2013 Second Quarter Goal Check In

We are almost halfway through 2013 already! Crazy. Here's how my 2013 goals have been going the past few months. You can also review my first quarter progress if you're interested.

1. Work out twice a week. Since my first quarter check in, my goal has been to either work out or clean on weekday mornings when I don't have a commitment outside of the house. Through the colder months, cleaning almost always won. Now that it's warmer, I'd rather be outside than doing just about anything else, even if it means exercising. I haven't kept up with a steady twice a week routine, but the new goal has kept me working on both of these first two 2013 goals more than it would have otherwise.

2. Create a weekly cleaning schedule and stick with it. Since we added two kitties to our house, my biggest goal has been to keep up with the extra cat chores, which has been successful. We're far enough into the year that I've gotten a pretty good idea how much I can realistically accomplish each week. It isn't as much as I'd originally envisioned, but it's a huge step from where I was this time last year. Also, I need to get a picture of Ares "helping" me sweep to include in one of these goal updates. It's become one of his favorite activities.

3. Double my December 2012 HubPages earnings. This isn't the best time of year to assess my HubPages earnings, as the late spring and summer months are notoriously my lowest earning months of the year. I did surpass my December earnings in both February and March. I'm not anywhere close to doubling yet, but it's a start. I still expect to see most of this growth happen from September through December.

4. Maintain a minimum 2,000-3,000 words per day minimum on weekdays. During my last quarterly check in, I wrote that this is the goal that I'm the most proud of thus far, which is still probably true. There have been very few days that I did not meet this goal or make up for it on another day. I have built up a solid stamina for this level of daily writing and hope to keep up with it.

5. Participate in 10 craft fairs. I participated in three shows this spring. I have three scheduled for the fall and have applied for one more as well. I have a few more on my list that don't have apps open yet. I'm confident that I'll be able to add a couple more to that list.

6. Learn one new Photoshop Elements skill per week. I have not been learning one new Photoshop skill per week. However, I have been pushing myself to keep opening the software and testing new features on a regular basis. Personally I'd rather be out taking more photos than doing a lot of editing on a smaller handful of photos, but I keep editing as I feel called to do so.

7. Start to monetize my photography. I opened Zazzle and deviantART accounts early in the year and have done a pretty good job adding new items to them on a regular basis. I still don't have any sales, but I'm still not doing a lot of promotion for them yet either. This spring I put together a larger plan for opening a SmugMug shop and eventually a separate Etsy shop with the goal of opening the SmugMug shop in June and the Etsy shop in September. There are a lot of components to this plan that I may discuss in more detail here at some point, but for now, I did get the SmugMug account going and am serious about getting some sales this summer. If you haven't already been over there, go check it out (and spread the word).

8. Participate in 6 BBA challenges. I've participated in 3 BBA challenges so far this year and am doing my best to stay on top of the challenge themes so I can plan ahead for future challenges.

9. Maintain focus on expanding my best selling lines/items. I have pushed myself to re-stock popular items as they sell and keep building on some of my existing best sellers to further those lines, which has gone pretty well. I've consistently sold these newer items both on Etsy and at shows.

10. Maintain focus on ensuring consistency with my craft fair booth and my business in general. I had a lot of clear ideas at the beginning of this year about how I wanted to refine my craft fair booth land how I wanted to pair down the items that I offer on Etsy. A number of my craft fair booth ideas have been successful, and I am slowly getting where I want to be with my Etsy shop. I have a hard time pulling a whole lot of items at once, but I've been able to let some smaller things go. I've also sold enough random higher end items that I'm confident that I'll eventually move a significant number of those pieces.

How are your 2013 goals going?