My First Year Blogging Schedule | Advice from a 6-Figure Blogger | By Sophia Lee Blogging

today's vlogging tips video is all about what my weekly blogging schedule was like the first year of my blog and i just found a binder that has everything from my first year written out so it's a gold mine of information and i think it'll be so fun to go through and just dig apart what i focused on that first year and how i broke up my schedule so usually my blogging videos i do like a 30 second introduction on just who i am and how i started my blog and where it is now and honestly i just do that for credibility so that the person watching it is like okay she's like semi worth listening to because i know for me a lot of times i'll listen to people and i'm like why should i spend my time listening like what do they have backing them up that can kind of prove that they're worth listening to but for this video that little spiel is actually really important because it has a lot to do with how i started and where my life was at that first year of blogging and why i had to structure my schedule in the way that i did so i'm gonna expand on it a little more in this video versus other videos i started my blog i was a sophomore in college and i started it in august so it was actually like two weeks i started it two weeks before i went to college for as a sophomore and i was like a full-on college student i was living in the dorm rooms which was a normal thing to do at the college that i was at as a sophomore um i was taking 22 credits i was a full-time college student over full-time i actually don't really know how i managed all of this now that i look back at doing it i paid for my entire college on my own so i had to be working so i was nannying 15 hours a week just because like even though i could defer my loans until after i graduated i still had to pay for like my meal plan and just like there's so many random things that come up in college that you have to pay for and so i had to come up with an income for that so when i added in starting this blog i knew that i had to be very very serious about it and treat it like a job treat it just as a thing that was just as important as my college classes and as my nanny job otherwise i would have given up on it i'm also very very type a and so the more structure i have the better i do i've always been that way and again if i don't have structure in place i get super super overwhelmed and i just don't do it anymore so when i was starting my blog i had very exact schedules and usually the schedules changed semester to semester based on my college classes and i mean like it wasn't always perfect it was just something that i could have in place to be like if i looked at my tuesday i'd be like okay i know from 6 a.m to 8 30 a.m in the morning i am doing writing blog posts from 8 30 to 12 30 i have classes you know like and i could separate it out like that um that way i could know that i was actually fitting things in and again it's like that job mantra that okay you have to be here and doing this at that certain time but another thing that i focused on that helped me so much was roi and i actually learned about roi which is return on investment and i say roi i use roi all the time like the wrong context but this is actually the right context i believe but i learned about roi i never heard of it before when i was researching really successful bloggers and i stumbled upon this woman her name is rosemary groener i haven't checked up on her in a while so i should like see what she's up to but she had a very successful blog back in 2017 when i started and she talked a lot about like how she started her blog and different things like that and what she harped on over and over again was roi and her blogging schedule mantra which i would love to like have a one-on-one with her to ask if this is like for real because now that i'm in it i don't know how this is ever possible but she only works on her blog 10 hours a week because she was a full-time mom and she just had 10 hours a week to a lot to her blog and so when i was looking at my schedule and planning different things out i wrote down like okay i have to work during these hours i have school during these hours where are little pieces that i could fit in my blog and i believe i was able to i mean depending on the semester and like my class load whether it was summer you know like there was a lot of variables in there but i was able to focus 15 hours a week on my website sometimes it was only 10 um and every single thing that i did that first year of my blog was something that would earn me money now i'm at the point where we're generating enough money that i can start doing things that don't earn me income right now in hopes that eventually they will earn income but there's a lot of things in this blogging world that you can get paid really well not really but faster versus other things that take a lot more time basically my entire focus that first year blogging was on three things for the website and that was blog posts so writing blog posts getting them up on pinterest so like making pins scheduling them on pinterest uploading them caption writing all of those things and then i had a block of time where i would do all of the extra things so that could be researching on different blog techniques taking blogging courses i swore still swear by blogging courses especially that first year so i would like spend my time doing that um updating the front page of my website different things like that and i would leave a smaller amount the biggest chunk of time for sure went to writing blog posts the second biggest chunk of time went to doing pins and then the third chunk of time was the smaller one that was for like the extras and the extras were i still was really trying to focus on roi but there's just like random things that you have to do like i probably like set up my email or like reached out to um other bloggers or like people to see if i could use their pictures different stuff like that but this is what i found which is a gold mine of information so i want to walk through it and i kind of wish there was more stuff i wish i found my planner from back when i was a sophomore in college because that would be really really good insight but this binder was my binder that i swore by and even like this is so funny like i'm looking at the front of this i must have used this binder for history back in the day but if you see on my history this is like this is really funny because this is the story of my life anything in college i like have paid attention to and only thought about this website but i have like three things and it's only write a post if it gets a reader to sign up for your email list drives them towards an affiliate sale or generates ad revenue and then i have in parentheses a lot of traffic which is still what i harp on today um i don't know i thought that was funny but this was like my end-all be-all blogging binder and so there's a lot of stuff in here that i have i would print everything out because i have free printing credits through school oh my gosh this is so funny i think this was probably my um like pin for pinterest what i used to what i should really do is make this a bonus on um the perfecting blogging our blogging course that goes over like the actual website and how we do things on the website and go over all of these pages that would be a great bonus maybe i'll do that eventually let me read it through so i must have been unfortunately there's only one and also it was on june 11th so this was june 11th of 2018 which was almost a year after i started my blog so monday i was in summer so i think i gave myself some like time to relax a little bit so from seven to nine in the morning i had my philosophy class i was on in the summer i would take online courses which was nice because i didn't have to like actually be somewhere then from 10 to noon and this is just like one week so this could change i wrote a blog post and then from one i had a dentist appointment apparently from two to four i had more blog posts that i wrote and then at night i did orange theory so right there okay let's see so on monday i spend four hours blogging if you're serious about starting a blog it is like a legitimate full-time job to get it started so you're gonna have to adjust your schedule to work around your work life and so that would be like to get four hours in on a monday you could do from like obviously this changes to a few kids or whatever but like from six to eight you can work on your website and then from like six to eight at night you also work on your website okay tuesday from 10 to 1 i did a blog post and then um i did a oh actually okay i understand what i'm saying now i did a college reference sheet so i'm assuming that was like my blog post standard that i made for all college posts because then i have a blog reference sheet which would probably be like the upfront blogging side of things that i needed to like there's probably like a checklist that i constantly kept updated or whatever you know something like that so from um 101 i did that college reference sheet and then from one two three i did the blogging reference sheet and then from four to five i did graphics for blog in college so that was like basically a full day from wednesday on wednesday from seven to nine i'd add graphics to all posts from 10 to noon i would update posts um from one to four i did a video for youtube which i don't know what i did that for because i did not have a youtube at that point maybe i dabbled in it okay and then on thursday i was flying somewhere so i updated posts but i do actually remember kind of how i did it during when i was a student so i am an early riser and so i would get up at like 6 a.m 5 30 a.m which is unheard of as a college student you know like people just usually don't do that but then um i would either work out right away or i would um start on my blog right away so in the morning it was like super quiet not a lot was happening and so i would go out to like my dorm was connected to like a um a community room so i would go down to the community room i would like grab some tea and then i would do whatever i'm doing whether it was writing a blog post doing pinterest pins which i think i called them graphics back then which is graphics um or doing like those extra things so i would divide up my time like that like i said something that i was super good about is at the beginning of every semester i would legitimately like print out calendars i bought huge calendars and i would just plan out my schedule and i would like move things around until i had it perfect and at them like the most effective schedule as possible and kind of do it that way but it was all about like finding the little blocks of time where i could focus on something and also if you're a college student something that really helped me is i would try to push all of my classes together so like i would not only would i spend time like on my life schedule i would spend hours trying to figure out like my actual college schedule when everyone was planning their classes so that if i had like if i could have all my classes done in the morning that way in the afternoon i could have a big chunk of time to nanny or a big chunk of time to work on my blog which like for me i'm not the type of person it takes me a long time to get like focused into something so i'm not like i'm not a multitasker like i can't go from one thing and then another thing and then come back to that other thing like that's just not how my brain works so if i do the time blocks i can like really divide out time where i can focus on one thing at one time so that is a little bit about how i did it and i think just the most important thing is figuring out which i still stand behind what i did before is what is worth you spending your time on in the beginning do not spend time on things that do not generate income or really bring your blog to that like next level another example don't spend a lot of time on your about page your about page put a picture of you up there and then write three sentences quickly going over you no one cares and no one needs to know more about you like that is gonna do nothing for your bottom line you want to focus on things in the beginning that will get you to that next step and then the next step and then the next step and like the blogging courses like that is in to fill your time and that extra stuff that you have to do that's a great way to fill your time because that's something that can take you to the next step pinterest over other social medias like firsthand i can tell you now that i'm on all the social medias that pinterest is the best use of roi that there is currently tick tock is coming up there but tick tock versus pinterest you can't like go and click to some it's just it takes a lot more time to get to an exact post whereas pinterest you literally put up a pin someone clicks on that pin and they take you to the exact post there's nothing like that else on social media and for me our pinterest conversions for bsl are so they are stupid high compared to our instagram conversions like it is such a joke but now i spend so much of my time on instagram because i'm at that point where the other part of the website is making enough money where like instagram is where those real connections take place that is something that i think i lacked in the beginning was that like personal touch because i was so like reader reader reader focused that um which is fine if you don't want your really brand to be about you but if you want you to be part of your brand then it's like that slow growth to getting in so now it makes sense in our business for me to spend time on pinterest but before it did it and when i was juggling a million other things and not doing this strictly full time like i am now it wasn't even an option so that was a little bit about my blogging schedule that first year i still stand behind what i focused on i think that's what you should be focusing on um and it's really just a juggling act for me i did three years of that juggling act and it set me up so well for the success of this blog because like one i know how to schedule out my time but two i was so sometimes when you have too much time it's a disadvantage because you don't focus on the things that you should be focusing on but i know so many of us that have blogs or especially starting a blog you have so many other things going on in your life that you just have to be so strategic with your time and having a job while also managing your blog can be the biggest blessing and like you have to also figure out your priorities for me i would stay in on a friday night instead of going out to the bars because i knew that like one i had i just had to worry about other things that like some of my friends didn't have to worry about but also like i saw the future of this blog and it's what i enjoyed like i would have rather been it was not the coolest thing to do and of course like i still enjoy my college experience like i would i would go out but like a lot of the time i wouldn't and i would work on my blog instead of going out to the bar or whatever it was so it's just figuring out like your priorities and getting in the mindset of sticking with it in the last video that i talked about i really talked about like blogging is not hard it is just a lot of work and that is true it really isn't hard in the beginning the hardest part is just figuring it out like the stuff that you do is not difficult but it's just like it takes so much work it's not a fast game it's labor intensive you don't see success right away it can take over a year which like a year to work hour in and hour out on something and not see any type of reward from it is so difficult so just keep that in mind the first year um but for me time blocking was key time blocking scheduling out and knowing the things that i should be focusing on what's the best um so i'm going to end that video there make sure to subscribe to this youtube channel i do usually like 99 of the time i have a weekly blogging video come out we also send out a weekly blogging email which is really good so we'll put the opt-in you can click on and put your email in below make sure to check out our blogging courses they're on um well we'll have the link for that also but they're actually so good like they're just like really intensive usually if you read the comments of the videos of these youtube videos people will like say how good they are which is so nice it makes me so happy um but if you are in that beginning stage of the blog i highly recommend not even if you don't want to do my courses but just taking courses in general is just so impactful for your website and your blog and yeah that's really all i've got for you so i will see you at next week's video i hope you enjoyed this and if you are in like your first year blogging six months and eight months in and you could give a little insight on your schedule in the comments i think that would be incredibly helpful for other people watching this you

Channel: Perfecting Blogging | By Sophia Lee Blogging

Views: 51,247

Keywords: blogging tips, by sophia lee blogging, blogging for beginners, how to start a blog and make money, how to start a blog step by step for beginners, sophia lee blogging, blogging tips for beginners, blogging tips and tricks, blogging tips 2022, blogging, first year blogging schedule, blogging schedule, blogging schedule first year, blogging 2022, by sophia lee

Id: fyoSCSg7-Tg

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022