I get a lot of people asking me how I was able to blog full-time within six months of starting a blog. The simple answer? I turned it into a full-time job. I ran my blog like I’d run a business. I put in the hours, and I got a big return out of it. This is largely the reason that Austin was unsuccessful with his brief time at OMG. It’s impossible to make full-time blogging income by blogging part-time… at first! When you are laying the groundwork, you have to give it 110%, or else your structure will collapse later on.

If you aren’t willing to put in at least 4-6 hours a day on your blog for the first few months, you can still become very successful, just not right away. It takes time to build backlinks, attract new readers, and to start to move yourself into an authority position in your niche. Playing around and writing a new post every 3 days, and foregoing promotion completely will not get you there any time quick. This is largely the reason that most new bloggers quit. They hear that you can blog part-time and make better than a full-time income… and you can, but it takes work. Had I not put in the full-time hours in the early-going, I’d still be working for someone else, and perhaps my blog would start generating enough income for me to do write full-time in a few years… instead of a few months.

So, just to sum it up… you have three options…

1. Treat your blog like a full-time job. I’m not saying that you have to put in 8 hours a day, but you have to be consistently working on your blog. That doesn’t mean posting every few days and expecting miracles. You should be commenting on other blogs daily, chatting up forums, and ultimately trying to move your blog towards that “authority” figure it should be in your niche. You should consistently spend 10-20+ hours on your blog weekly. This will get you there faster than any other method. If you put in the hours, you’ll start to reap the benefits of all of your hard work much sooner than if you just write and wait.
2. Blog part-time for a much longer period of time. These are the bloggers that post once a day, and occasionally leave a comment somewhere. They don’t dive into advanced methods like article marketing, or active promotion. This method works too, but it’s much slower than giving it a big early push. Had I gone this route with OMG, it wouldn’t be nearly as successful this early. I’d still be in the position of most bloggers that have been around less than a year… trying to scrape up a part-time income.
3. Quit. Not appealing, but if you don’t want to follow my advice on the first two methods, you might as well choose this one now. It’ll save you a lot of time and effort.

So it all really boils down to time management. I know a lot of you have full-time jobs, and are trying to build a successful blog to quit your day job… but you can’t do it without applying the techniques in this series. Accurate accounting, and time management are just two of the many skills you will need to conquer.

I do certain things every day to push my blog higher and higher up the food chain. Some of the things that I do daily, that I recommend you do, are…

• Comment On Other Blogs/Forums
• Submit articles
• Write quality content
• Network with other bloggers
• Research traffic/statistics

What do you do on a daily basis to assure long-term success for your blog?

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