Do you have time to be a ProBlogger?

I’m currently taking a bit of a working holiday in New Zealand and am spending a few days with two fellow bloggers to talk about the possibilities of working together as a blogging collective. One of the things I’ve found myself thinking on a number of occasions over the last few days is that it takes time to build a blogging business.

This morning I had an email from a reader of this site telling me that they want to earn money from blogging and they want to earn it fast.

In writing this blog I do not want to create any false impressions that blogs are a silver bullet – that all you have to do is start one, add some ads and then you’ll be set for life with a nice passive income.

The truth of the matter (in my experience) is this – if you want to make an honest and modest living from blogging that it is possible. In fact I believe it is possible to make a substantial living from blogging. However it takes a lot of work and it does not just happen over night. I started my first blog just under 2 years ago. Whilst I didn’t start blogging for dollars until around 1 year ago that first year was vital for the results I’m seeing today because it was a year of building my domain name’s ranking up. I’m just starting to see the fruit of all this hard work now – two years later.

Unless you have an absolutely brilliant concept or strike it incredibly lucky it will take you time to build your blogging up to a position where it earns you a decent income – even then you still need a bit of luck, many hours in front of the computer and a few intelligent strategies in place to make it worth your time. I spend at least 30 hours a week blogging – I treat it as a full time job – if I’m not willing to put substantial hours into it why would I expect it to reward me with a substantial figure?

Of course over the months my rate of return for the hours that I blog is on the increase but in the initial stages (as with any business) one has to be willing to put in the hard yards to get things going.

A recent study (see quote below) of business people found that 71% of marketers saw lack of time as a reason for not starting a business blog. I know business blogs are a different genre of blogging to the type of blogging that I do – however the principle still remains – if you don’t have time to blog you’ll never earn much from your blogging – and by time I mean time each day and week – but also time in the bigger picture of your life, if you’re not willing to work hard for a year or so with little return.

So some important questions to ask yourself when you start your problogging is ‘do I have time to dedicate to my blogging?’ ‘Do I have the patience and long term vision to pull it off?’