A week ago I sat down and planned out a day to do a ton of stuff on my blog. I also work a full time job while running this blog and recently I had not had enough time on working days to do anything. So I decided to dedicate one day to getting all of the other stuff done with my blog and maybe writing a blog post too.
After the day was done I realized I did not get a new blog post written and that I spend so much time doing things that someone who doesn’t run a blog would never know I did. That is when this post idea came to me. Once again I did not have time to write it until now, but I think that’s a good thing as I had a lot of time to think about how I would write it as I was driving to and from work every day.
Here is how my one day of blogging went. I hope this opens your eyes as to how much work blogging actually is, though it is a work of love.
8am
I had been up for an hour. I showered, had breakfast and had my second cup of coffee on the table next to me. My first order of business was to get my tailwind scheduled for the week. I use Tailwind to schedule my Pinterest and Instagram post so that I have more time for other things and so that both social channels can be active while I’m busy working that full time job.
Not only did I have to spend time finding great pins to share from others, but I had to figure out what post I wanted to pin from my own blog. I usually try to schedule my new post from the past week and at least 2 post that are older post. I use Canva to create my Pinterest images for each post and usually this part alone takes me an hour.
12 pm
Yes, you read that right, it took me 4 hours to do all of my scheduling and image making. Now I will say I actually got more then a week worth done and I had to get up and make some more coffee. Now I am on to twitter.
I don’t use a scheduler for twitter anymore. I’m not as active on it, though I need to be. I do also use Tailwind to share my pins on twitter so that helps a bit to. On this day I wanted to go through and read twitter. Respond to things I found interesting and start engaging more with my followers again.
1pm.
Lunch time. I had a sandwich and some carrots for lunch while I sat working on updating my blog. I had to update my plugins, fix a few issues and in general get very mad at my blog for not doing what I wanted it to do. In the end I won and was able to make it look a bit better, though you probably won’t notice it at all, they were all minor changes. I also updated my advertising to reflect more on this time of year and what I’m going to be blogging about. I try to change my ads once a month.
3pm
It’s time for Facebook. Facebook takes up a lot of my time. I only do most of my Facebook stuff on the weekends because I belong to groups that are very demanding if you post anything that day. I also run a small Facebook Group called Blogger Love and luckily it’s still an up and coming small group so it’s not too time consuming. What takes my time on Facebook is the share threads that I join to help get my work out there. Not only do I have to figure out what post to share to what group, but then I have to visit, comment, share others post as well. I love the community, but the whole process is very time consuming when you also have a full time job.
5pm
My work day is done, Use to work until 8pm but a few years ago I decided I was letting my blog take over my life and it just was not worth it. Now normally I only work for 4-5 hours on a Saturday so that I can enjoy my weekend, but this day was long overdue as I had missed the last 2 weeks. As you noticed I did not get any blog post written. After doing all of that my brain was done.
Blogging is a lot of work that you don’t get paid for, eventually that work will pay off and you will receive more offers, better offers and hopefully be able to create an income for your blog, but if you have not started a blog yet and you want to make money with one. Make sure you know how much work it will take, plan for it and you will succeed.
Here are a few other post that can help you make money with your blog.
- How To Make Money Blogging in 2018
- 11 Ways to Improve Your Blog Right Now
- Checklist for Starting a Blog on WordPress
So cool Holly because I just published a post sharing how folks often have no idea how much work it takes to be a travel blogger. Some post images of themselves on the beach enjoying Bali or Fiji and never share their workload. When I visited both exotic islands for 6 and 4 months respectively I was inside working much more than I was on the beach.