Working as A Full Time Blogger

June 27th, 2008 | blogs-

For the next 3 months I will be ‘working’ as a full time blogger. As a teacher, my term doesn’t start until mid September, so I will be spending the summer living the lifestyle of a ‘problogger’.

Usually, in the summer, I take on an onerous job of marking exam papers. But, thanks to the income I earn from blogging, I have been able to retire from marking.

These are some of My early Observations from Working as A Full time Blogger.

I rarely do a full days work.

On average I spend about 5-6 hours working on my websites. Working from home gives more leisure time, like an hour lunch time to watch an episode of Sherlock Holmes and spending several hours cycling. Therefore, even living as a ‘full time blogger’ I haven’t been doing a huge amount more than when I was working part time.

I enjoy the Work

This is the best aspect of blogging, generally, you are writing on topics that interest you. You can choose your topics and work to your own schedule. Whilst flexible time certainly as its challenges, it definitely has clear advantages that a strict 9-5 job can never give.

50% of My Work is Offline

One of my main focuses for this summer is to write more, increase the number of pages and keep 5 blogs going at the same time. This requires a lot of writing; therefore, I spend alot of time, writing in cafes providing the basic content, which then takes the rest of the day.

Projects.

I have set a few mini projects to give a structure to the full time job opportunities.

Write an Economics Dictionary of upto 1,000 entry
Target increase in RSS subscribers on certain blogs. This includes taking part in a blogging competition to increase RSS subscribers.

I think as a full time blogger it is important to set challenges and think big, growing blogs in a new direction.

Time Wasting

One thing you notice about being a full time blogger is how easy it is to time waste. A day can fly by without doing that much productive. I am trying to be disciplined, but, this could be improved. I probably still do too many unproductive tasks such as:

Multiple checking of stats email. I’m a great believer in the virtues of concentrating on tasks at once. The other big issue is that with a full day, it’s easy to spend large parts of the day doing things other than working, such as going shopping, cycling, watching DVDs, cleaning the house and gardening.

Social Aspect

Working as a full time blogger is not exactly the most social jobs. There is a lot of working alone. I don’t really mind this, but, for some people not used to working alone, this might be quite a different working environment.

Focuses The Mind.

One thing about working as a full time blogger is that your perceptions of blogging shift. In the past, a blog was a bit of fun. If it made some extra pocket money, that was an added bonus. But, when it becomes your only source of income, things change - the success of your blogs and websites determine whether you can pay your mortgage or not. It is an added incentive and perhaps also an added anxiety.

These are some initial observations, I will add more later in the summer.

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