Finding the Time to Blog

Now that you have your subject matter, name, and all the other parts lined up ready to go, and you are still jazzed about the idea, let me give you one more thing to think about.

Blogging takes TIME.

How fast do you type?  How fast can you write and then type it into the computer? Have you built a list of about 30 different post subjects?  It has been said that there are several thousand blogs started a day, and that of those, a large percentage will be stale or dead w/in 6 months.  Why?  People lose sight of why they started the blog to begin with, they don’t think they are being heard because they don’t have a million readers or even 100 readers.  If you are blogging to create a brand and/or build readership outside of your friends and family, then it will take a marketing effort on top of writing good content.  Both of which take time.

For my blogs, I started formulating what each blog would be about in June.  I then came up with names and wrote some post subjects down.  I then tried to write 16 full posts for each one before I started.  This didn’t happen due to consulting work that I was doing at the end of the year, but that was the theory.  Why 16 full posts?  My initial theory was that if I posted 1 per week on my blog (each day a different blog), then I would at least have 4 months of posts ready to go while I was still adding functionality and trying to market my blogs. 

I also allocated 2 hours each morning to work on the blog.  This includes writing content (I never got more than about 5 or 6 full posts written, so I am well beyond that initial stash), visiting other blogs to comment on them, finding other blogs that provide good information for my readers, etc.  I still have yet to do all the other marketing techniques to build a network.  I can also tell you that not only do I not have a million readers, even the best blogs in the business don’t have a million readers (although some do).  10,000 readers would be a great site. 

So the big question – Do you have time for this?

Let me know what your thoughts are.  You can subscribe to my blog (RSS feed sign up in the top right corner), you can also Twitter me @JohnnyOptimist  (one twitter name for all my blogs)

Ben – Blogmaster General