Do MORE in LESS TIME with 2 Skills
July 25, 2024
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Reading Time: 5 minutes Productivity is about efficiency. Here are 2 tricks to up your game.
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“You should start a blog.”
The words of a former friend, whose MLM I had recently joined, when I told her I was worried about how to promote myself online.
It was autumn, 2014.
By Thanksgiving, I had my first ever blog.
Eight years and half a dozen iterations later, I’ve learned a few things about how to balance your blog with a full time job. In Part 1 of this two-part series, I’m sharing five of my top ten tips.
I know this is pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone has been telling you to do, but hear me out.
The more focused your subject matter is, the more time you’ll need to devote to finding new angles to blog about. For example, if your entire blog is about photography (and you’re new enough that every camera company under the sun isn’t sending you cameras to review every week), your post topics will be limited to your knowledge about photography. And maybe that’s pretty extensive, in which case you’ve got quite a runway. But if you’re a hobbyist with your camera, it won’t be long before you find yourself needing to learn something new that you can share with your audience.
In an ideal world, that would be great. You could devote time to your hobby, then blog about it.
But the reality when you have a full time job is that your blog eats up a lot of your hobby time. So now you have to balance your nine-to-five with your photography and your blog.
This is part of the reason that the ubiquitous “lifestyle blog” became so popular. With a broad umbrella like “lifestyle” you can post about pretty much anything and everything that makes up how you live your daily life.
A “niche” in this sense might be your overall aesthetic, or a focus on makeup, fashion, or fitness. But that makes it much easier to find things to write about.
I can already hear the follow-up questions. But if lifestyle blogs are everywhere, how am I supposed to stand out?
The answer is to find a middle ground. You still want to find a niche, but it doesn’t have to be as narrow as the gurus on the internet would have you believe. A recipe blog isn’t only about desserts; a fitness blog isn’t only about workouts; a homemaking blog isn’t only about interior decorating.
So find your niche, but don’t niche down too much. Make it easy on yourself to sit down and write your weekly post.
I used to go to print-a-calendar.com and print out three months at a time, in duplicate. I had one set of calendars for a filming and writing schedule, and another for an editing and posting schedule. I used different colored pens for YouTube, Instagram, and my blog so I knew which topics were being published where on which day.
Sounds excessive, doesn’t it?
Let me tell you a secret.
I have never been as organized about my posting as I was when I did that.
None of the post scheduling apps or cross-platform schedulers has come close to keeping me as organized as my personal schedule did.
When you try to balance your blog and a full time job, stuff comes up. Evenings and weekends get booked, whether you want them to or not. You tell yourself you’ll get to drafting that post on Sunday.
But then you remember you not only have to draft the post, you also have to format it, get some images, edit pin creatives, and promote it on Instagram.
And suddenly it seems like a better idea to just skip your post for the week.
You could, but unless you have a plan to get yourself organized, you’ll be in the same boat next Sunday.
The way around this is to get real about all the components of a single blog post and map out when you’re going to take care of each of them. You probably won’t get this right the first, second, or even third time. For instance, you might think it will only take you an hour to find and edit the images you want for your post, when it actually ends up taking six.
Trial and error is key here.
Once you get into a rhythm, it will be a lot less overwhelming. Scheduling devoted time to all those little details that go into a blog will make it much easier to keep up with your content.
Expanding upon my last point, sign up for services that make your schedule easy to stick to.
Don’t have time to take all original photos for your blog? Sign up for Adobe Stock, PicMonkey, or Canva. All of those now include loads of stock images to choose from. Not a whiz at Photoshop? Picmonkey and Canva can help you out there, too. They’re much more intuitive, beginner-level photo editing software, with way less of a learning curve. Do you create video content? Sign up for an account with Epidemic Sound so you always have fresh audio tracks without getting your video flagged for copyright infringement.
And if you get really stuck with your website, tag someone on Fiverr to help you out.
Most of these services will cost you a little money. But the time and headache they will save you are totally worth it. Your blog is a business, but it’s also supposed to be fun.
It’s rare anymore to find someone who is blogging just for the sake of having a blog. Almost everyone who runs a blog with a full time job is doing it to make some money, either as a side hustle or with larger aspirations in mind.
And whenever money is involved, you have to start thinking of your blog as a business. Without getting too deep in the legal weeds, a business must be managed as its own entity, i.e. something separate from your personal assets. This accomplishes a few things.
The most important one is that it insulates your personal assets from anything that might happen with your business. If someone sues you because of information they got on your website, as long as the website is run by your LLC, they can only go after the assets of your LLC and not, say, your family home.
The first step in drawing this distinction is to create an LLC. This is a fairly simple process you can handle through your Secretary of State website, with an Operating Agreement like the one you can find here.
Be discerning about the companies you affiliate with. When you’re just getting started, it can be hard to say no if you receive an offer, even if it doesn’t really align with you or your new LLC.
There are loads of programs you can sign up for to connect with companies looking for influencers. (Check out ClickBank, LTK, AWIN, and ShareaSale.) And these are all amazing resources. But if you start posting about everything from bone broth to cashmere sweaters, it’s going to be difficult to establish your brand and set yourself apart.
So make use of the resources available, but use them wisely. If you mostly post about cooking, it would be weird to post about jewelry. If you have a home design blog, why would you post about protein bars?
If it doesn’t make sense, pass on it. Look instead for companies that are a good fit and build lasting relationships with them. This will work out better in the long run and I promise, the money will still come.
Keep an eye out next week for the remaining 5 tips on my Top 10 list for balancing your blog with your day job.
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