Reaching your goals takes time. Though you often wish they didn’t, they inevitably do.

It takes time to acknowledge your goals. It takes time to piece together a foundation for building up to your goals. It takes time before your goal-seeking efforts build momentum. It takes time before other people recognize your dedication and congratulate you on a job well done.

And if having patience while working towards your goals isn’t difficult enough, you’ll also meet up with an occasional obstacle trying to knock you off course. Given the amount of aggravation you’ll face attempting to reach your goals, it will often be tempting to give up. In this article, I’ll be describing my own experiences on this topic with the hope that I can convince you that giving up on your goals is the worst thing for you.

In the first month following its inception, LifeReboot earned only $42. It wasn’t much, and I didn’t expect it to be. My blog was brand new to the Internet, it contained very little content, and in an arena of over 71 million blogs, LifeReboot could barely be called a competitor. It took less than ten minutes to read through the entire contents of the site, and I had yet to write a “pillar article” that caught the attention of the so-called “blogosphere.”

It was quite disheartening to see $0.00 as the daily site earnings more often than not. Nevertheless, I continued writing with the idea that as long as I didn’t give up, the site would eventually become popular enough to have a regular audience of interested readers. I set a reasonable goal: earn one dollar a day ($30) in the first month. Thanks to some donations from generous readers, the site earned a whole $12 more than I had hoped.

Having reached my first month’s goal, I felt confident as I set my next goal: earn two dollars a day ($60) in the second month. Just one day after I had set this goal, something unexpected happened.

I wrote a “pillar article.” My post describing 10 Reasons It Doesn’t Pay To Be “The Computer Guy” was ranked so highly by the reddit community that it held the #2 spot on the front page. Within five hours of submitting my article to be rated, the article had been viewed by almost 13,000 unique visitors, the site earnings had totaled over $10 for the day, and the traffic spike caused my hosting service to suspend my account.

At first, I was devastated. My site had been crippled by the unexpected influx of visitors. Thousands of other potential visitors were trying to visit my site, but instead of being properly linked to the article, they were being led to a thoroughly embarrassing “Account Suspended” page. My fifteen minutes of fame had seemingly arrived but I was tremendously unprepared for it.

Several months worth of page design, site configuration, and writing was all lost only five hours after one article became popular. It felt terrible. Life had thrown me an unexpected obstacle, and every passing moment while my site was down seemed like an opportunity lost.

I had been knocked off course. The steps involved in overcoming this obstacle were going to be long, detailed, and stressful. Furthermore, I had to rely on cooperation from my hosting provider so that I could be granted access to my suspended account. It would have been much simpler to quit, throw in the towel, and admit defeat.

Giving up would have been senseless though. If I could bring my site into the spotlight by writing one pillar article, what was stopping me from doing it again someday?

Instead of letting this one obstacle end my blogging career, I chalked it up to experience and began migrating the site to a high-volume hosting provider. It took an entire day to bring LifeReboot back to working order, and by then my article was no longer under the spotlight.

Or was it? Although the traffic influx was not thousands of visitors per hour, it was amounting to a few thousand visitors a day. As the month went on, over 120 different blogs linked to LifeReboot, and the number of subscribers continually increased. Site visitors were frequently commenting on articles, and I received almost ten donations from generous readers.

Today I added up the earnings for LifeReboot’s second month, and I am pleased to reveal that it earned $126. That’s three times (triple!) the amount it during its first month.

Imagine if the site earnings continued increasing in this trend. Thinking conservatively, if the site earnings consistently doubled every month, then:

In month #3, LifeReboot would earn $250.
In month #4, LifeReboot would earn $500.
In month #5, LifeReboot would earn $1000.

Over time, the site earnings could rival a full-time job.
(Edit: LifeReboot’s Current Monthly Earnings are available in this article.)

I can’t talk about these projected earnings with any amount of certainty. Realistically, it may be another six months before the site is even earning $250/month. The important thing is that because I didn’t choose to give up, the site demonstrated an upward trend in its number of readers, subscribers, and consequently, its earnings.

If I had chosen to give up, however, then the tale of LifeReboot would be just one more story in a long list of “If I had only…” stories.

Reaping the rewards of exponential growth over time is one reason I refuse to give up. If I’m working towards my goals every day, and I’m determined enough to overcome every obstacle that stands in my way, then I’m bound to succeed.

Work towards your goals every day. Be patient. Push past unexpected obstacles. If you don’t ever give up, then you’re bound to succeed too.

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