Time Investment in Blogging
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FAQ: A common question I’m asked is:
“How much time will I have to invest to
become a famous A-list blogger?”
Famous bloggers like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.com have been known to work 16 hour days without taking a single day off. But do you really have to work that long and hard to become successful at blogging?
Not really.
Four Blog Mastery Factors
You have to focus on 4 things to become a terrific blogger and create a business around your blog:
1. Learn
Keep up to date with your industry
2. Create
Content and products
3. Promote
Your blog and let your blog promote your products
4. Network
With the influentials and you’ll find better opportunities
Thats about it. Only 4 things to take care. To work on those 4 things, you don’t need to spend 16 hours a day. But you will have to spend at least 2 hours a day on your blog in the early days. Or else, you’ll have to be willing to spend money and outsource.
My 3 Hour Blog Working Day
1. Learning - 30 Minutes a Day
Everyday, I spend about 15 minutes going over 13 key RSS feeds. And15 minutes going over my emails and tips I may have received.
Once a week, I go through 62 other RSS feeds and all the rest of my emails.
Note: I divide my RSS feeds into two categories. A-Pile and B-Pile. A-Pile contains the 13 most essential blog feeds. I read them through Google Reader. B-Pile are all the other feeds that are good but not excellent. Or those that update 15 times a day (news feeds). I use BlogLines to read the B-Pile and I don’t read the B-Pile everyday.
This may mean that I’m not always the first one to know of a new widget or website launch. But amazingly - I’ve found - that its not really necessary to be the first one to know the news to succeed <slight sarcasm>!
2. Creation - 30 Minutes a Day
One of the first things I do everyday is write. Because of past experience, I can now churn out a good quality blog post in 30 minutes.
A few days, I also spend time on product creation. (In my opinion, it is essential to create products to become an extremely rich blogger - and not just rely on ad revenue). Writing a 20 page report may take me up to 20 hours. But I write a report at a leisurely pace. I divide it in chapters and write one chapter a day. This way, its easy to write 1 report a week!
3. Promotion - 60 Minutes a Day
This is where I spend the bulk of my time. Blog promotion.
BlogClout Rule of thumb: For every hour you spend on content creation, spend two hours on blog promotion.
But again: I break the promotion down into manage-able steps. I focus on trying out and optimizing just one promotional tactic per week. This way, I don’t have to spend more than an hour or two per day on blog promotion.
4. Networking - 15 Minutes a Day
I’m not too good at networking. Its something that doesn’t come to me naturally and I strive to get better at it. Whenever possible, I try to attend workshops and seminars.
But here is one thing that I do for networking - that anyone can do too - to achieve fantastic results. I write one thank you note a day. Doesn’t take me more than 15 minutes to write a thank you note and send it through postful.com or sendoutcards.com.
Time Sheet:
- Learning: 30 Minutes a Day
- Creation: 30 Minutes a Day
- Promotion: 1 Hour a Day
- Networking: 15 Minutes a Day
Total Time Spent Everyday: 2 hours 15 minutes
In summary, I spend less than 3 hours on most days. And there are a few days that I work 6-7 hours to get a few time consuming things done.
Disclosure: I run more than one blog (I actually, I have more than 15 websites!) So I’m online about 6 hours everyday. But I do outsource a lot of work on my other projects. The above time sheet is my estimate of time spent on this blog - tracked over 7 days. I kept a log file for this blog the whole of last week and the numbers are based on those logs.
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Excellent post as usual Ankesh
Posted 12 Jul 2007 #
Ankesh,
Your “time spent” breakdown is a good model. Sometimes I get so caught up in the article creation, I lose sight of the other elements. Thanks for the reminder.
I appreciate you, Ankesh!
Richard Dennis
Posted 14 Jul 2007 #
Thanks Jamie and Richard for your kind words
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Can you tell us which 13 blogs do you read everyday?
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Hmm… not sure if I’ll reveal the names of the blogs. But I think it may be a good idea to write a follow up post on blog reading…
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Hi Ankesh, I just found your blog from a posting on doshdosh. Great stuff you have here!
I’d be interested in knowing what promotional tactics you employ. Would you mind sharing a little more about that part of your post?
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Just found you through DoshDosh and I like your blog. Good post. I fully agree that you should spend a lot more time in promotion. Would you consider sharing some of your time management techniques for running more than one blog?
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Mark: Thanks for your kind words. You can start off by reading these past posts: link 1 and link 2.
You may also want to subscribe to the RSS feed to this blog because I talk a lot about growing your blog traffic.
Genesis: Thanks for your kind words too. Expect a post on time management and running multiple blogs sometime this week or early next week.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
You are on my personal “every day list” and I am sure to need more then 15 minutes to read just your posts.
So it seems to me you’re a very fast reader
I also would be interested in your “13 blogs” list!
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
Rainer: Thanks
I have a decent reading speed of 400-600 words per minute (depending on what I read). For improving reading speeds, I recommend “Power Reading” by Rick Ostrov.
Here are a few statistics from my Google Reader on my A-Pile of blogs: In the last 30 days, I have read 322 items. Thats about 11 posts a day. Definately readable in 15 minutes a day (as most blog posts are certainly less than 1 page (300 words) in length).
Posted 16 Jul 2007 #
You’re obviously a fast worker honed through the experience of keeping track of more than 15 blogs.
I imagine a fair number of these blogs do not need your constant direct input, sites which are organic in nature where visitors or invited guests provide much of the content such as forums or gaming and video related sites?
Posted 17 Jul 2007 #
emigre: Thanks for asking. I don’t own and maintain 15 blogs. I own and maintain 15 websites. A few of the websites - I haven’t touched them since 2 years. Where as a few others (blogs and newsletters) require constant work.
What I usually do is set things up and then hire someone to maintain the momentum.
I rather prefer blogs to usual websites. My blogs earn me more money than my websites too. But blogs also require more time investment.
If I were starting all over again, I would focus on just 1-2 websites instead of the 15 I now have. Build blogs on them and later develop a community around them…
Posted 17 Jul 2007 #
Your absolutely right..
Posted 13 Aug 2007 #
[…] Kothari explores how you should schedule your blogging time and suggest that you need to focus on four things in order to become a terrific blogger. I agree […]
Posted 28 May 2008 #