Note: I’m going to share several 2010 wrap up posts which will summarize some of the details of my business and give you some specific advice on what worked well for me this year and what flopped. Let’s start with covering my goals first.

I started off 2010 after recently getting fired from my day job and deciding to make my online business my full time job. I moved my old blog to a new domain name and relaunched in the beginning of 2010. I set several professional and personal goals at the start of the year which I want to get to first:

2010 Business Goal Review:

1. Earn over $150,000 across my network of websites: Success

I was able to surpass my goal to earn over $150,000 this year. I’ll be sharing a more detailed income breakdown post in a few days which will cover more specific figures and it will be the last formal income report I share (I’ll explain why in that post). Overall I’m happy I was able to earn well into the six figures because this was my very first year working for myself and it came on the heels of getting fired from my $60k per year high stress 50+ per week sales job in October of 2009.

2. Spend at least $50,000 on quality domain names to be developed: Partial Success

I probably spent more like $30,000 on domain names / websites / new projects so I can’t say this goal was entirely completed but the main reason why I included this in the list was to make sure I was reinvesting my earnings into more projects (which I definitely did).

3. Work at least 5 hours a day for a minimum of 25 hours per week: Success

When I wrote this goal I had developed another video game addiction to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and was not working nearly hard enough on my business. After a few months into 2010 I got into the rhythm of being self employed and I easily began working around 40+ hours a week and sometimes more.

4. Hire at least one full time writer: Partial Success

I hired my first full time outsourced worker from the Philippines and although she does some writing for me it’s not her primary job function. My business ideas slightly changed in early 2010 so I wasn’t too concerned about accomplishing this goal anyway. I do plan to hire one or two more outsourced workers to help with customer support for various projects and help answer my emails for me (I think I’m spending too much time on email).

2010 Personal Goals Review:

1. Buy a house: Failure

My wife and I decided against buying a house primarily because I wanted to wait until she finished up her degree and could start her job. So we may buy a house in 2011, but we may just keep renting instead. Every now and then I do some research on housing prices in WA and it still doesn’t feel like we’ve hit the bottom yet.

2. Donate at least $10,000 to charity: Failure (for now)

I sold a website in a deal worth six figures near the very end of 2010 and this threw a wrench in my business plans / tax planning. I met with my accountant and he actually advised that I wait to make any larger donations in 2011 as opposed to doing them at the very end of 2010. He suggested this based on the assumption that we’ll be buying a house this year and it will be easier to itemize deductions then. So this goal is currently a failure but I will be doing some donating soon (beyond what I’m already doing monthly) and I actually have a secret project I’m working on this year with a goal to donate a lot of money to charity in 2011 with it (more on that later).

3. Cook an entirely brand new healthy meal once per month: Failure

I only made three brand new meals in 2010 which were the following: Italian Pasta Salad I, Double Tomato Bruschetta and Stuffed Peppers My Way (which I made 3 times). So even if I count the stuffed peppers as a new meal I still only made 5 “new” meals in 2010 which was far from my goal.

4. Work out at least 2 times per week: Failure

The closest thing to regular workout I saw in 2010 was playing the Kinect Dance Central game on my Xbox 360 several dozen times which can be a workout but isn’t exactly what I had in mind. More on this goal in another blog post.

5. Re-Learn Spanish well enough to carry on a conversation with a native speaker: Failure

I didn’t even open a Spanish book or buy some Spanish language software. This was an epic fail, perhaps I’ll try to plan a trip to Spain and set that as a target date to improve my Spanish?

6. Go to Disneyworld with my wife: Partial Failure

We didn’t go to Disneyworld but we did go to Hawaii (twice). I primarily made this goal just to make sure we’d go on vacation and we certainly did

7. Read my Bible regularly

To continue the trend set in the previous personal goals yes I didn’t even accomplish this one.

2010 Blog Goals Review:

Hit 5,000+ RSS Readers:

This was a goal I actually set in the middle of May and not at the beginning of the year. I was only 700 off my target for the year and frankly I’m not too concerned about missing it. I’ll set a new goal for 2011 in my next goals post and I’ll make sure I reach it next year for sure!

2010 Overall Goal Wrap Up:

I made a lot of money in 2010 and met nearly all of my business goals, but I lacked the discipline to set and stick to a schedule which would have allowed me to spend time working out, reading my bible, cooking food and re-learning a new language. It’s clear to me what I need to work on in 2011 and I’ll outline that in my 2011 goals post – I need more discipline. (anyone else struggle with this?) I’m still very excited with the success I’ve had with my business in 2010 when I technically wasn’t even planning to be out on my own until 2011.

Upcoming: Next I’ll be sharing my 2010 detailed income breakdown post. This is something I stopped doing monthly in mid 2010, but I want to provide a more in depth look at my business and how it performed for those that always like to see specific numbers so be sure to stick around for that.

What did you think about my goals? Any suggestions for what I should do in 2011?