Blog Owners, Pay Yourself First

Most of us freelance writing types have websites of our own, and quite a few of us try to achieve some sense of balance between what we write for our clients and what we write on our blogs. After all, there is only so much time in a day. If you’re not paying attention, it gets to be pretty easy to put our own blog on a back burner, especially in the heat of the freelancing battle.

Pay Yourself First

One of the most common axioms in the world in terms of personal finance is the command to pay yourself first. In other words, put a percentage of what you’ve got coming to you in savings before you pay bills or do anything else. If you have a website with a blog, this same philosophy applies.

Your website is probably the means by which most clients find you. To that end, it’s important that you keep your site current and fresh. If you’re going to stay in the game and attract new clients this is a crucial point. If a potential client arrives on your site and sees that the last update was three months ago, it may give them the sense that you are either:

a) too busy to keep up your site – or:

b) too lazy/sloppy to keep it current

Neither of these could be considered good impressions.

It’s really hard to take the time to write up a blog post when you have deadlines looming. The pressure is on and you need to deliver. Here are some tips to help restore some balance:

First, if you are currently behind in your blog, stop right here and take the time to write a post for your site. It’s okay, you can come back.

Set up a folder to keep blog posting ideas. Electronic or handwritten makes no difference. As you come up with ideas, make it a priority to put these ideas in the folder.

Choose a day to batch write your posts for the month. This is not as easy as it sounds. Personally, I’m good for one or two in a session and then I need a break. Don’t think that you need to be prolific and write 20 posts for the month. At first, one or maybe two posts a week are all you really need in order to keep your blog current. If you’re really strapped, just write up four for the month. If you have time later on and want to add, you can always do that. If you’re not able to complete each post, at least get them titled and save the drafts. That way, each time you are at your dashboard (assuming you are using WordPress) you will have them staring you in the face. As you complete the posts, schedule them out at appropriate intervals.

Consider asking blogging buddies for a guest post. It’s not a good idea to post these successively, but having a good guest post has its own advantages.

If you’re doing well enough with your freelance writing projects, consider outsourcing your blog posts to trusted writers.

Even with a lot of projects on your plate, it’s critically important for you to pay yourself first and get your blogging site in order. You’ll be glad you did.