How to Manage (Run) a Blog simultaneously with your current job for extra income
of the best decisions you can make. This is because if nurtured very well, it might end up replacing your day job.
Unlike most other businesses that require lots of capital to start, blogging is different.
This is because, with a very meager amount of money, you can launch your own blog and if you’re serious and determined to make it work for you, it can be grown into a 6-figure per month business with time.
The good thing is that today, anyone can make money from the Internet especially through blogging. At the same time, it’s often very hard to manage especially when you have other things doing like having a joy job. This is what usually prevents most people from venturing into it.
But do you have to quit your day job in order to run and manage your blog? My answer is NO.
You might have been advised to quit your day job so you can dedicate all your time to blogging alone and if that is correct, read this article first before making a decision.
Unless the money you’re making from your blog is more than what you’re being paid in your day job, calling it a quit will be crazy and absurd.
In this book “Rich Dads Before You Quit your Job”, Robert Kiyosaki described his first experience after he quit his job to become an entrepreneur.
In his own words, “One of the most frightening days of my life was the day I quit my job and officially became an entrepreneur. On that day, I knew there were no more steady paychecks, no more health insurance or retirement plans. No more days off for being sick or paid vacations.
On that day, my income went to zero. The terror of not having a steady paycheck was one of the most frightening experiences I had ever experienced. Worst of all, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another steady paycheck”.
When you’re first starting your blogging business, you’re not sure if it’ll become successful or not. Can you possibly go for 3-6 months without a steady flow of income?
Even if for nothing else, blogs needs money to run during their early stages coupled with your other financial needs hence, the need to keep your 9 to 5 while running your blog on the side.
Interestingly, there have been some proven ways through which you can manage your blog without quitting your day job and that’s what I’ll talk to you about in this post.
A steady income from employment helps ease anxiety, as well as provides for the day-to-day basic needs throughout the duration it takes to establish yourself in the online space.
Table of Contents
7 Ways to Manage Your Blog Without Quitting Your Job
1. Start Learning and experimenting for Free
Obviously, building a blog and making it successful takes lots of time and efforts. It’ll be a weird idea to give up a steady paycheck just to experiment and make mistakes.
During the learning period, you won’t be making any money from your blog because you know nothing yet. You’re still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. In this case, the best solution is to do this in your free time. That free time is your after office hours or weekends. Depending how much interested you are to Embrace the new age career choice.
It will be wise to use your spare time to educate yourself and with your steady paycheck, you can easily invest in the necessary blogging tools and services needed to simplify and facilitate your blogging tasks.
You can only call it a quit when your blog is earning more than you earn on your day job.
2. Become a Time Management Guru
“Time is money”
I have mentioned this quote multiple time & I truely believe in it.
From experience, I’ve come to realize that, you can actually be very busy sometimes without being productive, therefore; you should try to squeeze out enough time to work on your blog.
If you spend a lot of time watching the TV, playing video games, partying, etc, you may want to apportion that time to work on your blog instead.
Bottom line: Time is a very important factor when it to running an Internet-based business just like any other type of business. It’s now left for you to decide how you can work out enough time from your daily schedule to make your blog a success.
. Learn to Schedule Like a Boss
Sticking to a routine is often the most difficult part when it comes to blogging yet, it’s also the most important. In my initial days of blogging, I mastered this thing with the help of scheduling. I ensured that every single day one blog post is published.
If you must be getting things done then, scheduling is a must. You should plan your publishing scheudle ahead of the time. It’s always good to start with your most difficult task because once you’ve done that, the rest will become easier to tackle.
The best thing is to always figure out your most important tasks. Ask yourself “What’s the one thing that if you do now, will make every other task on your list easier?” this will help you to ensure you’re not wasting time unnecessarily. Once you’ve mapped out your tasks, stick to it at all cost and don’t allow yourself to deviate for any reason.
If you still finding it hard to maintain a schedule along with your 9-6 job, you can take help of Co-schedule tool. It has helped many people like you.
4. Learn to Always Stay Organized and Focus
To be honest, staying organized & focused is key to achieve all our dreams.
Running an internet based business while also maintaining a day job takes not only organization but also focus.
In my own case, I created two buckets lists, “To-do” and “done.” I put all the tasks that needed to be executed into the “To-do” bucket and once I’ve executed anyone, ill move it to the “done” bucket. I use Trello for the same & it’s pretty handy to use.
This way, I know what needs to be done each time. I don’t have to start thinking of what I should be doing at any point; this is also a time killer.
Therefore, start by listing your tasks, ranking them according to their priority level and start the Trello game. Regarding your big tasks, break them into small tasks & follow the same formula.
5. Always Remember Your Big Why
Being an entrepreneur and having a 9-5 at the same time can be very tedious and time-consuming most times and if care is not taken, you can easily get off balance and lose focus in the process.
One of the things that will always keep you inspired and highly motivated to move forward even when things are not working well is to know why you’re doing this.
With a very big reason, you’ll stand the test of time. This is one thing John Chow emphasised in his recent interview with me at Affiliate Summit west.
The bottom line is to regularly visit the reason why you are doing, what you are doing. Each time you lose motivation, revisit your reason & ask yourself ‘Why’?
6. Develop Confidence and Peace of Mind
Making money from the Internet is not meant for the desperate individuals.
It usually take lots of time, money and efforts before you start seeing any significant income from your blog but with a steady paycheck from your day job, you’ll have something to rely on while waiting for your blog to start paying the bills.
Without that certainty, your depression level will be naturally higher and potentially push you to quit and give up when results don’t materialize based on your expexcitations.
7. Assemble a Great Team
Thinking you can build a popular blog all by yourself is crazy. It works when you started out with your blog but if you want to build an outstanding blog, having a team will help you to grow really faster.
Even if you’re a superhuman, you’ll still need to get the help of others in some ways. As someone who’s busy with his day job, one of the best decisions you’ll make is to learn to outsource and delegate some tasks especially the most difficult and time-consuming ones.
Doing this will allow you to focus more on your job and on the core areas of your blogging business. Once you’ve built a good team, the entire day to day running of your blogging business will become less stressful and less time consuming.
If you check out most of the popular bloggers from around the web, you’ll find out that they have one thing in common, “they have a great team”.
Here is the right way to start in case if you are not ready to hire someone full-time. I have actually used this method to start building my team. Create a list of tasks that you want to delegate. This is the most important thing you should do before moving ahead.
Now, use any freelancing sites to hire a Virtual assistant & delegate your work to them. Since you are not accustomed with giving orders to others this will give you a good start. You will understand a lot of things in this process & this is your stepping stone before you hire people full-time.
If you ask me, I’ll say that building a team for your business is one of the wisest business decisions you’ll ever make, therefore, if you’re running a blog and also have a day job, you need a team to assist you in running your blog.
Conclusion
Like I mentioned earlier, it takes lots of time to build a successful blog. Within this waiting period, you not only need money for your personal needs, running your blog also requires some investment.
Because of this, it’ll be a dumb idea to quit your day job all because you want to create time for your blog.
A lot of people have made such mistake before and ended up regretting it, I wouldn’t want that to also happen to you.
If you diligently follow the ideas I shared on this post, managing your blog and your day job will cease to be an issue. Once you start earning from your blog more than they pay you on your day job, you can now quit the job knowing that your blog can pay the bills.
I will love to hear your thoughts on this via the comment section.