In the scheme of things, deciding to be a blogger and making the leap is relatively easy. You’ll have a surge of motivation when you first start out and for the first week or two you’ll be churning out posts on a regular basis and enjoying the feeling of satisfaction that comes with it. However, you’ll soon find you’re losing motivation and the actual time you allocate to blog will become less and less. Most bloggers experience this when the first start out. Even the highly successful ones. But there are steps you can take to manage your writing output and ultimately motivate yourself significantly in order to maintain the momentum.

So that’s what we’re going to run through today. I’ve entitled this post finding the time to blog but really it’s going to be more about how to motivate yourself day to day in order to give your project the best chance of success.

Less is More

A less is more approach is definitely needed in order to maintain the quality of any blog. But you have to question and work out for yourself what is truly too much and what is not enough. The most successful bloggers typically release a post every 3 to 4 days. This typically is enough to keep your blog fresh, your readership enticed and grow your blog at a steady rate. In terms of timing and self motivation I find 3 – 4 days is enough time to put a post together without causing yourself too much stress and anxiety trying to meet the demands of your project. At this rate you’ll also retain motivation and there is less chance of your blog falling by the wayside.

Different Environments

As any successful blogger will tell you it pays to switch up your writing environments. Do not be confined to your office desk as you’ll quickly lose motivation. Even if you do have to stay home for whatever, try writing in different rooms, in your office, in bed, even doing a few sentences here and there in the kitchen as you go about your daily life. You should also try and get out of the house, frequent coffee shops, libraries, public areas. You may at first consider them a distraction but once you get started and the content starts flowing you’ll feel much more motivated. Knowing you’ll be going to write in a certain location you enjoy will lead to you looking forward to “work” much more.

Passionate Subjects

Another huge motivational key is to choose subjects you’re passionate about. Depending on the nature of your blog this might be difficult as personal blogs are a lot easier to write than commercially angled offerings but you can still self motivate to write on subjects you’re not particularly interested in should it be of benefit to your readers. The key is to learn, become interested, research and give your take on it. It’s a lot easier to write about things you’re well versed in than those which you are not.

Reader First, Money Second

The vast majority of new bloggers decide to create a blog with commercial intent. There is nothing wrong with this but you almost need to set that mindset aside if you want your blog readership to have any chance whatsoever of growth. You need to treat the (potential) income as a bonus and concentrate solely on providing content that your readers will want to read, as a priority. Writing content solely to make money is tedious, boring and you’ll quickly lose motivation as nothing is going to make money from the outset. Show your blog and your readership interest and the income will come.

Getting Started

Getting started in blogging is extremely easy. Just pick yourself up a domain name, a WordPress hosting account and click install. Right there you have your platform and you can blog away at your leisure but try and take not of the considerations in this article and formulate a plan which both suits you personally and allows you to achieve the ultimate goals and ambitions of the blog itself. As mentioned previously, there is no perfect formula so you’ll need to find something which works for you but the key to all of it is to enjoy it. Don’t stress, just write.

Final Thoughts

In truth there is no perfect or ideal formula when it comes to blogging. Some new bloggers think that they need to be churning out content on a daily basis in order to source and retain a readership of sorts and some bloggers think that a post per month is sufficient. Even if the post is of the quality that doesn’t warrant a month of thought, work and ultimately time.

Essentially, you need to come up with a blogging plan that suits you and your intentions. But you do need to try and be consistent and avoid the common pitfalls. Hopefully this article will help you do that in abundance.