Back to the Basics – The Time Commitment
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No matter why you blog, one thing is certain, blogging takes time. So before you even start a blog you need to take a look at your life and determine just how much time you are willing to commitment to your blog.
When I first started blogging I was blindsided by how much time it took to run a blog and, of course, as your traffic and readership increase the amount of time required increases as well.
So when you make your plan for your blog keep these things in mind and try to estimate how much time each of these tasks is going to take you.
- Creating Blog Post – For me creating posts is the most time consuming blogging activity for me but that might not be the case for you. Keep in mind that a post might need research, recording of a video or audio, searching for images to use in the post, and proofreading and editing. I give myself a least an hour to create a blog post and sometimes more depending on the topic.
- Marketing – If you want people to find your blog you have to do some sort of marketing. Marketing can include promoting your blog on Facebook and Twitter, commenting on other blogs, writing guest blog posts, and participating in blog carnivals or memes. All these things take time. I spend about 30 to 45 minutes a day on marketing.
- Responding to comments – To create a sense of community on your blog you should respond to any comments left. It shows your readers that you really do care about what they have to say. I have to admit I’ve been dropping the ball on this and haven’t been doing so here on Faithful Bloggers. When I was responding to comments regularly, I was spending 15-20 minutes doing so.
- Responding to emails – While you may not get many emails in the beginning, the longer your blog the more emails you will get. I’ve found it best to set aside time to devote solely to email. In the beginning you may only need to devote 5 minutes, but I devote about 30 minutes a day.
- Maintenance and blog upkeep – Depending if you are technically savvy or not, maintenance and upkeep can take up a lot of time. You want your blog to be spam and virus free. You want to keep your blogging software up-to-date to prevent hackers from gaining access, and you want your blog appearance to stay nice and not too cluttered. I spend about 15-20 minutes a day on maintenance and upkeep.
On average I spend about 3 hours working on a blog. That may not sound like a lot, but that’s 3 hours away from my family and household obligations. That’s 3 hours I won’t get back so I have to make sure I use those hours wisely. And I’ll be honest, sometimes I spend less time and sometimes I spend a lot more time working on the blog. It all just depends what is going on that day for me.
The point is to be aware of amount of time you will have to commitment to your blog before starting and determine what you are willing to give up for that time. For me, I give up free time to get some work done when my kids are napping and I give up some sleep to get work done before the kids wake in the morning and after the kids go to bed.
It’s important to know just how much time you are willing to commit to and to stick to it. It’s easy to let it get out of control especially in the beginning, been there, done that, and it wasn’t fun.
