Guest Post By Sally Shaws
Stress is not the first thing that comes to mind when you picture the professional blogger.
Usually, he’s lazing about in his PJ’s, with laptop balanced just so and a cup of tea/coffee next to him, making all the right clicks, while the dollars rack up in his account. Nice image right?
In reality professional blogging and making money online is just as tough as any other “proper job”. It requires organization, creativity and good time management; three things you’ll see on almost every job advertisement across the world.
Stress? What Stress?
The definition of a successful blog is one that draws traffic and attention, while converting that traffic and attention in to sales and/or advertising revenue. This required properly optimized content and an easy-to navigate website. Easy, right?
In principal, yes.
In reality it can be very difficult to get the traffic you need if you haven’t put enough work in to understanding how to create polished, error free content and then ensure that content is optimized correctly.
If you’ve done the work, but you’re not getting the traffic, that’s down to you. And so the stress begins to build.
Make a Plan
Most blogging platforms tell you to sign up and just start blogging. While that’s great encouragement for the shy ones reading this, it’s not good advice if you have a product you wish to sell online, or a niche you want to explore long term.
Make a plan of how much content you want to create each week, how you want to market that content and what (if any), research needs doing around your niche. Which social networks do you want a presence on? How much time do you hope to devote to connecting with readers/customers?
All of these things need to be considered if you want to stay on track with your blog and not be overwhelmed by its growth.
Good Time Management
This is essential to keeping the stress of blogging under control. What’s important to realize is that time management isn’t just about doing tasks quicker this week than you did them last week. To execute a task properly might take you a day. Recognize that and schedule enough time to do it properly.
Rushing a job will only add to your stress and possibly cost you time later when you have to go back and fix mistakes.
Take Care of Yourself
You are the blogger – the captain of your ship, so to speak. This is your enterprise and it will only perform well if you are in good shape.
Eat well; eat fresh. Get your daily intake of fruit and vegetables. They drive up your metabolism and supply your body with the nutrients it needs to thrive.
Drink water. It keeps your body hydrated and your head clear. If you’re a coffee drinker, get your coffee fix, but don’t let that be the only think you’re drinking during the day.
Exercise is very important for productivity. Get out for a bike ride, or a swim. Take a walk during your lunch break. See the world outside your home office.
Start Right
Everyone gets stressed. It’s a part of modern life. But if you’re going to beat the stress of blogging, you must begin your blog with the right attitude, you’ll manage it well and avoid becoming overwhelmed. If you don’t, your blog could end up running you.
Guest post contributed by Sally Shaws. Sally loves writing about blogging tips and making money online. She also writes about paid clinical trials and volunteering at sites like GSK trials as a means to raise income alongside other work at home opportunities.
Poor time management leads to the feared “stress”. Totally, we are the ones making ourselves stressed. By effectively using the best of our time in a day, we will see that instead of stress flying around, finished blogs and other tasks flies around. The key is to not be overwhelm with the weight of what to be done; but rather, think of ways to finish the tasks in an organized manner.
Thanks for reminding us Ms. Liz of how important time is.
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Ashleen, Amen. If we could all handle stress correctly, it would be a different world
There is no such thing as STRESS if every individual had the right management over it. If you are not going to perform too much in that particular thing, stress is nothing.
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on June 26, 2012 at 2:56 pm said:
Hey Sally,
Thanks for this great blog post; it could not have come at a better time.
Sometimes blogging can be quite stressful.
Sadly, most times the stress is self inflicted because we just take on so much at a time that we bend over with the weight.
I blog these days when I have something to say, not just because I feel I ought to make a blog post.
That move has reduced the stress associated with blogging by far for me…
Stress management is always a good thing, especially if your task lists get out of hand like mine often do
Here’s something that may help with that .
http://www.homenotion.com/blog/daily-task-list-overwhelming/
I completely agree. Being a blogger isn’t that easy as what other people may think. A blogger also needs to develop the skills and proper management to be successful and prevent too much bad stress.
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Thanks for sharing this wonderful insight so true that sometimes blogging is quite stressful. following the right procedures in creating a blog will bring us to success.. we should bear in mind that plan first before anything else for you not to regret soon.
Thnaks Sally for sharing such a nice post on blogging. You are absolutely right that if the content is not understandable then we will not get our desired traffic even we optimized it well. After all, users are coming to our blog for getting some useful and latest information and if the information is not understandable it self then how will they read it more.
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