I love blogging but it is damn hard work if you take it seriously and people under-estimate just exactly what that means. So to help clear things up a little, I thought I’d share with you what my typical day is like. It’s not all spent sitting around in my pjs watching series I promise you.
I wish I drank my coffee every morning out of this gorgeous cup
I wake up at around 6:30am.
Coffee is handed to me. Yes, my husband is the freaking best isn’t he? I would not cope with life or the world if this is not how every morning started. My posts are usually scheduled for 7am so the first thing I usually do is check that they have gone off as planned. I usually lie around in bed catching up on current affairs while wonderful husband goes off to make breakfast. At this point, yes, I am aware that I sound like a princess. I am okay with that.
At 8am I usually get up and officially start my day
This involves a lot of social media, where I update Facebook, share my morning post to my main Facebook page as well as ensure everything has gone to twitter and google plus. I then manually share my post tweets to my other twitter accounts and pin any images to Pinterest. By now it’s about 9:15am.
I work on my bed a lot of the time
At 9:15 it’s time to write
Now’s the fun part; deciding what to write about. I have a content calendar which is basically a list of topics to blog about. I highly recommend these to any would be bloggers because there will be days when you have absolutely no inspiration to create new content whatsoever. It really helps having a go-to list of topics even if you don’t follow them in a day-to-day manner. On the days when I have no inspiration, it also helps to have a draft post stored away somewhere that I can edit and use. I usually spend most of the morning writing a post. I am done with the written part by around 1pm. Then I have lunch while I watch an episode of series (okay, so there is definitely some series watching involved in my daily task list).
Finally its lunch time!
At 2pm – it’s image time
I source an appropriate image, either from my own photos which I usually prefer to use or I find a free stock image online. You can pay for these but I often find free ones that work for me. When you are still at the stage where your blog is bringing in zero income, it’s important to save costs where you can. I then run this through Canva.com and add any necessary text to the image. Once the image is complete, I upload it to the post, proof read, preview post and proof read again and finally, after about 10-15 revisions of the post, I schedule it to go off to you lovely readers at 7am the next morning.
Can we play yet?
The afternoon slump
At this point the dogs are antsy and I’m ready for a nap but the day isn’t over yet. From about 3pm till about 6pm I’m looking at my stats, checking if the post is a hit and re-sharing it and earlier posts on social media. I also spend this time looking for “blogger opportunities” which I can apply for. Most of these depend on having a number of followers which I hadn’t reached until recently so I mostly just spent the time planning for the future and getting my feelers out there. Blogging as a business requires a lot of planning and research.
I’m also constantly on the look out for other blogs in my niche to see what I could be doing bigger and better and how to improve my content. As a new blogger, not only do I need to work extra hard at writing content but I also need to learn, from scratch all the tricks of the trade. I spend A LOT of my time reading up on how to do things like add plug-ins, which ones are necessary and how to improve my site. Luckily I have Dani, my “go to” graphic designer who helps me sort out my page but I also want to know how to do things on my own so I usually try to figure it out before I ask for help. My day ends at about 6pm officially but I am always thinking of new topics. I try to respond to comments as soon as I can but I also need to learn to create boundaries between my work and my life.
End of the day – well, sort of
I love blogging so much that it doesn’t feel like hard work but the entire day will go by without me realising that I’ve spent hours trying to find the perfect plug-in to do exactly what I need done. It can be exhausting. I often join in blogging chats on twitter too which usually run on UK time and thanks to daylight saving hours, they usually only start at my 10pm and last for an hour. By the time I finally go to sleep I am exhausted and fall asleep pretty much immediately. Pity though that being pregnant means I hardly get a full night sleep anymore anyway but it’s all worth it when I know that you have enjoyed my post.
Is this what you thought my day would be like? Let me know in the comments if you’re surprised about how much time actually goes into creating a single post.
As always, thanks for reading and if you are enjoying my blog, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog and share the article 🙂
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I loved this post, it shows a days work of a true dedicated entrepreuneur not long till ur the sa arianna huffington! Thanks very inspiring