Is there even such a thing as spending too much time on website or blog content? Sadly the answer is yes. Writing the content of your blog is only a small part of what it means to be a successful blogger or writer. Since most people who write blogs are doing so for ulterior motives lets take a moment to be honest about why we are writing and how that changes the amount of time you should be writing.
Why Are You blogging?
Most people who started writing a personal blog did so because they wanted to express themselves or they wanted a place to share things with family and friends. However, most of those people, if honest, will tell you that they started their blog because they thought they could turn their little corner of the internet into riches like so many before them.
How’s That Working Out For You?
You see, the thing is, it isn’t enough to have great writing on your site. It helps, don’t get me wrong, but there is so much more to it than writing well. In addition to writing (if you want to make those riches with your blog) you need to have something to sell on your site. You see, the blog is not the end result for those bloggers who have turned their website into a full time job. The end result is the book or movie deal.
What To Sell on Your Blog
You can sell a book, recipes, or photos, anything really. It doesn’t matter what you sell as long as there is demand for it and your readers are willing to pay for the stuff you sell. Most of the people who hang out at Tribal Blogs are people who have dreams of writing a book and selling it. Many members have already done just that and are actually selling them on their websites. Of course there are other things to sell like affiliate marketing products, diet books and how to get your ex back but those have been done to death and ranking for the keywords would be an exercise in futility. Plus, those products usually stink. Writing and selling your own book is a much stronger business model than selling someone else’s stuff.
Wanna Get Lucky?
It may be true that some personal bloggers got lucky and had a book deal thrown at them because of their blog, but it’s probably not going to happen to you. Sure Dooce is selling whatever it is she is selling and Pioneer Woman has a TV show and The Bloggess is writing a book (or maybe she finished it), but that doesn’t mean they got lucky. Most people assume these ladies were just regular writers like you and me and all the other personal bloggers you read every day. In fact I bet you have asked yourself many times how they did it, their writing isn’t that great, in fact you probably write better than all of them. And you would be right. The difference is that they spent a lot of their time talking to people, getting out there on the web, marketing themselves, getting their blogs notices in the search engines. All of these things take time, a lot of time, and if you spend all your blog time writing, editing, and rewriting, you won’t have time to do the stuff that gets you noticed on the web.
Budget Your Time
Take the total time you spend each week writing and divide it up into at least three parts – writing, SEO and promoting. Having great content is important but if you aren’t paying attention to your SEO and you aren’t promoting your blog then no one but your friends and family will visit. If you want that larger audience you must work on SEO and promoting.
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