How to Grow a Successful Blog When You Work a 9 to 5

February 4, 2017 Blogging Guide

For most people, blogging is just a side hobby they do for fun. Whether they blog about music they like, places they’ve been or just their daily activities, writing online provides an easy outlet for them to share their lives. Other people however, take blogging much more seriously. While they blog about things they enjoy, they follow a strict plan for posting content, generating traffic and, in most cases, making money.

Those who work a nine-to-five job often dream about blogging but can hardly find the time to do so seriously. Use this guide as a starting point for starting and maintaining a successful blog while working full time.

Blog About Something you Enjoy

Like most bloggers out there, you should find something you enjoy and just start writing about it. Whether it be about travel, fixing cars or photography, the more you enjoy it the more successful you’ll be. A large portion of bloggers who don’t stick with it chose a topic that they thought could generate the most money, instead of a something they were passionate about.

Decide on a Business Model

Like any business venture, a blog needs to have a structured and well thought out business model. If you’ve chosen your main blog topic already, a business model shouldn’t take too much time to create. You’ll need to check on the following items:

• Your competitors.
• How they make money.
• How your blog will be different.
• How you plan on making money.
• When you plan on monetizing your blog.

Remember, one of the keys to success is to never monetize too early. You’ll want to create a large enough fan base first.

Write Great Content on the Weekends

Writing content is key to the success of any blog or website. While you won’t be able to write during the day at work, set aside at least four hours on the weekend and four hours during the week. This will allow you enough time to perform research, obtain some decent pictures if necessary, write three to four articles, and promote them via social media.

Do not publish every article at the same time. If you’re using WordPress, you’ll be able to upload them all at once and then schedule them for different publishing days and times. Make sure your social media accounts are connected to the blog before publishing your first piece of content.

Leverage Free Online Marketing Tips

The vast majority of bloggers do not spend money on advertising. Rather, they focus on promoting their blogs via social media, link building, guest blogging and SEO. With a full time job, it will be hard for you to accomplish everything. Social media is an excellent tool if you use it correctly, as platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have a combined 2.3 billion monthly active users, so the audience is there.

One of the best ways to leverage a blog on a part time basis is to use some basic and well-known tricks. For example, when choosing keywords for each post, stay away from the generic ones. If your passion is photography, don’t use “photography” as the main keyword; choose a subcategory like “nature photography”. Doing so will allow you to narrow down your target audience and eliminate many of the larger, more difficult competitors you’ll face for search engine ranking.

The key to a successful blog when working full time is not to give up. Thousands of bloggers every day stop blogging because they’ve hit a road block, lost interest or simply didn’t know what else to write. If you blog about something you love and you consistently publish and share your content, you’ll gradually start building a large fan base that can’t wait to read your next post.