Blogging Is A Discipline

I haven’t been into blogging for very long and it has been a steep learning curve. I first started with blogger.com and soon realised their was more to blogging than just writing rambling thoughts. If anyone actually read my posts they didn’t return for more. Perhaps there was a message there somewhere! The other thing that I realised about blogging is that it is a process and requires consistency and discipline. This is especially important if you want to use it as either a marketing tool for your home based business, or to monetize your blog and make it the core component for generating your online income.

I was introduced to blogging as a second level tool to promoting my home based business. The idea was to write articles to submit to Article Directories. After which, the same article was posted to my blog. The idea was to use the blog as a self-branding tool. If anyone read my articles and wanted to know more about me, the author, an internet search would lead them to my blog containing more information about my interests and views.

I engaged in this method of blogging for some months, but I was having increasing difficulty producing what I thought was good quality content. I decided to see what other bloggers were writing about and I conducted a search on blogs about home based business, internet marketing and network marketing. I came across the Friday Traffic Report.

The Friday Traffic Report has been responsible for me moving over to the Wordpress blogging platform. I heard Wordpress was generally considered the best blogging platform. The FTR has helped me find useful Wordpress plugins, blogging aids such as BlogRovr, taught me how to use trackbacks, how to monetize using Adsense Deluxe and also caused me to fall of my chair with laughter at the “Funny Monkey Commercial” - all videos to view via the Friday Traffic Report. If you are looking for a highly informative resource to help you with your blogging and as a hub leading to other very high quality blogs, then regular visits to the Friday Traffic Report is a must. Even better, you should subscribe to the RSS feed. But what has this got to do with discipline.

During the last few days, one or two bloggers have started posting about the invasive time requirements of blogging. This issue has exploded onto center stage with the arrival of BlogRovr which, as I have already mentioned, I came across via the Friday Traffic Report. The FTR made me very aware that blog readers not only require you, the blogger, to remain tuned in to posting about your niche, but that posting should be regular. If you choose to post daily, then post on a daily basis. Dont, as I have done from time to time, post as and when. If you post twice a week, then stick with “twice a week”. Don’t post once this week then three times next week. Disciplined consistency forms the back-bone of good blogging. That being the case, if you are new to blogging, you need to do some planning.

It can take me an hour to an hour-and-a-half, to write an informative post of between 400 and 800 words. Writing the post takes about a quarter to one third of my blogging time. The remaining time is spent on reasearch - reading other blogs, forums, websites, etc. That means, in my case, spending up to five hours researching and an hour or so posting, daily.

Most people can’t spare that time, whilst others don’t want to. If you can only spend one hour a day on blogging, it may be better to post twice a week. Writing 2 posts will take between two and two-and-a-half hours leaving up to five hours for research. The hidden benefit of research is that you will become an expert.

In summary. determine how much time you can afford to devote to blogging, each week. Allocate sixty five to seventy five percent of the time on research to find high quality content for your posts. Divide the remaining time by an hour and a half to determine how many times each week you can post on your blog. Then stick to that frequency. Be consistent and disciplined and your blog will be both rewarding to your subscribers, as well as to your home based business.

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