Oct 27

Written by:
2009/10/27 10:01 AM 

This post is inspired by the really useful, Things I wish I knew and did when I first started blogging. Part I and 10 Things I wish I knew and did before I started blogging.

Contrary to what everyone will tell you the hardest part of blogging is taking the initial decision to put your name to your words and send them out into the world. If you’ve already taken that step I  salute you and welcome you into the fold my brother/sister blogger. Even if you’ve been at it for a few months, if you still feel like you’re lacking some direction or worse still lacking the results you hoped you’d receive this is for you too.

The purpose of this post is simply to help you find a way to manage all your blog related tasks as efficiently as possible during the course of the week.

Be a Jack of all trades and you’ll master some

This schedule can be scaled to fit the time you would like to allocate to your blog. I find that I need to go through this scheduling process weekly to determine my priorities for the week since I write for 3 different sites. The key to using this schedule is not how much time you spend on it but how much time you spend on each task.

Broadly speaking these are the areas that a new blogger should be focusing on:

• Writing Content and SEO - Creating Killer blog posts
• Networking or as I like to call it blog appreciation in your niche
• Site Admin – The nuts and bolts, dashing the hopes of would be spammers, chasing down dead links, installing that captcha plug-in or even upgrading your ailing CMS
• Design and Layout – Keeping your layout fresh and relevant, need to design a new logo or just feeling fidgety bout those widget(ey)s
• Research – Go out and track down as much relevant information about your niche and blogging in general

Optional

Monetization – This depends greatly on your reason for blogging, if your primary motivation for blogging is earning money then I suggest you incorporate this into your research and make sure you spend as much time as you can learning from people who have already monetized their site successfully. There is life after Google Adsense, if you’re serious about monetizing your site Google Adsense is probably not going to be the best use of your site real estate while you’re starting out, go find out what else is out there and ensure you’re spend as much time as you can learning about various potential income streams.

If you hope to be successful you’ll need to spend some time on all of these disciplines, or you’ll find you’ll end up with great content and no reader or worse readers queuing up with nothing to read or still worse readers giggling at your spam and swearing under their breath while clicking your broken links.

Typically my Schedule will look something like this:

Day	Writing	Networking	Admin	Design	Research	Monetization	Total
Monday	1hr	20mins	20mins		20mins		2hrs
Tuesday	1hr	20mins	20mins			20mins	2hrs
Wednesday	1hr	20mins	20mins			20mins	2hrs
Thursday	30 min	20mins	20mins		20mins		2hrs
Friday
Saturday				1hr	1hr		2hrs
Sunday	2hr				1hr		3hrs
	5hrs30min	1hr 20mins	1hr20mins	1hr	2hrs40mins	40mins	13hrs

 

Well that’s generally how my week looks except I’ll tend to be less rigid during the week as my blogging needs to fit around my work and and my life. As a result I tend to wake up early on a Saturday and Sunday and tend to end up working a bit longer obviously tasks like CMS updates and major design jobs will require more time but at least this way you’ll go into your week with your eyes wide open.

Balance is the key

This is just how I prefer to work, there is nothing stopping you writing for 5 hours on a Sunday and with all your content done and scheduled, spending the rest of the week working on your other tasks. The key though is to always remember when you sit down at your desk blogging is not just writing or networking or admin or any of the other tasks listed here it’s the combination of all of them. When you ignore any of them you are almost certain to struggle to achieve your objectives.

About the author:

My Name is Michael Fletcher, Monetize Your Life is a personal development site first and foremost. MYL focuses on helping you build your capacity and focus on the ways in which you are already rich.

When your life improves you automatically are able to improve the lives of others. You have the freedom to participate in activities that are important to you and contribute in the areas of your life that bring you happiness.

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