James Richmond is an up and coming blogger, he owns Infopreneur.net and is a force to be reckoned with. You can check out his blog and be sure to follow him on Twitter. James sent me this guest post the other day, I was right in the middle of taking over this site so I told him I would get it up ASAP. If you are interested in guest posting, just fill out the form on the contact page. Let’s turn it over to James:
If you run a 1 person website, you know how much work it can be, especially if you have a full time job, a family or both. I’m no speedtyper, no marketing guru and definitely no genius, but what I am is a person who is doing everything on my own.
I work a 60hr week and have a young family, add to that a house that needs jobs doing all the time. How do I run a website that is updated with fresh content daily and reply to everything that comes my way?
Writing content for my site comes easy for me, wait no, that’s not entirely correct. The ideas for post titles come easy, the rest is a bit of a battle having dyslexia and OSD etc. That said I still mana
ge to pump out between 50-60 posts a month.
I have been working on a lot of guest posts lately, including this one for Keith at Hot Blog Tips, but how can you keep your content fresh for your readers if you have too much on at home or work? Getting people to guest post for you is a fantastic way to ease the load off you. The advantages of accepting guest posts are long but totally worth it.
Another way of making content come easier and quicker is to keep a list of ideas to write about etc, keep your inspiration nice and high. Ultimately if you get stuck for writing something new for your site, then write about being stuck, easy.
Great, you have this amazing new site and even better content, but how do you then get people to read it? I”m not about to start banging on about social networking sites, because by now most of you know what it’s all about. You probably also know that commenting on other sites is a great way to bring in new traffic, but that also takes time.
Here’s how I do it, now I’m not saying it’s the best way, just the way I find works for me. I visit tons of sites every day and leave my mark if I feel I can add value to the article. Now take this site for instance, I would read the post and if I liked it I would leave a comment. Now here is the time saving bit, I look at all the other comments and right click (open in new tab) every comment that has a website and visit there’s too. It’s a really quick way of having 20+ websites to visit.
Important bit about commenting, do not spam people. Visit everything you can, but only comment if you can add value to the post itself or reply to a comment if you can provide a solution etc. Doing it this way saves me stacks of time and makes it easy to find new websites to visit and contribute too. It’s not for everyone, but give it a go, it does save a lot of time.
I must get well over a hundred emails a day, some don’t need replying too, some others don’t need a reply but I think it right to look after the people who put me here in the first place. The rest of the emails absolutely need replying to because they are asking for help or sending me a guest post etc.
Comments need replying too as well, as do all the social networking sites. This can add to a huge amount of time spent every day just replying to everything, but here is how I do it; Email, I check and reply to everything in bulk twice a day. Take now for instance as I am writing this guest post for Keith I have 36 emails in my inbox, but I’m not going to check them till I have finished this, also my Twitter tab is saying I have 4 @ replies, but again I won’t check them till I have done this.
I reply to virtually every comment I get on my site, but again I do this in bulk three times a day. Thankfully I have my phone with me at work, so when I’m on a break I reply to comments that way, I also do it when I wake up and before I go to bed.
Other updates and back ups can be done automatically anyway so that takes care of that.
Awesome, this makes it sound so much easier! Well yes and no. My working ethic is different from most, I don’t want to wait a year or two before I get close to the top, I want it now, which is why I work on average about 6hrs a day on the site as well as working a 12hr day job. Thankfully my day job includes an hours travel on the train there and back which means I can squeeze that time to do some more work on the site. Yeah I survive on about 5hrs of sleep a night, being ex-military helps with that discipline.
Bottom line is this, if you want to realize your dream of being job free and earning online or getting that book deal etc, it takes a lot of hard work everyday, but it can absolutely be done.
I don’t have a corporate board of directors or a Virtual Assistant, me, my laptop and a dream.
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Sounds great. God knows you’re doing it as does everyone who comes across your site or another site talking about you or one you’ve commented on.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure I could do what you do but bottom line is, dude, you’re making it work and that’s everything.
You’re down to earth and busting your ass every day to add value to everything you do and make it all worthwhile. No one can honestly give you any kind of crap for that.
Congrats James and Keith, both!
Re-Tweeting now!
.-= Eric´s last blog ..Lets Help Each Other =-.
@Eric,
Hey brother thanks man, Yeah I try and be everywhere I can, it’s not for everyone, but like you said it’s working for me.
.-= TheInfoPreneur´s last blog ..When You Have To Say ‘NO’ To a Friend =-.
Good tips, especially about the batch processing of e-mails.
One thing you could do is to just change the mail-checking interval of your e-mail program to 1 hours instead of 5 minutes.
One way not to be overwhelmed by tweets is to just check them at Twitter.com instead of having a desktop client chirp on every single tweet.
.-= The Digital Life & Tools Blog´s last blog ..Verified by Visa (and MasterCard SecureCode) Is Insecure =-.
@The Digital Life & Tools Blog,
Yeah that’s a good way of doing it too, think I’ll give that a try
.-= TheInfoPreneur´s last blog ..When You Have To Say ‘NO’ To a Friend =-.
@TheInfoPreneur, That is actually a great idea! I leave outlook open all day and it is a constant distraction (not quite as much since I shut off DM notices on Twitter LOL)
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Does Your Blog Stand Out? =-.
Excellent article Keith, I too am familiar withthe 18hr days…all here.
Side-note: am I the only one getting Knight Rider flashbacks looking at the title?
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Hello & Welcome To The All New – DennisEdell.com/DirectSalesWebMarketing.com Merged – Direct Sales Coaching Blog! =-.
@Dennis Edell,
Ha ha I love Knight rider !
It’s true though 18 hrs days are hard core, especially in the long run, but ultimately worth it. Thanks for contributing
.-= TheInfoPreneur´s last blog ..The Day My Wife Almost Died =-.
@Dennis Edell, I have 18hr days most days too, it does catch up to you eventually and I usually have to take a 2-3 hour nap once a week to let my body catch up! LOL
.-= Keith Bloemendaal´s last blog ..Does Your Blog Stand Out? =-.
James is one guy I really admire and he’s a really great inspiration. Keep up the good work, James
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.-= Shirley´s last blog ..Happy Birthday To Me! =-.
Hey guys, great ideas about making some of this manageable. I have finally figured out that I don’t want to live at my computer checking emails and twitter and blog visits every 5 minutes. Took way too much time!
Thanks for the tips to keep it all in perspective.
Justin
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..February, Fishing and my Alexa Ranking. =-.
hey shirley, thanks so much for the support, Happy Birthday by the way!
.-= TheInfoPreneur´s last blog ..Why Being Normal Is The New Extraordinary =-.
This gives me a much better idea of how you manage to get so much done. And some ideas to do more myself. Thanks.
.-= Ralph´s last blog ..Success is a process not a destination! =-.
Guest Post is a good idea to reduce the work load. But author must be more careful while replying the mail and check the content of other authors. If guest authors are the trusted members of the community and well know writers this will be better for blog author.
When you’re creating links I think the key is to diversify. You need strong one way links from websites related to yours, web directories, web 2.0 websites,