Are You Too Busy to Write? Seven Ways to Blog More Productively

Is finding time to blog something you struggle with? A number of people have asked me how they can find time to blog on top of everything else that I have going on.

Writing content is vitally important for your blog. It is your source of direct visitors, plus the meat of what you share in social media, the combination of which is essentially all the marketing many of us do. Your content attracts and maintains a relationship with your subscribers, and it is also what prompts readers to take action, even if that action is simply a blog comment.

Without regularly added, fresh, original, useful content … well, your blog becomes the web equivalent of the Pacific Junk Patch.

One thing you might have noticed though is that I don’t stick to a rigid writing schedule. This helps me find time to work on my blog around other commitments, but is only possible for me because of a few factors:

1. I already have a reasonably sized, engaged audience. You might say I have some “credit in the bank”.
2. “Traffic” is not something I rely on for my income. Providing I help enough people work towards their own goals then I will attract “few but enough” customers to pay my bills.
3. My philosophy is that you are only as good as your last post. Given the choice between “phoning it in” to keep up an arbitrary schedule and waiting to post something I am happy with … well, you guessed right, I wait.

You might not have these luxuries so need to balance your schedule a little more in favour of keeping in touch with subscribers more often but without making it too taxing a job for you.

My approach is to offer my loyal audience content you will want to bookmark, give you actionable tips via the benefit of my experience. If I succeed then I get more subscribers and clients, and really, unlike many bloggers my subscribers and customers are the only people I need to worry about where my blog is concerned.

I have no advertisers to keep sweet, and I don’t intend ever selling my blog, so I have no need to inflate my page views. Providing I do well with keeping my readers happy then my peer group and potential partners will also be happy.

If however you make money from impressions or ad clicks then you will need to get your traffic up and maintain that high level. That makes having a more rigorous publishing schedule a priority.

At the same time you can’t let your quality suffer because you are pushing quantity, making your productivity even more important.

Most of my readers are individuals, professionals or small businesses, so it might be well within your reach to shift your online business model to be more about authority than page views and clicks. If that is the case for you then focus on one solid article a week rather that try to achieve an unrealistic schedule – that might be all the solution you need. If you do want to eek out a few more hours in your week though, read on for some more tips!

How can you find time to not just write but create great content?

1. Set time aside – preferably quiet, focused time with zero distractions. I recommend actually putting this time in your diary and sticking to it. If you try to “catch 10 minutes” then you are going to either keep pushing the task back or you are going to find that time just vanishes altogether. Also setting a specific time allows your subconscious to prepare.
2. Write in Batches, and if possible schedule your posts in advance – Most blogging software such as WordPress allows you to write articles in advance and set the date and time when they should go “live”, visible on your blog. Publishing in advance allows you to write in quieter times and have the articles visible at busy times. While I no longer do this on chrisg.com I have always done this when writing for clients (when you have a contract for a certain number of posts per month it is not a good idea to write them just before they are meant to be sent out to subscribers!). Writing in batches allows you to get into a flow and you will find the writing process far more fluid than trying to task switch between your main job and being a writer. Darren often has cafe days where he will sit and batch write a whole raft of posts, and he ran away to a hotel to complete his work on the Problogger book!
3. Jot down ideas as they come to you – When you relax your brain or think about something else is when some of your best ideas will come to you, so make sure you store those ideas on a notepad, in your phone, or on some scrap of paper! A really cool aspect of the WordPress is you can use multiple tools, even email, to send a draft of a post to your blog for later use. I have a whole bunch of draft posts that are just headlines and some bullets waiting for me to complete them.
4. Repurpose content – “Repurposing” is taking your content and using it in a different location, in a different way, or re-packaging it. So I might take a series of posts and create an ebook, or I might expand an article into a presentation. Someone might request they republish my article in their newsletter. It can work the other way though, and it can be a great way to fill your blog. Take points from your presentations and write them up as blog posts. Maybe you have a transcript that you can copy and paste as a starting point? Have you got a section of a report or ebook tat you can use? Emails to customers? Existing content is an asset to be reused if you are creative!
5. Answer questions – Taking the last point further, my customer, coaching client and audience questions are my best source of content. This post came from a question I get asked a lot and was asked in interviews twice last week. When you answer a question in email, on a forum, in a chat, blog comment, or in an interview with a transcript, then you can copy, paste and edit to create a post. The best part? You KNOW it is on-topic and relevant.
6. Have a system – My coaching clients know that I have a writing system that allowed me to write for at one point twelve different blogs at once. This has meant I have written thousands of articles, and to be honest was probably too many because people were telling me I was getting over exposed! In brief, use headline formulas, write an outline, create without stopping, turn off the internal editor until you have a first draft. People try to write the whole thing at once and get stuck switching from creating to editing and back again. Don’t do that – split the creative part from the editing part and you will work with your brain rather than against it!
7. Failing all that – outsource! If you still struggle then get guest writers, pay writers, or what I think is a really smart move, get an editor to take your thoughts and ideas and polish them into finished articles.

These might not be silver bullets but they do work. While my family is watching TV I can sit with them with my laptop tapping out outlines, drafts, or editing. Some times it will take three or even four days for a post to get to the point where I am happy to hit publish but I have also had articles written in under half an hour that have been big hits in social media and in terms of traffic.

The big difference though is when you make time.

How do you find time to blog? Do any of my tips work (or not) for you? Please share your thoughts, experiences and tips in the comments …

Talking of being more productive … I want to tell you about my latest course …

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The New York Times’ Pathetic Case for the Decline of Blogging

If you feel that the New York Times has the pulse of the Internet then the answer to our headline would be yes. In fact, the Times article which ran on Sunday is titled “Blogs Wane As Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter”. That’s a pretty heavy statement especially when you are saying even the shortest blog post idea can be just as effectively conveyed in 140 characters or less. Maybe TweetDeck will end up being the “Anti-Twitter” by allowing over 140 characters?

The article is provocative for sure and focuses on younger Internet users (at least initially).

Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.

“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their allure for many people — particularly the younger generation.

First off, nice job by the Times using Twitter as the catch for their story then shifting gears to Facebook (which actually makes more sense from the get go but who’s counting?). But back to the premise.

The notion is that blogs are losing much of their ‘shine’ to Facebook and Twitter. This ‘conclusion’ is reached based on the following bit of research.

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.

This is where I call BS. How can you infer that blogs are ‘in trouble’ when you are looking at numbers relating to 12-17 year olds? Kids in this age range can’t pay attention to much anyway just because they are simply kids in that age range! It’s certainly not because they have found the better way to get their thoughts across. It’s because they found the easiest way, for now. A quote from a young lady proves this point.

Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. “It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said. “With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”

As people grow and mature in how they think, the inevitable happens which is that you cannot usually get a point across or make an argument or defend a position in 140 characters or less. Even Facebook has limits. This idea that blogs are fading based on the findings about teens and blogging is pretty silly. In fact, the Times shows it’s engaging in some sensationalistic journalism because if you read on the stance about blogging being on the decline softens and pretty much goes away. That’s why this whole thing is nonsense really.

The blurring of lines is readily apparent among users of Tumblr. Although Tumblr calls itself a blogging service, many of its users are unaware of the description and do not consider themselves bloggers — raising the possibility that the decline in blogging by the younger generation is merely a semantic issue.

Ok, New York Times what is it? Are you pushing the beginning of the end of the blogging or are you jus trying to use headline journalism to get a few more pageviews? Hey, even if blogs are going the way of the dinosaur it looks like you guys picked up a few tricks along the way, huh?

Let’s look at what is really happening. People who are blogging because they are looking for an outlet of some kind are losing interest mainly because people are not reading their posts. There are usually two reasons for that; 1) they are not promoting the blog so the idea of “if you write it they will come” is in effect and that doesn’t work and 2) it’s very likely that their writing is awful or what they have to say isn’t interesting to anyone but themselves. Don’t blame the platform if you can’t write.

Finally the article looks to blogging in older folks and reports

While the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, people approaching middle age and older are sticking with it. Among 34-to-45-year-olds who use the Internet, the percentage who blog increased six points, to 16 percent, in 2010 from two years earlier, the Pew survey found. Blogging by 46-to-55-year-olds increased five percentage points, to 11 percent, while blogging among 65-to-73-year-olds rose two percentage points, to 8 percent.

Here’s my conclusion. Right now, as the world exists today, with all of this still being relatively new to the masses, we like to think that everyone who is growing up on 140 character bits of communication and piecemeal updates via Facebook and location based services will continue to do so. I say they will but they will also embrace the fact that real communication requires more ‘meat on the bone’.

As a result you will see young people who really have something of substance to give to the world will come back to a blogging platform or one that resembles it. They will do it because they are thinking more analytically and realizing the limitations or annotated communications.

So if you are thinking that blogging is truly waning take a look at the reality and ignore the headlines. At least those from the New York Times.

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7 Mistakes that Lead to Guest Post Failure

Guest posting! The highway to unbridled blogging success! Nab yourself a spot on an A-List blog and suddenly it’s your name in lights. Traffic, engagement, the undying adulation of the unwashed masses!

Sounds great, right?

Well, it is, actually.

But what about those of us who really crave a bit of failure? The ones who like to start every anecdote with “One time I almost” or “I was this close …”?

What does guest posting offer for us?

Well, fellow failure-chaser, you’re in luck. Because writing and submitting a guest post offers some real opportunities for spectacular failure.

So start taking notes, because you’re going to be able to tell your friends about the time you nearly wrote an amazing post for an A-Lister that almost took your own blog to a whole new level.

1. Be as timid as humanly possible

The first opportunity for failure is the pitch. Confidence carries the day when it comes to guest posting.

So if it’s failure you’re looking for, don’t show any confidence. Try not to sell your idea, and make sure you don’t actually write the post you’re proposing. Be hesitant, and make it apparent that you’re wasting your host’s time. With a bit of luck, they won’t you send so much as a read receipt.

2. Don’t startle the readers

Maybe the A-Lister you’ve just pathetically pitched has taken pity on you, and asked you to draft up your post.

What he’s looking for here is some competence. So make sure you don’t show any. Starting with a bang and grabbing attention leads to success, so don’t do it. Write cautiously and quietly, so as not to startle your audience into action.

3. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery — so shamelessly copy content

Your lukewarm opening should have dissuaded all but the most persistent of writers. So it’s going to take some real incompetence to screw this up now.

The quickest way is to do something that’s been done before. Retread old ground — but not in a new and interesting way. No, simply regurgitate your host’s best piece with some added spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Be very cautious with this, as covering old topics in a fresh way is actually a terrific way to write a popular guest post. Make sure not to add your own twist or fresh angle and you should be fine.

4. Shamelessly plug Unmemorable Title your own blog

It’s now time to look over the content you’ve just haphazardly thrown together.

To hit the dizzying lows of total failure, you need to employ an ancient SEO technique known as “spamming.” In other words, drop your link into the post so often that the page becomes nearly unreadable.

This is going to fail for two main reasons. One; it’s going to make your host even less likely to publish your piece. Two; it doesn’t work.

5. Make your ending as flat as possible

If you’ve done everything wrong up until now, you should be faced with a pathetic piece of trash, where every second word is a link to your blog.

Congratulations. You’re nearly done with the writing. All that’s left for you to do is cobble together an ending that peters out. And whatever you do, don’t forget to leave out effective closing techniques like a strong call to action.

6. Treat your host like you’re one of The Sex Pistols

The chances are that you’re going to have to interact with your host, as they attempt to polish the steaming post you’ve just deposited in their inbox. So now’s the time to channel some old-school punk.

Just like The Sex Pistols in their first TV interview, start swearing at your host, avoiding giving direct answers, and give the impression that the conversation is beneath you. With luck, this should be enough to make sure you don’t get published …

(If you want to really nail it, you could try throwing up on their desk. The blogging equivalent of this is publicly trash-talking bigger blogs. This works spectacularly well at ensuring you won’t get your guest posts published.)

7. Run like mad and don’t ever look back

If after all of this, by some horrible stroke of luck you do get published, there’s still one more opportunity for failure.

Demonstrate a complete lack of commitment to your guest post. Don’t reply to comments, don’t promote it on Twitter or Facebook, and certainly don’t write a post on your own blog to take advantage of the new traffic that your guest post provides.

And with that, you’ll have blown your big guest posting chance.

Complete and utter guaranteed failure as a guest poster in just seven short steps. Not for you, the benefits of seeing your name alongside the luminaries in your niche. No, because to do that, you’d need to be confident, competent, and committed.

Far easier to just take my advice and slip quietly into obscurity and mediocrity.

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My 6 Favorite Blogging Locations

Where do you blog from?

One of the most attractive parts about blogging as a profession for me is the independence and flexibility that it brings.

I can work from anywhere that I can find an Internet connection. In fact, I don’t even need that at all times—I just need some kind of device to capture the content that I produce (something to type on, a camera, and/or a microphone).

This flexibility, and the opportunity to be location-independent, are wonderful things. They’ve meant I’m able to travel and work from the road; they’ve enabled me to be quite hands-on with my family (particularly useful when your kids are toddlers!), and they’ve also cut down the dreaded commute that I used to have to do when I worked a “real” job.

The other great thing about this type of work—combined with the ever-increasing array of portable computing gadgets that are around—is that from day to day, I’m able to work in all kinds of locations. This variety can be both fun and make life a little more interesting, but it can also help stimulate all kinds of creativity.

Someone asked recently what were my favorite places to blog from. Here’s what I said (and I’d love to hear your favorites below):

1. Cafes

The combination of coffee, a computer, and the white noise of those around me is a very productive mix for me. I spend at least four mornings a week in my local cafe, just a short stroll from our front door. The staff greet me with ‘Blogger dude!” and bring me my drink of choice (a skinny latte with one sugar) without needing to be asked (and a second one 30 minutes later, or on the nod of the head—whichever comes first!). They even installed WiFi just for me.

Other patrons ask how I ever get anything done with all the noise, but for me it’s a strangely productive place where I find myself getting lost in my work. I also enjoy the fact that there are others around—snippets of overheard conversation or interactions with others in the cafe often produce ideas, stimulate blog posts, and even generate product ideas.

2. Shopping centers (the mall)

A variation on the cafe approach has been a semi-regular visit to a local shopping center or mall. The one I go to is among the biggest in Melbourne, and has a great range of cafes, a food court, and several hundred shops—including an Apple store. I enjoy working there partly for similar reasons to those mentioned above (white noise, coffee, etc.), but also because I find the environment quite stimulating for ideas.

I have a little routine that I use: an hour in one cafe; a 15-minute stroll through the shops, where I get all kinds of marketing ideas; an hour in a second cafe; another stroll through shops; then I settle down in the food court or a resautrant for lunch. The combination of all this is surprisingly productive (and I keep the Apple store in business with my regular stop-offs there).

3. The library

I don’t get there as much as I used to since we moved further away from the city, but I always found the big library in the center of Melbourne to be an inspiring place to work, and I used to head there at least once a month. I found just being in a place where others were working and reading used to help me still myself and focus.

Having a vast array of books, magazines, and newspapers on hand for little breaks was also quite stimulating, but the real treat for me is the reading room pictured above, which is just an inspiring place to hang out.

4. Flying

One of the most memorable work sessions that I’ve ever had was on a recent flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles. While I never used to enjoy that flight (14 hours cramped up next to a stranger with not much to do? Not fun!), the last few times I’ve flown, I’ve found myself being particularly productive

Perhaps it’s the altitude or the oxygen they pump around the plane (do they do that?) but I often get a lot done flying. This could also partly be because this is one of the few times in my life that I’m disconnected from the Web (those international flights don’t have WiFi yet). It might also be because I’m traveling to and from conferences that I find to be stimulating experiences.

5. On the couch

Most weeknights you can find me sitting in our lounge room, next to my wife, on the couch, in front of the TV, blogging. I’m not sure how much of the TV I actually watch, but I find the experience to be a good way to wind down at the end of a day.

There are times where my wife needs to tell me to put the computer down so we can connect (although she often sits there surfing too), but all in all it’s usually a reasonably productive time. I tend to use it mainly for admin-type tasks—email, social media, comment moderation, etc.—rather than creative ones, but occasionally I’ll find that something from the TV also stimulates ideas for my work.

6. My desk and office

This is where I do the bulk of my blogging. While I like to get out of the house in the morning to write (mornings are generally more about writing content and creative tasks), I spend the bulk of my afternoons in my home office. This is where I create multi-media content, do interviews, take calls, and do most of the admin and editing tasks that I do.

I did a tour of my office a few years back—not a lot has changed in terms of layout, although I now mainly work from a laptop rather than the desktop computer.

What about you?

Where do you spend most of your time blogging? Which places do you enjoy blogging the most? Do you find different places are better for certain tasks more than others? Interested in your thoughts.

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The Idealist’s Guide to Raking in Tons of Cash

I know what you’re thinking.

You see the title of this post and you see who wrote it and you just might assume that I’m going to ask everyone to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Again.

Maybe you figure that idealism is all well and good for pink-haired bleeding hearts, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

Sure, it’s great to donate and volunteer and do pro bono work … later. Right now, you’re trying to make the cashflow work. Right now, you need to take care of your family. Idealism is going to have to wait until you can afford it.

I totally understand this line of thinking, because I used to think the same way. The only problem is, getting trapped in this mindset will keep you broke.

Because if you think that idealism is something that you choose instead of making money, you’re kind of missing the boat.

How to make more money

Q: How do you increase your business’s bottom line?

A: You get more customers, or you start charging a price that generates more profit.

Q: But how do you do either (or both) of those things?

A: You find a way to help more prospects to become customers, or you do a better job helping your existing customers.

The bigger the problem you can solve or the more people you can solve it for, the more money you stand to make. That’s the fundamental principle behind a good value proposition. Simple, even if it isn’t always easy.

Where we can sometimes go off track

Somewhere along the line, it gets hard. No matter how great your ideas or how mad your skills, you’ll have some tough weeks.

That’s when it can be easy to decide that the whole “being good” thing can wait for a better week to come along.

You know what happens next. Companies start to cut corners, or abuse their employees (who then go on to abuse their customers). What used to be cool and delightful gets a little … less delightful.

Those companies aren’t evil. (Well, most of them aren’t.) They’re just focused — just like you might be.

When you want and need money, you focus on what can make more of it for you. And if you aren’t careful, you can forget that the best way to increase profits is to help more people.

You might start to make decisions based on spreadsheets.

Which is another way to say you start to make decisions based on fear.

You ask, “How can we make these numbers add up in a better way?” And when you do that, the idealistic vision you started with begins to look like a naive dead end.

Let’s talk about a real business

Is it a good financial move to pay four or five times the going rate for African jewelry if you want to resell it in America?

Business 101 says we’ve got to control costs. Helping the vendors or artists you buy from is nice if you’re a billionaire with good hair like Richard Branson. But it looks pretty unrelated to your business’s profitability.

But take a look at what Keza does every single time it works with an artist in, for example, Rwanda. They do, in fact, pay their artists more than the going rate. A lot more. And they make a big profit on every sale.

The artists win. Keza wins. And the win is bigger than that, because Keza’s two missions are to improve Africa’s image in the eyes of the West (eyes that are used to only seeing misery and disease in charity commercials) and to bring the continent some of that “trade, not aid” that Nelson Mandela and Bono keep talking about.

Keza could have leveraged the different costs of living, as many companies do, for easy profit. Paid the street value of pennies and come back home to sell the necklaces for dollars.

From the spreadsheet perspective, that would have made good financial sense. Spend less, make more. Worry about profits now; worry about helping Africa later.

That gets you to being Cost Plus. Which is, I’m sure, a perfectly nice company. But it’s not a remarkable one.

Keza is nothing like Cost Plus.

Keza gets its jewelry into red carpet events, and luxury stores like Barney’s. They’re not chasing the lowest common denominator — they’re finding work that’s exceptional, and delivering it to the wealthiest buyers on the planet.

Keza has a better product, and it tells a better story.

Without Keza’s idealistic mission, its great win-win-win story, and a superior product, could it achieve the high status and esteem required to sell at those high prices?

The perfect balance: Profitable Idealism

If you’ve read any of my posts or taken my courses, you know I’m big on win-win.

I’m not willing to “leverage” when that means that I make a lot and someone else gets a crummy deal. I don’t feel good if my kid is thriving at the expense of someone else’s kid.

In fact, my kind of thinking led a lot of people to tell me I’d never be really successful — that I didn’t have the killer instinct.

No one tells me that any more. (Not, you know, that I’d gloat or anything. Because that would be wrong.)

So ANYWAY, when our own Johnny B. Truant and fellow Copyblogger contributor Pace Smith announced Profitable Idealism, I may or may not have attempted some celebratory cartwheels. It wasn’t very dignified, but fortunately no one was watching except the cat.

What’s Profitable Idealism?

Profitable Idealism is a comprehensive guide to creating a business that makes money (maybe even big money) and makes the world a better place.

I’ve known Johnny and Pace for a couple of years now, and I think they’re the right people to teach this course. They both have highly profitable businesses, and they both have a mission to change the world in their own unique way. (They’ve also brought in a bunch of brainy, wise folks to help teach the course — I know nearly everyone involved, and they’re all amazing.)

Johnny started with the profit side of things and Pace began as an idealist, but they ended up in the same place: with businesses that succeed because they’re focused not just inward, but also outward.

They put Profitable Idealism together because there’s more to creating a profitable idealist business than just slapping a charitable venture on top of your existing business. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll end up with an “idealist” side that drains time and money from your business instead of bolstering it. Or, you’ll end up doing a lot of good, but will find yourself unsatisfied and unable to find the true win-win that allows you to make any money for yourself.

Pace, Johnny, and their six detailed case studies (Jared Angaza from Keza is one of them) can show you how to do it right, so that you end up with an entity that truly helps everyone … including you.

(And if you don’t put yourself into the equation, my friend, that’s not idealism … it’s just being a chump.)

Copyblogger is happy to be a marketing partner for Profitable Idealism and the links on this page are affiliate links. As you’ll find if you spend any time with us, we don’t back anything we don’t believe in — and this course couldn’t possibly fit better with our “Third Tribe” approach.

The course consists of:

• Five live course sessions with Q&A,
• Six case studies of profitable idealist role models that you can steal all kinds of great ideas from,
• Extensive interaction, and …
• … if you beat tomorrow night’s pre-registration deadline — a shot at one of 114 great bonuses.

Pre-registration for Profitable Idealism ends tomorrow, Tuesday 2/22, at 11:59pm Pacific time. After that time, the price of registration goes up by $200 (which is still actually a really good deal), so if you want in, now’s the time!

Check out Profitable Idealism today. Learn how to make more money, and change the world.

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I Do: Tips for Co-blogging with Your Spouse

This guest post is by Mr. Broke Professional: the husband in the husband/wife team behind Brokeprofessionals.com

“I think you need to rewrite that last paragraph,” she said. “And this time, maybe try to be just a little more concise.”

She said it gently. Yet the words stung. She could tell I was a little hurt, so she tried to smooth it over.

“I really like this blog post. I think it is going to be well received by our readers.” I patiently waited for the “but.” And after a moment or two it came.

“But … the only thing is (and please don’t be upset) maybe you should also work a little more on the title before hitting the Publish button.”

This was a new criticism and I did not expect it. Again it hurt. I do not particularly like being edited, by anyone. “Anything else?” I asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Yeah, when you’re done with that can you help me set the table? Dinner is almost ready.”

So goes life when you blog as a husband/wife team.

Note that I’ll use the term “spouse” in this post, but this word is being used to mean any type of relationship.

Advantages of blogging as a husband/wife team

There’s a lot to be said for blogging in partnership with your spouse.

Time

The one resource all bloggers can agree they need more of is time. Unfortunately it’s also the most finite of resources. Partnering up with at least one other co-blogger is great because you can, in theory, accomplish twice the amount of work. For example, while one of you is working on the creative portion of your blog, your co-blogger can work on blog promotion.

When you co-blog with your spouse, as I do, it’s even easier to communicate. You’re probably always together anyway, so even dinner can become an impromptu brainstorming session.

Not feeling guilty about the blogging “time suck”

Another advantage of co-blogging with your spouse is that it’s a great way to spend a lot of time on your blogging hobby without feeling like you are alienating your family. I feared in the beginning that my wife would start to resent my blog, but instead I turned her into a blogging co-conspirator.

Honest feedback and criticism

My wife and I can be (sometimes brutally) honest with our criticisms with one another because we have been together for years. We are in sync and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I understand that she finds the creative process more engaging than blog promotion, so I try to pull more weight with promotion and online networking.

Much like real life, as bloggers your spouse and you will tend to form a complete unit, whereby you can as a team rise well above the level of skill and/or success that you could ever hope to achieve individually.

Improving your blog’s voice and perspective

Our blog has brought us closer together and we can sometimes incorporate our marital dynamic subtly into our blog. We have blog “debates” or use in-jokes that are, hopefully endearing to our audience and different from what they generally read in most other personal finance blogs.

You can leverage your relationship to maybe create a more unique and valuable experience for your audience.

Motivational benefits

Like an exercise program, a book club, or a diet, it can be very motivational to have a blogging partner—someone who can push you, and keep you inspired and working towards the ultimate goals of your blog. It’s also helpful if that person is someone you do not want to let down.

There are nights when I don’t want to follow our posting schedule, but then I think about how we’re a team. Also, having someone else around to pull half the weight means that I have not yet come close to burnout, despite the fact that we both have demanding day jobs and keep a daily posting schedule.

Challenges of blogging as a husband/wife team

Like any partnership, blogging with your spouse has its challenges.

Creative control issues

You need look no further than examples of various movie star couples that have broken up after working together on a movie project than to know that working with your spouse is not without its potential traps.

For some, the whole purpose of starting a blog may be to escape a job or family, or to simply have something all their own. Once you partner up with a co-blogger, whether the co-blogger is a friend, a stranger, or your spouse, you will no longer possess 100% creative control over the blog.

For example, once I wrote a post that was, in hindsight, really quite weak. It was weak because it was a subject only I really cared about, and it was outside the scope of our niche. My wife pointed this out, and I have to admit I begrudged it for a little bit, even though I knew deep down she was right. The opposite scenario has occurred as well. This creative collaboration can benefit the blog, but it’s still a challenge for the individuals involved.

The stronger personality may take over

This is the Fight Club Rule in effect. Essentially, and as with the rest of your marriage (or in any relationship, really), the stronger party may hijack creative control, and thus alter the intended direction of your blog.

This is not an issue that affects us personally, but we definitely have some friends in couples who could not, in our opinion, function as a 50/50 blogging team. This is particularly devastating if the less visionary or talented partner is the one who is more desirous of control.

Fear of honest criticism

I realize I previously listed open communication and honesty as a likely result of blogging with your spouse, but I can also imagine scenarios where even married couples are too nice to be honest about whether material is right for their blog or not—and the kind of friction that might result.

Jealousy

There have been times when I’ve been jealous of one of my wife’s posts going viral or getting more comments—particularly if my posts have been in a prolonged slump. It is only normal to feel a twinge of envy under such a scenario, and it is one of the possible occupational hazards of working with any partner on a blog.

The blog becomes consuming

I fear I have the blogging addiction much worse than my wife does. I am sure there are times when she wishes we could just relax without worrying about furthering the blog. The solution, of course, is to set some boundaries. That said, if you figure out how to properly establish such boundaries, please let me know, so I can try to establish some as well! My wife would be forever indebted to you, I’m sure.

Are two heads better than one?

The important thing, of course, is to have fun and to allow the co-blogging experience to bring you together as a couple. The major thing to avoid is burnout induced from working together. If you ever need a reminder of what not to do, turn to this post or, if you’re desperate, watch the movie “The Getaway” starring Alec Baldwin and his ex-wife, Kim Basinger.

If you establish the right boundaries and you both find a passion for blogging, then your co-blogging experience can be both beneficial to your readers and to your marriage.

Have you ever co-blogged? What was your experience like? If you haven’t co-blogged with a spouse, would you consider doing so? I look forward to reading your responses.

Join our husband/wife blogging team as we discuss life for the overeducated and underpaid, along with what we have learned about blogging thus far, over at Brokeprofessionals.com.

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Several Reasons To Avoid Writing Free Samples

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like a crow that’s obsessed with picking up anything shiny when it comes to the free samples that people ask us content writers to provide to get the work that pays our bills. It’s hard to discern between the people who will rip you off and take the sample and never return any of your subsequent emails, but I’ve found there are certain criteria that can be helpful when trying to separate the honest clients who just want to get a feel for your writing and the shysters who are out to take you for a ride.

First of all you need to be sure that you’ve got adequate contact information. It used to be an e-mail address was good enough so that you could start a business relationship but now you need to get some further point of contact like a telephone number, a snail mail address or even some kind of social media to look at like a Twitter or a Facebook page. The reasons for needing this much contact information are simple. It’s important that you can rest assured that you are dealing with a reputable company and on the Internet that means you’ll need to have several different points of contact.

Even then you want to be extremely careful when people start asking for free samples of your writing and one of the best ways to get around it is to have a comprehensive list of your past work on a website. Several times I’ve been asked to write samples and pointed perspective clients to my website where I’ve stored information away that highlights my experience and provides URLs and samples to my previous work.

One of the rules that I like to use is the fact that if you’ve been around for a while in the writing game and have a portfolio of your work there’s really no reason to provide anything for free. If you’re a proven writer with a background you should get paid for what you do even if you make a promise to rewrite according to your client’s specifications for free so you can get on the same page.

There are several other things that you want to look out for when you’re writing for a living on the Internet and they include the promises that go along with free samples. Usually I found that companies who promise you a lot of work without being clear about payment methods can be the ones that you need to watch out for in the end. Sometimes the people who promise you the world aren’t necessarily dishonest but they’ve just oversold the amount of work that they think they’ll be able to get.

Finally, I just like to remember that there’s never a contract with any freelance writing that I do on the Internet so there’s never any reason not to pay me for my time and effort because clients can let me go just as quickly as they hire me if they don’t find my writing is up to the standards they set. For me there’s no reason to give out any kind of free samples.

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