Maintaining a blog can become a time consuming task. Writing post, SEO, Marketing, Ad Networks, Social Networking, ext takes up a lot of time. Depending on how you look at it if you are a full time blogger you should look at it as if you are working full time at a regular job or the same goes for a part time blogger. How much time do you spend working on your blog and marketing? No mater which you should have goals and consider working on a long term plan for your blog. Setting up your milestones, time keeping, tracking your stats and other aspects can become an important rule when creating a successful blog.
Only working post and less on other parts of your blog like marketing, networking, advertising is not that effective if no one is reading your blog. You may find that setting a few goals and having a good plan for your blog will give you a chance to manage your time. Even with a good long term plan a successful blog will never happen overnight or over a few weeks. Building up your blogs success and profit will take time. Staying committed with your blog though the rough period of starting up and staying motivated with your goals will help you maintain a more noticeable blog for your readers.
So the next thing to figure out is what parts of your blog you need to work on and how to manage your time and what milestones you need to set to archive these goals. If you decide you are wanting to be a full time blogger try to spend at-least 4-8 hour a day or more on your blog as you would if you are working for a regular job. Set you how much time you are going to spend doing certain jobs around your blogging like time you will spend posting, research, networking, marketing, reading other blogs, ext.. These are a good starting point for your daily goals.
Going in to short term and long term goals for your blog you may want to set a few milestones to archive these desired goals. These goals can be anything you would like to archive from redesigning your blog, testing a new ad network or affiliate program, trying out a new marketing strategy, see how many readers you can achieve in a months time, set up a advertising campaign, and so on.
As I did a little research myself I was looking for a tool to help out with managing my time online and how much time I spend doing certain things on a daily basis and other tools to help with achieving goals and found some great tools to help. Here are some sites and tools you can check out to help you achieve your short term and long term goals while blogging or anything else in your life.
SlimTimer
SlimTimer was the software I found to help me keep track of my time online and how long I spend doing things. It’s simple to use and is easy to set up. All you do is set up your activities and when you are doing one you select it and it will keep your time spent on that project.It also keeps a nice report of all your activities in a report so you can view the time you have spent on each activity though out the day, week, month, per task, etc. An the good part of this software is its free.
TimeTracker Firefox
This is a firefox addon that you can use to keep track of your time browsing. you can track your browsing across a time session, pause it, reset the timer, etc. It really doesnt keep track of anything but your browsing time but this could be good to see how much time you spend reading blogs or doing research.
Toggl
Toggl is a time tracking service that has a nice free service along with a paid service. The free service offers a lot of great options and the service also has a desktop application that you can install to connect to the server.
Time-tracker
A simple tracker to keep track on the time you spend on task.
Project2manage
Project2manage is a free project management tool to help you keep and organize projects, create milestones and stay on task. A lot of great features and a free alternative to similar projects like basecamp.
Goalmigo
Goalmigo allows you to set your goals, track the progress of your goals, share your goals with friends, and you can join groups to connect with others with similar goals.
AimsVille
AimsVille lets you create goals, share your goals and progress with other and communicate with other users with similar goals and interest.
MyProgress
MyProgress is a personal progress manager with a lot of great management tools that help you track and analyze your productivity, success, wealth progress, skills, knowledge, health and more. With MyProgress you can watch your progress and discover your productivity at any period, any time, any place.
Paid Task and Project Management Servies
There are a few services out there that allow you to keep track of your projects, task and milestones. They can be used for individual goal setting and keeping track of everything. Most have a price but offer a free account with limited usage. You can check in to a few if you are interested. BaseCamp, Tick, ActionThis, ActiveCollab, and Harvest.
There are lots of applications and services that are out there to help you with your time management, achieve and setting goals. All this is great to help you get motivated, but the only person that can achieve your goals is you. You really do not need fancy software, it can help, but the old fashion way with a pen, paper, calendar and some sticky notes on the fridge might work just as well.
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By RandomThinker on Mar 26, 2008
Since I’m currently unemployed, that technically makes me a pro blogger. It’s my full-time job right now, so time tracking isn’t that important to me. Blogging takes tons of time. I’m home all day and can easily spend 12 hours per day working on my blog. Marketing a blog takes a tremendous amount of time.
It’s possible that you can spend a lot of time doing something that doesn’t provide any return. I find myself getting so wrapped up in reading other blogs at times, that I’m taking time away from working on my own.
RandomThinker’s last blog post..Help Wanted - V.P./Astronaut….I’m Serious!
By ksc7 on Mar 27, 2008
Being focused is very important. Preparing a routine is very important. Scheduling also helps. Prepare a daily routine and stick to it.
What I do:
Schedule my posts a week or two in advance
Write in my spare time
Always write more and submit in article databases
Do some Web 2.0 stuff daily. I dedicate 20% of my time.
Decide what you want to write about and create a strategy.
ksc7’s last blog post..Make money Blogging and Marketing Blog Reviews