This year I’ve spent months focused entirely on this blog.
I’m not going to stick my neck out there and call this wasted time, but it has by no means been the most productive use of it.
I’ll admit, I’ve spent way too long on this website. Recently I took a lot of stuff out, design wise, so to create a very minimal feel to the place. I had plans to minimise it even further, but thankfully I caught myself before going head first into the third redesign in six months!
I’ve spend hours at a time obsessing over tiny parts of this blog, a blog which doesn’t make me any money (and isn’t designed to).
Compare this to a CEO of a large company arriving at work one day, then spending the entire time watching House in his office and not understanding why what he needed to do for the day didn’t get done.
Sure, House is a great show, but it just wouldn’t happen.
So what’s the cure?
For me, I’m going to take a step back. For the foreseeable future I will only be posting once per week. I am not going to be guest posting, commenting on other peoples blogs, or even reading many more than the select few that have survivided my bi-monthly cuts.
This is no way to build a blog, but right now, I need to build an income. I keep lusting after travel, I have a plan to keep to (looks like Croatia is out of the window this year). It seems stupid to dedicate more than a couple of hours a week to this place when everything else around me is being held up by cardboard.
I apologise if this seems negative. I’m not a negative person AT ALL. I absolutely believe I’m going to start to reap the rewards of all my efforts (online business) very soon if I continue to work as hard as I have been, I’ve just finally found my realistic side! Too much realism and the dream never gets off the ground, too much faith and you’ll get stuck in the clouds. Balance is a pretty cool thing ;)
There are so many bloggers out there talking about the same things as me. When it comes to this idea of ‘lifestyle design’, which despite being overused is still a cool as hell way of looking at your life, I really do wonder whether constantly talking about something gets in the way of actually achieving it.
In Do The Work by Steven Pressfield, Steven points to an old New Yorker cartoon with a man stood at the gates of heaven in front of two entrances, one entrance says “HEAVEN” the other says “BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN”.
We are all too quick to read about, write about, and talk about something, but we all stop dead in our tracks when it comes to actually going out there and doing it.
Yesterday my flatmate asked what I was working on as I sat at the table typing away. “I’m creating a website about [insert incredibly boring, yet profitable niche here]” I said. She laughed, then looked up and said “You’ll be a millionaire one day, I’m telling you”.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re such a good writer Ben it doesn’t matter whether you post once a day or once a week. And those little SEO tweaks don’t matter either. The cream always rises to the top…
I appreciate that, thank you Rob!
I TOTALLY relate to this, Benjamin. Sometimes (many times) with this whole lifestyle design/blog balance with ideas remaining unfinished and racing around our head – it’s hard not to feel you are torn in all sorts of different directions.
I find tea, lack of sleep and looking like shit is a great tool against it :)
You’ll get to Croatia matey, I have no doubts.
Forget spinning plates, we’re spinning tea cups! Cheers mate, I reckon it will form a part of an exciting Eastern European adventure sometime next year.
go for it dude. cant let the blog get in the way of you doing what you need to do. i had a similar thing that happened with a friend of mine who ran a pretty successful blog, burned out and totally quit it to concentrate on his personal goals. now i like your way too much to say quit so slowing down the pace sounds like a excellent idea! i look forward to your weekly infobursts mate, and best of luck Ben :)
*your posts
Thanks Sanjay,
I could never quit. I really enjoy writing, but for the meantime I’ll be writing for other (more profitable) reasons more often. I’ll let you know how I get on!
Good idea to cut back on the frequency of blog posts here and focus on other areas.
As I’ve learned a blog isn’t a business but a platform to promote and sell your business products.
So if you niche sites are going to make you the most money and your goal is money, then definitely spend more time on that stuff.
There are bloggers out there growing their blogs just posting once a week. It’s about quality over quantity.
Good luck to you!
Hey Benny,
I completely agree with you regarding a blog not being a business. Some people get by really well selling a few business products on their blogs, but this is a tiny minority with a very large reader base (as I’m sure you well know!)
For the rest of us it’s worth our while to concentrate on more immediate forms of income first before we engage in putting more concious effort into growing out blogs.
Cheers man, I look forward to bringing the (weekly) quality!
Have to agree with Mr Cubbon your writting is awesome. The only real currency in life is time therefore its should be divided accordingly amongst our priorities. Someone once said to me “others have hopes and dreams we have means and ways” sounds fitting on this subject matter.keep writting
That’s a really good quote, thank you for the compliment!
You are completely right. Keep writing, which I am definitely doing with a blog and whatever other opportunity that comes my way. What do you do when you don’t know what to do next to make anything happen? I have been pursuing writing for the past 10 years or so and at one time I was doing ok. Now those same avenue seems a waste of time $$ wise because they pay so very little and the work just seemed to disappear. I even went back to school and got a degree in Mass Communication to increase opportunity and still can’t find a job writing. I’m not complaining, just asking for some advice. Seems the industry has changed and left me behind somehow. I seem to be at a dead end but really want to keep pursuing. HELP ME PLEASE! If I could get some advice on how to get my foot in the door somewhere and make some $$s I’ve be very grateful.
I’m no expert by any means, but I’ve seen a lot of success through the emergence of the self-publishing services for the Amazon Kindle store.
If you can write something that’s really good, and not too long (from what I gather, nowadays people are drawn into shorter and shorter reading material, though of course this changes depending on your audience) and sell it as cheaply as you can (or free) you could gain momentum and long-term fans who will be happy to pay a bit more for your next book.
Check it out if you haven’t already: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
Like I say, I’m no expert, but I believe if you search “kindle direct publishing success stories” – or something to that effect – you will find some interesting examples :)
Fantastic post Benjamin and bang on the money of what I’m going through right now.
It’s been a while since anyone has commented in but did you make it to Croatia?
I’m glad that you pointed me in the direction of this. I’m going to seriously consider measuring the amount of time I spend on particular projects.
Glad you enjoyed it Will. I’m actually in the middle of writing a follow-up post to my year plan at this very moment. All shall be revealed.
(If you’re interested in measuring the value of time, I wrote about this here: http://liferapture.com/our-only-real-currency/ so to avoid being hypocritical, the post takes all of thirty seconds to read).