The blogosphere is in an abiding increase both as size and importance, many blogs being considered as very trustful and enjoyable entities. Following this trend, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, in the near future, the importance of blogs and bloggers increases as well and many of their opinions will really be taken into account (somehow, we are contemporary with the beginning of this change of mentality). Apparently, it seems that to create and maintain a blog is mostly a nice job, pretty simple with a lot of interesting activities; thinking this way, many people have started their own blog but the results were ruinous. Where did they go wrong?

There are a great series of factors and a clear answer can’t be pronounced, but the main mistake is to disrespect what indeed the blogging activity requires.

A blogger may post discontinuous articles, with different lengths, styles and formats but I doubt that his results will be awesome; a real blogger, most of his life, has almost no free time because blogging is one of the most time consuming labors. An engineer might fine tune his project and a doctor successfully treat a patient within a deadline (being conditioned by the 9-to-16 program) but blogging is the kind of job that extends from eight hours to an entire night. The many frequent changes in the online industry do not allow any professional blogger to sleep well and the need to be connected with the latest news may become an addictive matter. Probably, the bloggers become more and more influent because of their curiosity, speed of adaption and fast spreading of the novelties. I am afraid I am not fully prepared to give you a mathematical formula, but the online success is strictly related to the sacrifices done in our private life.

The “Off-Publishing” Activities of a Blogger

The purpose of this article isn’t to debate the personal life of the bloggers but it will be fabulous if would make people understand that blogging by far isn’t publishing articles and waiting for comments. A blogger who manages a heavy traffic blog has many things to do, some of these being: finding out new attractive domains for the readers, studying the impact on the traffic of the new posts, receiving/emailing back to any request, handling lots of proposals, advertising and optimizing the blog for search engines. More pragmatically, any new blogger is as Titanic, he sees the tip of the iceberg and consider blogging only a small piece of ice; diving into it reveals the harsh reality, only the well –prepared and strong willing people manage to avoid the disaster or why not , to pass through it.

Definitely, the “off-publishing” tasks are more important and the writer needs more time to accomplish all of these. To convince all the readers about the complexity of this job, here I emphasized the common “off-publishing” activities, what these actually suppose and a few ideas on how to improve and make more efficient any of these.

1. Documentation (reading posts, books, listening to podcasts; studying the trends)

One of the most important activities, having a huge role in the success of any blogger carrier is the documentation. On the Internet, the news is travelling faster than the speed of light and to stay updated it is more than necessary to read an impressive volume of other blogs, posts, or books. Depending on the niche, sometimes the news are posted in few hours or in few days, but what is really important is the ability to offer the information first or else the readers will search for other sources of information. The problem of any blogger is the competition, we all are running for the clients’ money and only relevant and high quality posts may attract and maintain them. Thinking this way is pretty easy to make out that a strong documentation is the foundation of the success.

The good news for the bloggers is that the Internet may be a cruel enemy but at the same time a faithful friend; it depends on each one’s perspective. It is the supplier of concurrence but it gives the best sources of documentation: there are tons of blogs which offer detailed solutions for everything, complete articles written by the best specialists, podcasts-another nice source of leads. I hope you comprehend that here is an infinite work, but usually the readers sense who spends time for them and greatly appreciate this sacrifice. Still, it may not be enough….

Many bloggers know how to profit, and everything is legal but artful…it is the science of writing about hot topics. Studying the things Internet users like attentively, many administrators of blogs publish articles about what is trendy at the respective moment and the traffic is on the growing hand. A viable example is social media, which has been a traffic attracting domain since two-three years ago; all the blogs related to design, blogging, freelance or development included articles about this trend, mostly having a special category- “social media”.

In a nutshell, it is terribly wrong to skip on the most debated subjects, but still maintain your own voice; or else you might be another source of boring stuff.

2. Analyze the Evolution of Your Own Blog and SEO Campaign

The world is changing but the Internet is changing at a faster rate, so bloggers should know that today’s success might be the failure of tomorrow and they must pay full attention to any small change. The tools to monitor the evolution of a website are numerous and the information provided is really amazing: the owner of a blog can find out even the browser used by the visitors, but also the landing pages, the time spent on the site and the geographical location. The advertent monitoring of each post is the incipit of any successful analysis; let’s suppose that an article was visited more time than others, the topics debated should be considered in writing another post and in case it also has good traffic, it is clear to write more about the respective domain. Anyway, it is puerile not to study the evolution of the traffic, even amateurs are aware of this necessity.

On the other hand, any online presence, in order to get noticed by users needs a SEO campaign which may be never-ending. Even though there is a multitude of online solutions, it can be difficult to maintain a top position whereas major search engines are concerned (Google and Bing mostly), not to mention when it comes to choosing the right keywords. Studying the evolution of the blog is apparently a half an hour or maximum an hour length task, but to be merely updated with latest trends it is better to do it daily (it is good to know that even the day of a blogger is still formed out of 24 hours!!!).

3. Freelancing Activities & Practicing

It isn’t morally right to write about something which you have no idea or you only know something vague about it, so any blogger who is writing about a topic must have a solid background behind him. For a blog related to web design and development, it is almost necessary to have the articles written by good designers and developers or else the posts can’t be anything other than retells of other quality articles. The administrator or the editor must also be an expert into the respective fields, refusing articles full of mistakes which are similar to bombs that quickly beat from the visitors.

Unfortunately reaching the “pro” level in any activity is a difficult and time consuming process and once obtained, without practicing strongly, it might be lost(not suddenly, but mostly “silently” ). To avoid being just a rewriting blogger, the single solution is to practice and write from the experience gained; these posts are really quality stuff which instantly attracts readers. In this way, we established another non-publishing task of a blogger, really important in having a much-visited blog. The big problem is that practicing at the professionalism level isn’t easy and the time spent here is hard to neglect. A solution to this dilemma is resolved intelligently by some bloggers: they are freelancers and work for some clients and also bloggers- and they write from the experience. The competitiveness of this kind of bloggers is high but usually their free time is equivalent with minimum sleeping hours per day and nothing more.

It is an out of topic question but personally I believe that the Internet brings a lot of unseen modifications in our lives and one of these is the invariably rising of the competitiveness. To resist and be profitable in the online medium, where there are countless other similar presences, the competitiveness was pushed to the new limits, somehow the Internet has speed up the natural selection. Are you agreeing with this fact, is that true? Please let me know what you believe by using the comment form.

4. Developing Writing Skills

The blogosphere is full of blogs which are debating all the subjects possible in all the existing language but to have a reasonable traffic which assures a good income it is better to write in the English language, which is the most (still) used. Clearly, the native English speakers are getting advantaged but there are many editors and writers who aren’t natives. Writing perfectly in English and not being native hides a colossal volume of work: the author should write something interesting and must express in a foreign language. To write and express perfectly into another language than the natural one, years of study and sacrifices are required. Another avocation of a blogger, mostly for the ones that are non-English natives, is to regularly improve the writing skills and the vocabulary. This might mean reading books, practicing exercises, watching movies without subtitles (of course, the actors must be speaking English!), pretty nice activities but all these need time, which is a very precious resource for any professional blogger.

5. Studying and Obtaining a Financial Progress

The financial aspect is very important even if we don’t want to pay attention to it. A blog may be a source of income and it is a sin to invest a huge volume of work and time only to create a community around you. Any type of work must be financial rewarded; it is the base of capitalistic development and our society is headed by this system. A blogger must always be attentive to his ways of obtaining more money and this is another labor which needs a lot of time. The sponsors are many, the big problem is to find them and when you are inexperienced, everything is a waste of time and the results pretty decent. Unfortunately, I am not a very good connoisseur of the financial domain but in my country any activity is taxed by the laws and everyone must declare his revenues which of course, a part of them are shared with the state, or else there could appear some troubles, penalties or other unwanted situations.

6. Social Networking & Keep in Touch with the Readers

The most debated subject on Internet, the social media, should be a good promotional tool for a savvy blogger. The social networks facilitate a quick and many times non-hoped for promotion of some posts, the viral spreading being the term used to describe such a phenomena. The power of social media is that the distance between writer and reader is made practically zero; they can communicate, share impressions and leave comments. The most amazing effect is still another: the world may be divided into communities which share the same passions: the web design community, the freelance community and so on and the information is at hand with no effort. The appurtenance of a big family, where the head of it is a friend and give advice to the “little kid” it is fabulous and in this way the contribution to the success of the community is stimulated.

Another aspect of the wise use of social media is that the cost of obtaining better traffic is zero and because friends usually have common passions it is possible to receive more and more visitors which, a small part of them, could became trusty readers. I shouldn’t repeat that having a powerful presence on various social networks is time consuming and another part of the working day is spent in “non-publishing” activities.

7. Contact/Maintain a Strong Dialogue with Other Administrators/ Owners of Blogs and Bloggers

I noticed that the web design community is very cohesive and a lot of friendships are established between bloggers or administrators of blogs. This is awesome and quite beneficial for the readers. Maintaining a blog means to resolve unexpected or difficult situations as the lack or richness of posts, handling guest posts, selling ads or searching for sponsors. All these are overtaken more easily by asking for the help of other bloggers or administrators, so I strongly recommend having connections between them. Anyway, a curdled community is advantageous both for readers and bloggers, but it means another weekly hours spent to comment on friends’ blogs or answering emails.

Another “possibility” to waste a lot of time is to reply to any emails received from various people proposing various affairs. One of the most advantageous proposals may be the guest posts. These are articles written by other people than the owner of the blog but published here, usually the author is stipulated at the end/beginning of the article, having a personal bio. In the phrases contained in the personal bio the authors are allowed to put links to their websites/portfolios.

8. Relaxing, Sport, Family & Friends

The most pleasant “non-publishing” activities of a blogger are relaxing, practicing sports, taking trips, altogether with family and friends. Never, but never, bloggers should forget that they are still human beings and not blogosphere contributors. Family and friends are the number one priority and I am in doubt that even the most powerful souls may overcome the difficulties in their live without any help. The friends and our relatives influence the inner state and the power will of the blogger and this means the relationship affects both blogger and family& friends. Personally I saw them as the sweet escape from the routine of working.

Performing a sport is another nice and useful modality of escaping from the stress and worries. It has two major advantages:

• it clears the mind, make us happy and inspiration level reach again the full level;
• contribute to the health, without practicing sport or any activity supposing physical efforts is impossible not to visit sooner or later the medics.

All these are vital elements which keeps us fresh and healthy (somehow it was better to put it, “to keep us not ill”) and are as important as our job. A man, respective a blogger, who doesn’t enjoy the time spent with his relatives and doesn’t have fun is near collapse, the problem is only a matter of time till to disaster to come. Finally, if you are a blogger, don’t neglect your personal life, relatives and friends and if you aren’t one of them ever disrespect this “job” which is stressful, fatiguing but enough motivational and interesting. Don’t see only the tip of the iceberg, below is what paid attention must be to!

Image Credits

• Taking notes on Michael Arndt’s talk
• Be seeing you
• Business woman taking off shoes in office
• Social key

Find Something Missing?

While writing this article, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great facts and tips. Feel free to share it with us.