Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007...12:45 pm

How Much Time Do You Spend Working On Your Blog?

At the moment this blog seems to be eating all my time. I’ve got a few other projects that I’m just waiting to sink my teeth into but I can’t find the time to get any work done because I’m either writing, researching, or fiddling with the design of this blog.

All up I’m probably spending about 5 hours a day working on some aspect of this site. If I could halve that I’d be happy.

I’m hoping to sit down some time this week and knock out a good ten or so articles to give me a solid backlog so I can have the luxury of the odd day where I can completely focus on something else.

How much time do you spend working on your blog? Would you rather it be more, or less?

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34 Comments

  • It depends on what I am doing.

    If I am working on the code for the site it’s easily a few hours a day. But content wise I’m always looking for something.

    But then I recently started a new site and need content for that, and I have 4 people who want me to create sites for them so I’ve been working on that.

    I could easily make working on my blog a full-time thing, I just wish I could get the traffic to compensate so that i could quit my day job ;)

  • I guess almost 3 hours a day would go for this…. apart from the regular browsing and reading feeds (as I do this every now and then, so I don’t exactly know how much I spend on this)

  • um.. *sheepish glance at the professionals*
    I just surf, chat and write whatever happens to be in my head at the time - I can spend all day writing something if I need to rant, or 3 minutes if i’m just tickled by something.
    As far as coding goes, the blog gets minimal attention because i’m too lazy to sit down and try to figure out how this php stuff works at the moment, my site however.. I can spend hours fiddling with bits in dreamweaver, it’s quite soothing.

  • Things that take up most of my time are write ups of games im working on a big one atm for World in Conflict that I got my hands on at GO3.

  • I’m with you Vics … I’d say it’s anywhere from *cough* no time at all to about an hour most days. It probably should be more to really attract and keep dedicated readers, but unfortunately there’s only so much time in the day :(

  • It’s taking me time just to understand this world of the blogs. After joining MyBlogLog I’ve begun to be exposed to a larger world, a world which could easily dominate my time 24/7. I started out with a flurry a couple weeks ago with MyBlogLog, after I upgraded WP to 2.1.2, but now in the last couple days I’ve backed off a bit. There are other things in life, like reading actual books, attending live lectures, walking in the woods, you-name-it. But I should spend at least two hours a day working on my blog if I want to enter the world of the blogs in all its glory. It’s been fun so far and I’ve learned a lot from this one, ironical named The Wrong Advices! Thanks Dot Com Orphan!

  • I agree with you, Tyler. I can spend a lot of time if I’m working on code for the site (that happened a lot more when I was creating the site, but still happens from time to time). If it is an article, sometimes the words flow freely and I have no problem banging something good out quickly, but sometimes it can be a struggle to put what I want to say into words.

  • [...] much time I spend blogging each day because of an article at TheWrongAdvices questioning, “how much time do you spend blogging?“  My answer is that it depends on the day.  Am I coding something new into the site?  Am I [...]

  • Too much time! No wait - not enough time.

  • Well, with eleven blogs…I spend anywhere from 30 hours on up reading, researching, writing, and updating all those blogs! I love it and have to admit that I am a little addicted to blogging, but I’m working on creating more passive income so I won’t have to blog so much.

  • Wow, Maria beats all! She spends 30 hours a day with her blogs! :-)
    I spend about three hours a day when I started (I use Textpattern and fixing the design was complicated…) but I discipline myself not to spend more than one hour now. But I do not blog for a living.
    BTW: Many things can be automated, do you know ScribeFire and FireFTP for example?

  • Hmm…I actually want to be faster at getting my blog related work done. I have many books to read and study to do as well, so as much as I enjoy blogging, I need to become more efficient at it.

    It sounds very selfish, but I could do with reading less blogs, but then commenting brings traffic too.

  • oops…after reading the comment by Zep, I should clarify! I spend anywhere from 5-8 hours a day working on my blogs ;)

  • The past weeks I spent quite some time integrating plazes and twitter on my blog. But that also means I was more focused on design rather than content. Don’t know if that’s the best approach for a blog.

  • Monday~Friday is two or three hours a day. Takes time to read the source, translate, then make a synopsis. Some posts/items lead me to make separate webpages for them and the adsense clicks are healthy enough to keep me encouraged.

  • At least a couple of hours a night during the week but more on weekends although some of that time is spent on reading other blogs which is part of the whole blogging experience for me. Probably too much time with respect to getting other things done but not enough time to make the blog more successful. Trying to find a balance.

  • @ Maria: You win this game. :) If only I could be as efficient with my time as you seem to be.

    @ Qwerty_: If you went to GO3 does that mean you’re an aussie too?

    @ Bri: I get that too. Sometimes an article writes itself, other times I just have to grind it out.

    @Zep: I’m doing a writeup on ScribeFire at the moment. I’ve been using it a bit and I’ve been quite impressed with it so far.

    I can relate to alot of what has been said. I think we’d all like to just spend the minimum amount of time possible to get the job done, without sacrificing quality.

    coach brings up a good point too about the time you spend reading other sites. When you add in this time my number goes up considerably. Reading and commenting (I’ve fallen behind a bit here) is such an important part of the blogging experience, it’s not something that is easy to cut back on.

    I think when I put the new design in place I’m going to have to install the threaded comments plugin. It will make it much easier to have an ordered discussion. :)

  • I think when I said in my comment above that I need two hours a day to enter the world of blogging in all its glory, I should have added several thousand for the number of days, at the rate I’m going. And by that time the “world of blogging as we know it” will probably be a lot different than it is now. In other words, by the time I understand the “basics” they will have already become new basics. Oh well, I’ll keep at it anyway.

  • Hi, Dan –

    For me only about 6 hours per week … two hours or so per entry. But mine is a very different sort of blog.

    Good luck in cutting your work time on this. If it’s any consolation, your hard work shows!

  • I spend WAY too much time on my blog. I’m on it all day at work and when I get home, I put in another couple of hours or more. I wish I could spend less time because I too have other projects to work on… but I feel like I need to spend more time because there’s just so much I still have to do!!

  • Like Maria I admit I’m an addict. I’m currently spending about 5-7 hours daily working on my blogs. My home and personal life are reflecting my absence so I’m also considering “down-sizing” and then doing a better job by simply focusing on 2 blogs.

  • Generally i spend about 2 hrs daily , but on holidays i try to spend 4-5 hours if possible .

  • Interesting. After reading these comments I don’t feel so bad about spending 2-3 hours a day. One of the things that I have to get better at is trying to schedule some posts. Always have some up your sleeve that you can use in advance. I took my wife away for the weekend recently and was thinking about how I should have done some prep work for the time away so the updates remained regular.

  • I spend a few hours a week, I get occupied and cannot get a full post up regularly.

  • For the past 3 weeks, everyday! I spent almost 8 hours! Wondering why? Check here: http://www.writinerary.com

  • I spent 3-4 hours but not every day… every other day,my wife is furious about it…………..so i had to reduce the time i spent on blogging

  • Well, I have 3 blogs going at once. They are all ranked about the same. I am doing this pretty much full time and share your frustration.

    I really need to spend more time on other areas of online marketing. I have learned a lot in 60 days.

  • Full time

  • I found it easy to get deep into one of two “blogging styles”: 1. obsessing over writing every single day, at least 2-3 posts. That time adds up quick, and is insane to try to do every single day if you’re not a full time blogger.
    2. binge and purge, where I’d go a few days and then “puke” up 8-9 posts all at once.

    I found that Typepad lets you schedule when a post gets published. Using this, I can spend one day per week crafting quality posts and schedule them to pop up 2/day for a few days ahead. I still check RSS and keep up throughout the week, and am free to add more posts to a certain day, but this way if I don’t have a chance to blog on a certain day, my readers aren’t dissappointed. I’ve also noticed that my posts are more well-thought out this way.

    -Ricky

  • Sounds like Ricky has a workable plan. I like the binge and purge analogy. Kinda like a disorder, this blogging thing.

  • As an aside, you can do the schedule in advance with WordPress, and I think Blogger also.

  • Yep. I think that if you do not set the time stamp, and do eventually post (at least in blogger) say a week later, it will not give a date for the post.

  • I’m running a personal blog and I’ve tried to take it a bit further than normal for a couple of reasons - one being that the advertising revenue makes it more worthwhile. At the moment it’s up from about 2 hours per week to an hour a day. We’ll see if the time investment pays off.

    I’m not a professional blogger (yet) but I hope to get there.

  • Since I like what I’m doing the time passes by quickly. I often sit till midnight and later to complete what’s been started (articles, themes, etc). Actually little time is left for forums which I frequent (there are just two of them :) ) But I won’t stop at being an ordinary blogger like millions. I gotta learn ins and outs of blogging!

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