Blogging is a simple way to earn cash – this is the phrase you are going to hear time after time from people who never tried to grow a blog and live off it. The reality of blogging is filled with challenges, starting from financial limits and ending with administrative issues. But the biggest obstacle of bloggers is themselves! Procrastination plagues bloggers from all over the world, as they become tangled in the multiple time wasters that are available out there. In order to break the blogging market and start making a revenue from your blog you need high quality content, posted frequently.
Instead of trying to find excuses, start finding the time wasters which limit your productivity and prevent you from earning with your blog.
1. You are a perfectionist.
Being a perfectionist is good, most of the times, but in the world of blogging, literary perfection can be an obstacle. Of course, if you are posting grammatically incorrect content, you will lose your readers, but being a perfectionist is also going to damage your blog. A study made by Nielsen Norman Group found that readers only read 28% of the content from a web page. This means you need to be very concise with your posts, because readers are not going to read the entire article. Also, the longer the article, the less words will be read from it. Ditch perfectionism and focus on the message you want to pass on to the reader, to get the most from each post.
2. Your workspace is a mess.
Clutter does have a bad influence on your work, so it’s time to start listening to those Feng Shui rules. You don’t have to take my words for it, because there were many studies made on the influence of clutter on work. One of them was conducted by OfficeMax, who found that 70% of the questioned workers blamed clutter for their lack of productivity. When I say clutter, I mean files and small items which clog your desk and your desktop – yes, the latter matters just as much as your physical desk.
The best lifehack to help you out with clutter comes from a source you would never expect to hear from when it comes to blogging productivity: chefs! Professional chefs always clean up as they work and this is what you should do. For physical files you have to get your hands “dirty”, but for desktop clutter you can use a wide range of productivity tools to manage a blog in order to keep everything filed and archived.
3. You get lost networking.
Networking is important for a blogger, as you need other bloggers to survive in the online medium, a.k.a. “blogosphere”. But many writers simply get lost networking: they spend hours on end talking to other bloggers, online or offline. This is definitely a productivity killer, unless you work your way towards time management.
To avoid this distraction, disconnect from chats and email at least two hours a day. This will give you the time you need to blog without anyone asking you questions. Then, you can use your time to socialize and build your network.
4. You lose focus due to noise.
Bloggers either work from home or from an office. In both cases, there is going to be a lot of noise. When you work from home there are kids, neighbors, and television which can become huge distractions when you are trying to write a killer post. If you are working from an office, chances are you’ve rented a cubicle in a large space, where there are lots of noises coming from dozens of people working at the same time.
The solution for this problem comes from headphones and earplugs, which help you block the noise either completely or partially. From the first moment you find yourself staring at the blank page, pick up your sound-blocking headphones or earplugs, and disconnect from the noisy world.
5. The biggest productivity killer of all times: cat videos.
In fact, it’s not only cat videos, but any article, video, or content that is not related to the article you are writing. Bloggers love to read and inform themselves and this is what keeps them so cool, but the limit between wasting time and informing yourself is very thin. While we depend on knowing as much things as possible, visiting non-relevant sites can break the entire blogging work, rendering a day completely wasted.
Try to focus on following the blogs or sites of influencers in your niche and when you feel you need a break, read their latest posts. This way, your time will become productive, as you will find new inspiration for your own blog and you will be developing your knowledge on blogging.
Featured photo credit: Unsplash via hd.unsplash.com
