We want everything to be easy. Things are nice when they’re handed to us, aren’t they? The more handouts, easy breaks and close calls we experience, the more we want. All of these things have to do with luck, and the people you interact with on your blog.
The “simple life” I’m talking about above is not created by you. In fact, nothing is easily accomplished if you’re the only person in the picture. It’s the people who are around you, and interact with that help make things easier for you. In the world of blogging, those people are your readers.
A blog is nothing without readers, and generally without any readership – a failure. Since readers play such a massive role on your blog, it is often that we turn to them to do things for us that will help us achieve success.
But you can’t rely on other people to do everything for you. That’s not what blogging is about, and that’s certainly not how life in general works.
Because of that need for simplification and a goal for an easy life, some of us start depending far too much on others to do the things we need to get done. A blogger usually wants the following things from their community:
- Content – Nearly every blogger accepts guest posts from their community.
- Conversions – Affiliate sign ups, product purchases, etc. Generally anything that makes a blogger money.
- Marketing – Share articles on social media sites, and help bring traffic to the blog in any way possible.
- React – To comment on a post and start discussions with others.
Now, doesn’t that sound like just about everything there is to do on a blog? Look at it this way:
I would breakdown the time I spend working with 50% of it for writing content, 20% marketing, 10% monetizing and 10% participating in community discussions. That leaves out a 10% gap where I can be spending my time on something else, related to or unrelated to my blog.
Now, all of that work is work that can be done by my community members. If I had my readers doing all of those things for me, those numbers would look a lot different. The idea of having other people working for us and writing our content and giving us their money is any bloggers dream. But, it’s a dream that is also self-destructive, if put on the mind too early.
It All Comes Down to You
It’s possible, and smart to rely on others to do things for you, don’t get the wrong idea. But becoming too dependent on that help is something that will ultimately lead to failure. Because what happens where people don’t show up to make things easier and do work for you?
You have to pick up on their slack, and if you became too reliant on that help, you will never get the job done. I learned this the hard way, and it’s not a very comforting thing to admit to yourself that you’re lazy. But, it’s also step one to getting yourself back on track.
When we have other people do those important things I mentioned earlier in this article, we start doing less of them ourselves. When it’s time for us to start doing them again, we have to know how to get ourselves back into gear.
I have broken down those things yet again, and this should hopefully help you figure out what you need to do to start depending on your own self to get things done.
1. Writing Content
Run out of guest posts? Sick of editing poorly written guest posts? It happens, and when it does – it means you have to write again. But, writing a good, quality article is not meant for the lazy! Try following these writing tips to get you back on track:
- It’s important to make your writing process easy to make writing less stressful.
- Know where to find sources of fresh ideas so coming up with new ideas for content takes less time.
- If you just can’t find the time to write an entire article – recycle it.
- You may want to incorporate some new writing habits into your writing style. You may find an increase in content production by making tweaks like these.
2. Marketing your blog
Marketing is not a strong point for many bloggers. Trying to get back into marketing habits is not much fun, and most will be hesitant to do it. However, it’s vital that you can get back in the game as swiftly as possible. Your brand depends on it.
- Remember, you want to try to get as much help as possible. Ensuring your blog can market itself is a great way to find that much-needed help.
- Start off with easy tactics like blog commenting and tweeting older posts. Methods like that are great to send in some traffic, then work your way up to guest posting and maybe even purchasing ad space.
- If you need an extra push to get yourself into a marketing mood, look at your blog statistics. Compare traffic levels of the current month to last month. You may not like what you see, so you need to let things like that motivate you to get back into gear.
3. Making money blogging
This is a tough thing to keep working at, even if you are motivated to do so. Say for example you launched a product, and it did really well at first. You just let it sit around and enjoy all of that income. Then, sales started slowing down, and because you were so used to just sitting around and making passive income, you forgot that you still had work to do. I went through this in the beginning of the year, actually.
- There are millions of ways to earn millions online. You just need to get out there and learn all of the different ways to make money blogging.
- Never forget that your community should always come first. That means, just because you went through a bit of a lazy period, don’t throw out sloppy money-making schemes.
- Making any decent amount of income online isn’t something that just happens overnight. You have to work hard at it, and chances are, work without money on your mind.
4. Keeping up with user engagement
Talking with people on Twitter, replying to blog comments and just interacting with your community in any way can get tough. After all, it’s just you communicating with anyone who visits your blog.
- Make it a practice to reply to comments as soon as they are published on your blog. People will appreciate it more than you may think, and some will even come back to talk to you more.
- The more you communicate with your fans, the more motivated they will make you feel. So, if you are feeling lazy, you need to look back at some of the things people have complimented you on and use them to get back to work.
- Dedicate a certain part of your schedule to focus in on just interaction. Set a whole day for it, a few hours a day, anything that will get you focusing on just talking to other people. Don’t be shy!
Relying on others to do the work for you when it comes to blogging is only really possible for those of us with thousands and thousands of readers and hundreds of thousands visitors a year. You want to do the best job you can to get others to pitch in and help you with the main things I highlighted in the article, but you are still the one who needs to take the initiative and the majority of the work. Remember:
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?The easy blogging life, hah! Maybe it does exist, but defiantly not for the first 5 years of the blog. If you enjoy all of the above: writing, marketing, getting to know readers, and maybe making some money, then it is the life! Maybe not the easy life, but you sure will be having fun.
.-= Patrick Toerner´s last blog ..The Guide to Creating, Writing, and Selling an Ebook =-.
Damn, 5 years? I hope I’ll have done something within that period of time to make my blogging a little easier!
Blogging being easy. NA!. Only way blogging is easy when your blog has absolutely no visitors, you write for yourself and happy with that.
Blogging properly is hell lot of task even if you outsource things.
.-= Agent Deepak´s last blog ..Readers Are Your Very First Priorities =-.
If you are happy with no one visiting your blog, then I’d agree with you. But, only people who blog about their life I think only worry about that. Otherwise, that’s probably the hardest stage of a blog!
That’s a lot of interlinking in this post ^-^.
Blogging is simple, but not easy. It needs commitment and persistence to keep going while everyone is mocking you for trying this make money blogging BS. And you just don’t have the money to prove them wrong, although you already work your ass off doing the marketing and writing great contents. It’s tough.
Anyway, another great one, Alex.
.-= Andi | WebMarketerDepot´s last blog ..How to Beat the Top Blogs: A Contemplation =-.
Haha that’s a great comment, “everyone is mocking you for trying this make money blogging BS. And you just don’t have the money to prove them wrong”
Nice one Andi!
.-= Patrick Toerner´s last blog ..The Guide to Creating, Writing, and Selling an Ebook =-.
Hopefully people see the links and click them.
Blogging is simple, but it definitely has its complicated moments. I agree though, persistence is key. I like to think after blogging on a regular basis for over a year, I have some sense of persistence.
Interacting with your readers is a must if you want to be succesful with your blog.
.-= Palabuzz´s last blog ..Who is Pepito Manaloto? =-.
Totally! In what ways do you interact with your readers?
Alex i read your blogs and you write in a quite impressive way. Blogging is not at all so much easy going thing, you have to think new topics, content and then how to market your blog. It sounds easy but not at all, it needs persistence and commitment to yourself and for your work also. Two thumbs up for all blogger who are regularly working.
.-= Lawyers Working Ethics´s last blog ..Best working ethics for Lawyers =-.
It does look easy, and you may think it is easy when you are hitting successes with it. But, once you let your guard down – as I mentioned in the article, you will fall back some and then it will become difficult for you.
Now that raises eyebrows… lol
That was really an important lesson, should’ve seen it coming or what? Nvm.
That time distribution was really helpful, I guess you experimented with that, didn’t you?
Delegation is important, I am trying to implement the advice from Rich-Dad-Poor-Dad about making human independent system. It should work even if you are not there. But I am still so unsure about it.
You’ve touched a bit of that in this post – about not depending on others for your work but is there a way to make our ‘blogging’ system human independent?
Thanks for the awesome post, btw. Solved many Q’s …. and as always – so close to what I am experiencing.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..How to Judge a Brilliant or Bad Idea? A Bulletproof Way! =-.
After the launch of the Blogussion Theme, I did go into a bit of a slump working wise….but I like to think of it as a well deserved break.
When you think about it, what do you spend the most time doing? For me, it’s just as I said in the post – content, marketing, discussions, monetizing.
Are you wondering about a blogging system that is totally automatic? I think WP-Robot (we reviewed it here) could be something that could start something like that up.
Well yes, After release of an edition of magazine – I’d also take those well deserved breaks – so I know what you are talking about. Without them I will never ever pick up that work. LOL
I think I waste a lot of my time just reading stuff on web. It’s such a time waster. I really want to get over this habit.
Yes I was wondering about that but not robotic thing. I wanted to make specific tasks automatic. Think I’ve found some really good tools. Think there is new post for Bloggusion.
All I wanted to do was write, post and talk to readers (comments and email). I hate having to post it on facebook, twiiter but I have found tools to handle that.
I am writing this one.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Meditation Weekend: What does your Meditation Corner Look Like? =-.
I have the problem with managaing time, becuase 50% is for college and rest 50% time is for blogging, so i have to squeeze a lot of things in the little time I have.
Actually, managing time is the most important for a blogger. If you are good at it, you will be at the top.
.-= Gautam Hans @ Blog Godown´s last blog ..5 Tips to Increase Productivity while Blogging =-.
Time management is essential, and is something many people suck at!
Yep, good advice here. It seems to come in waves no matter what kind of success or lack of your having blogging. Seems like you can go months pushing hard, then slack off, then push hard again. I’ll have to check out some of the hyperlinked articles you featured here.
.-= Zack´s last blog ..Tips for Learning Online Marketing =-.
I like to take a break from the less important things. Like, marketing…I hate it, and it’s pretty important. But, it’s not something I spend hours on. Maybe I’ll spend an hour a week doing stuff like commenting on other blogs and things like that, but I agree with you – you can slack off SOMETIMES.
Personally I find that what percentage of your time you spend in what strategy depends on what stage you are at with your blog. An example would be spending an almost equal amount of time marketing and networking as you do writing when you first start out, not even thinking about putting time into monetizing yet. Then after you have built up a readership through marketing and networking shifting more time to monetizing and less on networking and promotion (site promotion).
.-= Keith´s last blog ..Make Money On Twitter: Ethical? =-.
That’s true Keith. But, I always spent more time on writing the best content I could. Even more than I did marketing it.
But I agree, the percentages can be based off your status as a blogger. I still think you should be spending the most time writing and the least time making money, regardless of status!
The easy blogging life is something that should never be comprehended. If you don’t enjoy it: don’t blog! That’s just my opinion though. There are things you can do to make blogging easier however.
.-= Chris @ the best blogging sites´s last blog ..Why your FeedBurner count will never be accurate =-.
Blogging is always fun to me until it comes to content. Sometimes, I just don’t want to write! One way I get myself to write is keeping it exclusive to 1-2 days a week. I set aside 2 days in the week to get all of the content for my blog ready. I do love writing, but if I did it everyday, I’d get sick of it. Since I only do it every once in a while, I can’t wait to start writing when that time comes.
Good article my man. There is an easy blogging life if you write articles basically for search engine traffic. Then write an article a week. Has worked for some of my blogs.
.-= Franklin Bishop´s last blog ..How to Lose Weight in a Week – Quick Fat Burning =-.
Thanks dude.
So, are you talking about side blogs and just letting them run passively? Besides that one weekly article?
I also think that having genuine desire and passion for your topic would inspire your community to give you the things you want from them (e.g. content, reaction). When people see that you are really interested in something and are willing to help others who have problems in a certain topic, your community would reach out to you and give you the things you need.
.-= Julius´s last blog ..Closed-Circuit Televisions =-.
If you don’t have a passion for the topic, DON’T create a long-term blog based around it!
The more interested you are, the better the stuff you can come out with is. That’s all there is to it, and you made some good points there Julius.
wel it may seems easy and one can call it very easy, but to be real, its not that easy, I ve been blogging for years and I can feel how many hardships one has to bear to go through this thing.
.-= Frank´s last blog ..daekpriser =-.
It’s definitely not easy Frank. Sure, it gets easier, but it’s not something we call “mindless” or not care about.
How long have you been blogging for exactly?
I just realized that i spent most of my time on marketing. I think i should spend more time for my writing now. Content is the most important thing in a blog. Thanks for your sharing!
.-= Kok Siong Chen´s last blog ..Anti-angiogenic Therapy to Treat Cancer =-.
I spend up to 2 hours on some of my articles. Honestly, if your posts are good enough and you have some readership already – it will market itself…for the most part.
That’s the benefit of social media marketing. If your content is great, people will spread the word about it, especially on twitter. So the initial effort of publishing a post and generating that first tweet can be multiplied 1,000 times by visitors reading your content and retweeting for example. As the amount of site visitors grow, the effects will become more noticeable and have a greater impact.
Delegation and duplication is just being smart about business.
Keep up the good work Alex.
.-= Sam’s Web Guide´s last blog ..Microsoft’s New Courier Tablet / Digital Journal =-.
I love my Twitter traffic.
It doesn’t take much effort on Twitter man. Like I said above, if your content is good and you have even a little readership, your articles will market themselves.
Thanks for stopping by Sam.
Engaging readers, this is what we are up for now.
.-= Lucian Apostol´s last blog ..Use a caching plugin on wordpress to avoid server load when =-.
Yes, nteracting with your readers is a must if you want to be succesful with your blog.
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