Run Your Blog Like You’d Run Your Business: Time Management
By Bryan Clark on Feb 6, 2008 in Better Blogging
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…
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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11 Comment(s)
By Nick on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
The thing that blows my mind are the people that post once every ten days. There’s one guy that writes a baseball blog, and he’s one of the internet’s best kept secrets. He works a very demanding full time job, and he says he doesn’t have time to really give it a go. He doesn’t understand why he only gets a few hundred visitors a month. I’ve told him time and again he needs to really give it a go, or just hang it up. I’ve reached out to him several times, invited him on board to my site so that when he has time to write, someone will actually see what he has to say, but he has no interest. It’s been eight months since he started, he’s still plugging away, but eventually he’s going to fold due to lack of interest. No one wants to write for an empty audience. It’s sad too, becuase this guy is far more talented than me, I honestly believe that he has “real writer” skills, but no one will everk now him.
By Bryan on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
By GoalGuru.com on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
We have a saying when we coach home based DotComPreneurs. If you treat it like a hobby, you’ll make hobby money.
So if you will treat your blog and web site like a million dollar business, that is what you will create.
Live Your Dreams,
Jill
By Nick on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
Not neccessarily true Jill, I definately treat my blog like a million dollar business, I’ve manged to place my articles on USA Today, Reuters, Fox News, etc. and still I don’t make much money. I actually research what I write, call for quotes, verify stories, you know, stuff real journalists do, but it doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference with the advertisers. Maybe I just don’t know how to properly utilize what I have created, but I only average about 400 bucks a month in revenue.
By Bryan on Feb 7, 2008 | Reply
I got lucky here and there to make what I make… for most of us, $400 a month for a 7 month old site is worth it. Especially since you run a sports blog, and those are notoriously hard to monetize. Adsense doesn’t work, there aren’t many affiliate programs, and unless you are one of the real BIG ones, it’s hard to make big money on a sports blog.
Give yourself a pat on the back for being able to achieve what you have, and keep striving. A goal that I would set if I were in your shoes would be adding 10% to my readerbase every month, and along with it 10% to my income. You’ll be amazed (given time) at how that number starts to grow on it’s own.
By Ty Brown on Feb 9, 2008 | Reply
I have to agree with this post. For years I dreamed about owning my own business. I finally started treating my part time business - http://www.CommuniCanine.net - as a job. As soon as I did that I was able to quit my job and focus on training dogs all day.
Now that I have started blogging - http://www.DogBehaviorOnline.com - it is my plan to have that replace my income from my other business within a year.
This article was a good motivator
By AntiVirus on Feb 10, 2008 | Reply
not many people realize that success needs hard work and if you treat ur business like a second job, you won’t succeed
it’s great if you have all the motivation!
By Holly on Feb 11, 2008 | Reply
Great post. A lot of people look at blogging as a way to make some fast, easy money. However, the reality of blogging is that to make it work for you, you really have to dedicate a lot of time and energy to it, as you would at any job you held.
By RandomThinker on Feb 11, 2008 | Reply
I completely agree. Many enter into blogging thinking that it’s the ticket to fortune without having to do anything. We’ve all seen the ads that say something like “make 1 million per year with only 15 minutes per day”. Those ads are everywhere and have given many the impression that this is the norm. It’s so far from the truth. Just starting out I’m finding that its taking 4-6 hours per day just to get 50-100 unique visitors to stop by. It takes networking, reading, researching, writing, more research and reading. If you don’t like sitting in front of a computer all day, the income won’t likely get there. My goal is to go full-time, but I don’t think it will be anytime soon. I’ve got so much to learn! That’s why I read blogs like this. Thanks for sharing the thoughts.
By Eric on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
Great Advice!
By free wesite sumission on Feb 27, 2008 | Reply
I completely agree that a blog requires a consistent support. I also have a blog. It’s relatively new and I try to spend at least 2-3 hours a day to maintain my blog. I would like to spend more time but I also have other job to do. I think that a solution could be guest blogging. I opened my blog for guest posts and I have already received a guest post. So, I hope my blog will be running.