Learn just how much time you need to start and run a blog, how much time it will take from your daily life, and hint: it’s not as much as you think!
How much time do I need in order to run a blog? When you’re just getting started, you need to ask yourself how much time you can dedicate to running a blog. Blogging on the surface may seem like a quick and easy way to make money, but it really does take time.
Obviously blogging takes time not only in the writing sense, but also in terms of developing marketing materials and getting in front of an audience. You’ll need this foundation of marketing and growing your audience in place to eventually lead you to monetizing your idea and your blog.
To answer the question of “How much time do I need to start a blog (or run a blog)?” you’ll find the answer is another question… “How much time in the day do you have to dedicate to your blog?”
I know this might seem a little obnoxious, but the truth is that you can give as much or as little time to your blog as you wish. Some people blog for 40 to 60 hours a week if they do it as a full-time job. There are other bloggers who spend an hour a day (or less if they don’t even have that!).
The truth of the matter is we all have the same amount of time every single day to show up in our lives to do the things that we care about. If we all have the same 24 hours in a day, you really just need to ask yourself the question, “How much time do you want to blog?”
How much time do you have to dedicate to blogging?
Obviously, all of us have busy lifestyles and different things that we need to do in the day. I started blogging when I had the least amount of time I’ve ever had in my entire life, which was when I became a new mom. I had previously blogged a little bit before that, but I didn’t really get serious about the idea of blogging until I became a mom.
If you know anything about being a new mom or a stay-at-home mom, the workload is endless: there are diapers to change, babies to nurse, laundry to do, and meals to make. Even showering felt overwhelming after I became a mom – plus throw in some postpartum anxiety – and to say the least, it wasn’t the best time for me to take on a new endeavor like blogging.
But I found that having that limited time allowed me to be extremely focused on what mattered, and I didn’t allow myself – or really have time – to get caught up in what every other blogger was doing or how I wasn’t measuring up. I just found what was important, found some small chunks of time, and started going for it.
You can start blogging on whatever time you have, either 20 minutes per day or 8 hours.
When you have a set amount of time to do any task, you will get creative to find ways to make it happen. Plus, sometimes having more time doesn’t mean more productivity or efficiency. I have found that more doesn’t equal better when it comes to my writing or creativity.
Maybe you only have 20 or 30 minutes to start with each day. Maybe you have 2 hours. I built my (other) blog on less than 2 hours per day for the first 5 years. Then consistently at 2 hours for this past year, and have seen great improvement in traffic and engagement.
Think about what your lifestyle is like right now. What is the most important to you at this time of your life? If you’re a full-time employee, maybe sneaking in an hour or two at night is possible. Or getting up a little earlier. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, maybe you can find an hour or two while your kids nap, do art projects, or watch TV. If you can’t find even a small bit of time each day in your routine, then it may not be time for you to start a blog.
Look realistically at your life situation right now and see how much time you can dedicate to this new project of starting and running a blog. Claim that time as your time to blog and pursue a project that will bring you joy and potentially an income stream down the road.
There’s no better time to start a blog than right now!
It takes Google 6 to 12 months to pick up any keywords and to start crawling your site for SEO related searches. That means if you get started today, you’ll be that much further down the road than you would be if you started 6 months from now. It also takes time to build up a following on social media. It takes time to build an email marketing list to send readers back to your blog.
Starting now is better than starting when you find MORE time to work on it.
Even with just a few hours a day – or even a few minutes a day – you can start a blog if you’re focused on what you want from it, and what you want to produce.
You can lay a foundation with a new website, some foundational content that relates to your niche, and learn about blogging right now. Then in 6 months, a year, or even a few years when your time opens up, you’ll be that much farther than you would be if you were to wait until it felt like the timing was “right.” Today is the right day to get started sharing what you know and helping others do what you already know how to do.
One thing that I always had to remind myself I was when I was getting started with blogging is that there are two types of people out there: the tortoises and the hares. In the online word, you mostly hear about the hares and how they became overnight successes, built a blog and made loads of money in just months.
Those stories may be true, but they certainly aren’t the norm. The norm is that people like you and I decide we have something that we can share with the world. We decide it’s time to get our ideas down, and we build a blog one hour after another after another. It might take us 5 years to get to where we’d ultimately like to be. Or it might take us that long to get to where these other hares have made it to in just a few months.
There’s no right or wrong way to start blogging. There’s no magical number of hours that you need to dedicate to it. If you have a message or something you feel strongly about sharing with the world, you shouldn’t let how much time you have get in the way of pursuing it.
Find some time. Claim that time. Be diligent about using that time to get you one step closer to your goals as a blogger each and every day. You can do this!
