WHO IS A PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER?

If asked, the humble Uncle Che will say a professional blogger is one who dedicates at least 50% of his time blogging, and is being paid, directly or indirectly, an amount that accounts for at least 50% of his income. In a nutshell, what I am saying is a professional blogger considers blogging, together with related jobs, his primary occupation and primary source of income. While the above definition might be very incomplete and makes several assumptions, I will like to use it as the basis of this post and lay my arguments on it.

SOME EXCEPTIONAL PROFESSIONAL BLOGGERS

Some bloggers don’t spend much time on blogging, and don’t receive much money from it, yet they are still considered as professionals. Professional in such a case of not spending much t8ime on blogging will mean that the blogger has to replace the supposed time and hard work with money, that it, paying others to get the job done. He will have to pay writers, a web designer or developer, marketer…etc. In situation where a blogger might be referred to as a professional blogger but earns nothing or very little from his blog, the credibility might be due to experience and skills. The reason for earning very little may be personal. Maybe it is a corporate blog that carries no ads and does no marketing at all or the blogger is a fan of a particular person (like a celebrity) or an organization (like a non-profit) and will like to keep the integrity of his blog and earn some recognition.

PROFESSIONAL & SUCCESS

Reconsidering the above paragraph, one can look at a professional blogger as any blogger that is successful, or is succeeding in achieving his/her goals. Success can be considered as a combination of many of the following;

• Provision of very good content for information or education
• Availability of a large readership base (of course this comes with the above in hand)
• High blog traffic
• High ranking in the search engines
• High and increasing number of referees in the blogosphere
• Provision of “employment” or “training” to younger bloggers
• High popularity and achievement of great respect in the blogosphere…etc.

FOR NON-PRO BLOGGERS, IT IS A RACE AGAINST TIME

Now, let’s get back to our subject. What are we talking about? Blogging against time! In almost every walk of life, one has to work very hard to get to the top. Even after getting to the top, one still has to work very hard to remain there. In certain fields, however, when one has reached the top and gained some level of credibility, there is less to do than in the case of someone still fighting for it. With very little effort, therefore, someone at the top will remain at the top while others at the bottom will continue struggling day after day to get there. Do you think Michael Jackson will ever drop? Even if he is doing nothing, he is already the king of pop and “nothing” can change that.

If you are aspiring to be a professional blogger, then you have 3 times the work of a professional blogger in front of you. If John Chow is spending 1 hour a day blogging, you should be sure you have to spend at least three at a constant rate to get to his level.

What is the problem with that, anyway. The problem with that is that you have other responsibilities on which your living depends. Maybe you are a student or a worker, or just a stay at home mom or dad that has to take care of the kids and fend for the family. Blogging therefore is secondary, if not optional. How then do you get t spend too much time in something that is secondary?

If you have a very busy schedule but already possess that passion for blogging and you are aspiring to move to the top then must step into some serious time management. Time management here can be looked upon in two dimensions.

INCREASING YOUR BLOGGING TIME

One way to increase your bogging success is to increase the t8ime you spend blogging. You have to put a few extra minutes when writing a post. Even if the post is very original and totally your idea(s), maybe you need to do some reading (web, books, magazines…etc) to give it some more weight. You may also need some extra time for Social networking and participation on other blogs. The theme and general design of your blog is what gives new visitors a first impression about your blog, so you will definitely need more time in improving on it too.

How do you get more time to allocate for blogging? Before you achieve something great, you must sacrifice something smaller or greater. You like listening to music, going for the movies, sports, sightseeing…etc. If you are very serious about blogging and want to make it to the top, then you should be ready to take off about 10mins off each of those activities and add to your blogging time. You can even reduce 30 mins from your sleeping time and add it to blogging.

MAXIMIZING YOUR BLOGGING TIME

Some people’s schedules are so tight that it is almost impossible for them to add even a single minute to their blogging time. What you do in such a situation? You simply have to maximize that time.

• Increase your reading speed. This helps for people who want to do some research before they post
• Increase your typing speed. This is obvious.
• Use a language tool to help you proof read your post faster. I use Microsoft word to deal faster with spelling and some grammatical errors
• Improve your connection speed if possible

WHAT IF I RUN MULTIPLE BLOGS?

Oh! The first thing I think of is “That’s Suicidal”. Oh, really? No! It’s not. Running multiple blogs can possibly make you a better blogger than running just one. One advantage of running multiple blogs is that you remain conscious of the fact that there is much work to be done, so you don’t relent your efforts. Secondly, your writing skills can possibly improve since you have more than one niche to write for.

I hope Lainy (Lainy’s Musings, Our Journey to Forever and Kuerdas ) now understands why I told her I was very happy that she has a third blog to run. I for one, I’m heading for the same hell. I have this blog to run, my personal blog to revive, a friends community (BushFalling) to moderate, the blogs of Noela and Bareta to supervise, to act as co-blogger for the blogs of Seekvice and it4u, and finally The World Ahead which will be coming up soon.

One big “secret” to running multiple blogs is that you have to carefully set your priorities. While it is advisable to grow your blogs together at almost the same pace, it will be very wise if you can do a self ranking of your blogs so that in case of very limited time and resources, you will know which one to attend to first.

SO, WHAT HAVE WE BEEN SAYING?

Blogging for non-pro and semi-pro bloggers is like racing against time. Time is a very essential factor in blogging. For us to achieve our dreams of going professional, this is the ti

me to work and work very hard. Since blogging is secondary to our normal daily chores, we need to maximize our blogging time. Maximizing our blogging time means sacrificing a few minutes from other things we like doing and adding those minutes to our blogging time, or increasing the speed at which we do blog related activities so that we can do more in the same limited time we have. Remember, not only addition and maximization counts. Accuracy is king!

What do you think?

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