Blogging Is Time-Consuming. What Can I Do About It?
I've just completed the draft for my fourth article on my blog, kasperallerslev.com.
And man is it tough.
The writing comes easily to me, and I try to keep a schedule of publishing every Monday and Thursday. But it takes so much time, especially the code samples, and I feel that I can't keep this up after the easter break comes to a finish.
I work full time as a software consultant. I figured getting started in my easter vacation would be a good idea to get started, which it was, but I fear for next Thursday's article.
As I see it, I either have to
- Write shorter articles
- Write fewer articles
I have difficult time seeing any other alternative. Unless of course you lot have some great ideas.
What can I do besides writing shorter or fewer articles?
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I think the best you can do is figure out why you write. Your article on decorators, for example, is a reflection on a very technical topic. I wonder what motivated you to write it? Is it something you learned, something you had to explain to a colleague, were you meaning to start a discussion?
If you figure that out, then you can also figure out whether the sweet spot is in longer articles but less frequent or the other way around. In my case, I tend to publish long tutorials, sometimes of more than 6000 words, because I want them to be complete. I do it to document what I learn, not only personally, but also through doubts of people with whom I interact. I also do it because the blog is a source of income (through selling a book and getting customers for workshops).
But, knowing that, I also know that I won't publish more than one article every 2 months on average. Over time I also figured what are the most popular topics on Google and, fundamentally, which ones people remember. I had a circular talk with someone saying they found a tutorial online, to later find it was mine. That was very rewarding, and I don't need more than that to keep publishing.
Currently, I'm just writing about things that interest me, things that has been banging around in my head for a while. I feel like I just need to get it out. I'm also just learning. I've never done technical writing anymore, even though technical topics are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine.
But yes. They should be more focused. I don't think I've truly found my "why" yet. But I'm getting there.
Ist this new post more clear in purpose, @aqui_c?
I think this one is quite short and to the point! Can't judge the contents since I'm no .NET developer. What about you? How did you feel after publishing it? One thing I am actually doing is writing articles that would later make the building blocks of a book. In thsi way, I can sparkle some discussions and see what else is missing.
Just an advice, that is something I also do a lot and had to learn to stop, at the end you promise you will write about something else. It looks better if you keep those promises to yourself, just write them down, and once they are done and published, you put the links in the relevant places.
Hah, I would never have done so before, but I just knew it was the right thing to do, because this is something that's important to me. It's a core of my being as a software developer, and it's important for me to help others adopt these practices as well.
Through some introspection, I found out that I wanted to help other developers relieve stress. On the short term, I can do this by helping them learn techniques that optimize for peace of mind, but also help them apply these techniques well.
It's not just how to swing a hammer. I also need to teach how to hold the nail, so readers won't bang the hammer one their fingers.
On the longer term, there are a myriad of options to pick from. But the stress relief gained from learning how to test properly comes first.
That's why I must write these articles now. They will form the foundation of my writing.
Started this over 7 years ago as I was just getting into web design and development and had a psychology degree, but couldn't find work and should've gone for more education, but -- web design and web development was paying the bills, so it helped me stay connected to my passion: social psychology. I was fascinated by people AND the workplace: why we go to work, why we do what we do, why some people only do it for the money while others are naturals and are happy to get paid for it, why some people get looked over for a promotion why others seem to just be "that guy" or "that girl" -- it's not you. The website is called Confessions of the Professions. https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com
I publish 1-2 articles per day, sometimes up to 3, 5 days a week, Monday through Friday at 10 AM EST, 11 AM EST, and 12 PM EST, repsectively. There's no randomness to it. If there is only 1 article, then 10 AM is it. If there is 2 articles... you get the point. Very seldom I'll publish on a weekend or a holiday. I have written over 500 articles. I have published over 2,600 articles. I have about 250 articles scheduled to be published, 300 articles that are ready to be scheduled and published, and about 750 articles waiting to be written/edited/processed (these articles are all at various stages). The website is approaching 4,000 total articles on the backend. I work full-time my day job, I work contract for my night job, and then I run my own business developing web apps at NoteToServices (https://notetoservices.com) and I still manage to find time to write articles for my blog.
What's your excuse? Ha, just kidding. How I do I do what I do? ADHD. Anxiety. Cannabis. Those probably help me to stay focused while slacking off. So I have a dozen tabs open almost always and I just go through them like tasks, and that's how I get my work done. But if a conceptual idea pops up in my mind, I write about it, even if only a few sentences. If something happens at work.. I write about it and tell a story. Even for COVID-19.. we all have stories to tell.
It also helped that when I first began the blog, I wrote as many articles as I could by talking to friends and family and my own stories, then solicited like crazy for articles on Craigslist and other websites. After the first year or two, I stopped soliciting, and Google started doing its job, and marketing agencies, universities, freelancers, authors, writers, and even lawyers and doctors wanted to contribute to the website, just to tell their story. It has evolved since then and I get tons and tons of infographics, but they're all very informative. So instead of calling it "my blog" or "my website", it became yours. And when you have something collective with people who all want to tell a story: you have a community. In my case, I built a website focused on jobs, careers, and the workplace.
And we all work jobs, work in a workplace, and dream of one day, or are currently possibly working in, our careers. So yeah... that big chunk of our lives, which accounts for about 60% of your life, is something WE ALL HAVE IN COMMON. I would write articles, but never publish them, sticking to a schedule of no more than 1 per day. Occasionally 2 per day. I'd ensure that EVERYONE ELSE WAS PRIORITY OVER MY ARTICLES. So that is why I have so many. I'd get backed up. Told people they could pay to be priority, and some started paying, while others were okay to wait the week or even up to a month, at times. So I am backed up in publicaitons right now until May 2nd.
My advice to you:
One year, I had a challenge of the week article. Every week, I'd come up with a new challenge. "Your challenge for this week is to eat carrots." "Your challenge for this week is talk to your children about money and spending habits." Things like that. Since my website is dedicated to jobs, careers, and the workplace, a reason for some of my many articles is that I scraped their website for job-related workforce data, and publish it on my site. I give them complete credit as I am only publishing their material to educate my readers. There's always something new.
The biggest secret to having a successful blog and making people know how serious you are: be passionate about whatever it is your doing... and capture that moment in writing.
The good news is that you enjoy writing, and that makes it a lot easier to continue.
I think if you dedicate a set amount of time every day for blogging, for instance before starting work, your output will increase over time as you become more proficient and efficient at writing blog posts.
It's more important to keep the habit of writing than meeting a predefined schedule. I believe in quality over quantity, and the quantity will accumulate over time anyway.
True, quality is important. The reason my schedule is to make writing a habit. My last article was 2,000 words, and I think the next one will top that.
But it takes a lot of time, and it’s hard to write something actually useful in less words :-/
What worked for me was moving all my blogging time to a time slot that was otherwise underutilized. I take public transit every day 20 minutes each way to the gym, 7 days a week. So instead of listening to podcasts or music during that time period, I decided to make it my time to write for my blog.
That's a good 30+ minutes of writing every single day and it really adds up. I can easily get through one post a week now and I use the balance of my time to write other things such as IndieHackers posts and customer support tickets for my product, StatusGator.
Sadly, home quarantine has removed this time block from my schedule but I've been trying to make it up in other places. It's harder with my routine all turned around, but I'm working on a new routine.
I had the same problem you are describing, as a result I decided to give myself smaller goals and write shorter posts for a while to avoid getting overwhelmed. I launched my blog 8 months ago but I went on hiatus twice during that time. It does get easier to write after you've been doing it for a while, but I would still say if you are writing 2K words that is a LOT. You can rank on the first page for your chosen SEO keyword pretty easily with posts that long, if you do keyword research.
Check out this blogging for business course, its free currently but may go back to costing money when the plague is over: https://ahrefs.com/academy/blogging-for-business
Based on what I learned in the course so far, you can write as few as 1 posts per month and still get significant views if you post has good SEO. Basically taking the time to polish SEO is better than churning out posts because you will continue to get views to old posts for the foreseeable future.
I'm not there myself but many bloggers have recommended the course to me so I think there is something to be said for it. If you're curious about my blog, you can find it at www.nadyaprimak.com/blog
It becomes easier as you continue writing. Consistency is a key success criteria in my opinion.
Consistency is how everything of value gets done. :)
I have integrated blogging into my workflow for complex topics. This way I get to write about stuff that I still have discover myself. Working this way has the primary benefit for me that it enables me to stay more focussed on the task at hand. Also, I can document my process while I'm working to solve the problem. Describing a problem after you've solved it leaves out many important details of the process. Besides that it seems that describing a problem after you've already solved it requires an even deeper understanding of the topic in order to be able to clearly describe the solution.
One thing I'm actively preventing is writing for the sake of writing. My time is too valuable to be doing that, and I'm quite sure that other people are not interested in things resulting from this practice.
Ps. please, for the sake of simplicity, make your code samples just simple enough to bring the message. I understand you want to be complete, but providing 4 models as part of your DbContext is just too much for me (someone casually reading a blog) to comprehend. Thankfully blog posts don't have to be compiled, and usually showing a little bit of code will enable readers to paint the picture around it.
Use GPT-2 (Talk To/Write With Transformer is an app that leverages it) :D
But I will say that long and well thought out tends to beat shorter articles...maybe post less frequently but don't compromise on the quality cause you will inevitably lose out.
I think the reason for the longer articles is that I wish to back my arguments with actual code. This forces me to also explain the code, not just the concepts.
For example, my latest articles is about decorator classes. It is are a really simple concept, but they are massively under-utilized, and most people don't use them.
The concept can be explained in a sentence. I ended up writing 2,250 words, 750 of which was code.
And there's value in that. Try to get feedback/data on what parts are most valuable...create different versions of the article and A/B test it with audiences. Remove what isn't adding value and double down on what is. Think of this as an upfront investment.
First of all, yes, it's hard for all of us. What works for me the best is to already have the idea for the article beforehand. Usually from code at work. Then putting it down or just "wrap" it in some text comes much easier.
I also allowed myself to write very short articles. For example, if I encounter an error that gave me a headache I will write about it even if it's very short. It can be still helpful to others and I am not going to write more just for the sake of it.
At last, when you don't feel like it, don't write. Don't make it something to hate. Sometimes I tell myself this weekend I will write this or that article. Then the weekend comes and I am not in the mood. I think it's important to allow yourself to pass on writing.
Hi Kasper,
I saw a lot of good advice here and going to add a bit of my own:
Hope this helps,
Jonathan
You know, the idea of splitting up the articles is really good. It helps me with keeping up the cadence and keeping visible for readers during the week.
So I just measured the next one, 1,500+ words without code samples, 2,250 with code samples.
Next time, I'll try splitting up the article into multiple parts. It might also give me that "cliff hanger" effect, where people will have read the first part and are "pre-sold" on reading the next part.
I might also just need to be more concise...
The "cliff hanger" is definitely an added bonus I didn't even think of :)
Glad I could help and good luck!
I don't think there are alternatives if you don't want to outsource. It may get easier/faster in the future though as you get more practice and experience in writing and editing.
If I had to choose between shorter or fewer I would personally choose fewer articles. In general it is difficult to create posts that provide a lot of value to people and posts that get attention from social/search/links without going in depth which in general means longer articles. So keep publishing the best content that you can, content that answers questions people have and content that helps people out but don't worry about following some strict schedule or deadline.
Make the article great and then publish rather than rush to publish because of some schedule that you yourself have set.
I'm not rushing anything, honest! The next blog post is due Monday, and I just finished editing the draft. :)
As @JonathanOron suggested, I'll try making them shorter by splitting them into parts.
Is it a passion project? Depending on the value they bring in, you should consider outsourcing it. There are plenty of people writing about these topics as their main gig. You could have someone build out the framework of the blog post then come in and "make it your own".
It’s definitely a passion blog, so I don’t want to outsource it. I just want to get more productive.
It depends on what your goal is.
I write daily development tips so every day 1 article, shorter than yours though, but whenever I'm in the mood i pre-write content.
Of course the demo's GitHub projects is the most work and validating my story.
But I love doing it, and it holds me accountable.
Have a look if you want: https://daily-dev-tips.com/
Funny I stumbled on your daily-dev-tips.com, I was just thinking today that I should have a similar Today-I-learned kinda blog.
You use yours only to get more followers and generate leads?
How's it working for you?
I use mine really with the sole intention of becoming even better and keeping up to date with programming, been a developer for about 17 years, and it's so hard not staying stuck in an old world. So use my blog to keep myself motivated to learn something new every day.
Or at least write something down for other people to learn from.
So far it's going alright, not really much leads or engagement, but it's fun to do.
I'm not sure what I really want, except just to get these things out of my head. The one thing I intend to do at some point is to write a book. With all this writing, I'm getting a fair deal of training. 😭
That's amazing! looking forward to your book! ⚡️
Thanks :)
The idea is an introduction to unit testing with .NET Core, which will lead into test first programming, then outside-in development, and then TDD.
Hey @undreren - I see how your blog is time consuming, especially since you cover such technical topics.
My new product may help. SplashPad helps you write by providing language suggestions, as you write, that attract readers' attention and sell your ideas. The initial focus is marketing emails, but it can be used for blogs too. Check it out and let me know what you think: https://www.getsplashpad.com/.
What is stopping you from outsourcing this task?
The fact that I want to write the blog myself.
It's a labor of love, after all.
If you love write, then write!
Blogging is all about providing value. Think of how you can provide value without writings...
For example try podcast , slide shows, Code snippet gallery , content curation etc
I disagree, blogging is about writing and publishing whatever you want. Providing value obscures other very valid purposes, such as personal growth, skill development, etc. Not everything in life has to be done seeking an audience or profit.
You create value in whatever you do. It depends on the reader how valuable is the value provided by you.
When ever you write whatever you like , there will be another person who agree with you.
For that another person you give a kind of assurence that his thoughts are valid... That's the value you deliver at that point of time....
Use Speech to Text
I don’t think typing speed is my limiting factor, but it sounds like it’s worth giving it a shot.
What tools do you use for this, and what is your experience with it?
I use the feature of Google Docs. Simple to use but lots of simple edits.