As the door closes on 2008, it also close on another 12 months of the Swollen Pickles goal project. It's been a big year, with some decent gains made in some areas, and some disappointments in others.

Join me, as I take a look at how I went in December 2008.

1. Develop Swollen Pickles into a website that can generate $350 per month.

To say that the past couple of months have been disappointing is probably an understatement. In November 2008 SwollenPickles.com limped to $98.55. December 2008 saw revenue increase to $121.83 for the month. I'm not much of a mathematician, but I doubt that increase is statistically significant.

I made ten bucks from AdBrite this month. I have set up AdBrite to run as an alternative to Adsense if no Adsense ads are able to be displayed.


2. Develop Swollen Pickles to the point where it receives 30,000 unique visits per month.

A grand total of 27,048 unique patrons stopped by in December 2008, up slightly from 25,101 unique visitors in November.

Here's a graph showing unique visits to this site for the past 2 years, comparing actual traffic to my target.

3. Develop Digital Burn into a website that can generate $150 per month.

December 2008 saw DigitalBurn nudge past is revenue goal, bringing in $159.54 for the month, well up on the $70.51 for November 2008.

4. Develop Digital Burn to the point where it receives 15,000 unique visits per month.

Another traffic increase, with 13,028 unique visits to the site in December 2008 up from 11,284 in November.

The first full month of statistics tracking on DigitalBurn for a couple of months. There were 11,284 unique visitors in November.

5. Develop Motor Dude into a website that can generate $50 per month.

A record high month for MotorDude.com, with the site generating $229 for December, up on $151.92 in November, and well over the goal I set at the start of the year of $50 per month.

6. Develop Motor Dude to the point where it receives 7,500 unique visits per month.

MotorDude.com seems to be proving that it is possible to do quite a bit with very little. There were only 697 unique visitors to the site in December, down from 740 in November.

7. Achieve my goal weight of 85kgs.

In a case of better late than never, the start of December saw me start up at a gym for three visits a week. While I know it's still early days, and my work hasn't really impacted on the scales, I think I can say that I actually feel better for it.

In summary 2008 was an interesting year for me and my little goal experiment. Besides the revenue generated by MotorDude I can't really say that I hit any of my goals for six (or out of the park - depending upon where you are from), but I can say that they gave me something to aim for. It's funny how things pan out, as I started 2008 with SwollenPickles.com as my 'flagship' and number one earner. At the end of 2008 that was no longer the case. It's left me scratching my head a little. On the one hand, I'm glad that a couple of other sites have developed the way they have, on the other, I'm disappointed SwollenPickles.com didn't live up to its financial promise in 2008.

I'm yet to sit down and think about what goals I should set/work on for 2009... any suggestions?