The Secret to Blogging Sanity

by Robb Sutton

Stop the madness! Stop doing things that you are not good at…it is a waste of your time and you could be doing something else that would be a more effective use of your time. By leveraging your strengths and outsourcing your weaknesses, you can stop those frustrating midnight headaches while on your quest to be a pro blogger. I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I have wasted in my blogging career doing tasks that I should have been outsourcing. Do not make the same beginning mistakes I did and take the advice that I have finally beat into my own head over the past year.

Outsource…Outsource…Outsource

Every individual has their own strengths and weaknesses. I, for example, have the ability to churn out content and deal with corporate level executives to line up thousands in review products for my blogs. By spending my time doing the actions that I excel in, I am able to grow my business. There are certain things that growing a blog requires that I am absolutely terrible at or take me so long to complete that it takes away from being productive. When it comes to plug-in development, coding, site design, etc. (basically the web tech back end of blogging), I source that to people (justtheweb.com – shameless plug for the best of the web) I trust which makes much better use of my time.

A lot of business owners fall into the trap of not placing a value on the time they spend working and growing their business. They perceive their own time as free when, in fact, that is not the case. For most successful businesses, the owners time is actually the most expensive and needs to be handled efficiently. Do you really think that a brick and mortar, manufacturer owner’s time is best spent on the assembly line? Hell no…that is why he has a big ass office and completes tasks on a daily basis that grows his business on a larger scale. Get my point?

You Don’t Have To Empty Your Wallet

Many beginning bloggers think that outsourcing those tasks that they are not rocking out like 3rd grade math is overly expensive. In reality, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It just means that you are going to have to be more resourceful and not stop when you see the high price tag that many companies out there charge for their services.

When you come across some project that you know will take you 8 times the amount of time than it would someone who actually knows what they are doing, start looking into alternatives. What do you have to offer that someone that could help might need? Just as you leverage your strengths on your own blog, you can use those same strengths to help out a fellow blogger that might be able to help you out with your issue. The sooner you start working with other bloggers, internet marketers, coders and designers, the faster you will grow your business. Finding the ability to trade one strength for another will be the difference between success and failure.

Over the course of your blogging career, you are going to form heterosexual life partner relationships that will compliment your abilities. No one…I repeat…NO ONE is a one man show….at least not the successful ones. I do not know anyone that got into blogging to be a slave to their computer screen and dump all of their money into completely custom designs without traffic. Start racking your brain on how you can be more efficient and start outsourcing through creative means those actions that are a enormous waste of your time. You will thank yourself later…instead of beating your head against a desk like I did…

Related Posts

8 comments

Mike May 29, 2009 - 2:20 pm

I know I should outsource more often. I have tasks that use up a lot of my time like the technical stuff, article marketing, etc, that other people can do probably do some of it better, I just never think of it until I’ve spent the entire evening getting some behind the scenes technical thing to work.

Reply
Robb Sutton May 30, 2009 - 6:13 am

In the beginning…it really takes some creative ways to get outsourcing to fit into the budget when the budget is small. Still helps out tremendously and you grow faster.

Reply
UltraRob May 29, 2009 - 9:47 pm

I’m still a one man band but I’m planning to change that. Being laid off for 6 months from the day job gave me more time than money. Still there are things that I’m not good at and take me forever while I could be cranking on what I’m good at.

Reply
Robb Sutton May 30, 2009 - 6:12 am

Like riding?! Great job on the century on the trainer ride. I would have lost my mind…great cause too.

Reply
Chris May 30, 2009 - 1:15 am

You brought up a really good point Robb… there’s an opportunity cost to nearly everything we do. Personally, I seem to be spending ridiculous amounts of time nowadays building my sites too, when I should be producing quality content.

Reply
Robb Sutton May 30, 2009 - 6:11 am

The opportunity cost is something that I have to constantly remember. That is also time that you can never get back.

Given the funds or the resources…I would rather have someone do those tasks that has higher quality output as well! Win/win situation.

Reply
Paula from Affiliate Blog Online October 16, 2009 - 7:37 pm

I definitely agree. In the early days of our online business we would be writing up to 20 articles a day for our blogs. It’s just way too much work – we now have writers who do most of that work for us. So now we only write up content for the blogs that we enjoy writing for and not because we have to.

Reply
Robb Sutton October 16, 2009 - 8:47 pm

That will really help you in the long term. I don’t think anyone gets into blogging to slave away at articles they don’t even like writing!

Reply

Leave a Comment