The goal of most bloggers, especially in the “make money online” niche, is to attract visitors to their blog. Once they are able to attract large amounts of visitors to their blog, they are virtually guaranteed to make money with proper ad placement. The fact of the matter is, you won’t make much money off of your blog until you are able to consistently draw in large amounts of traffic. Consistently drawing in large amounts of traffic is usually a byproduct of things like: a quality website design, good promotion, longevity in the blogging industry, and most importantly, quality content. I’ll admit that I sometimes catch myself reading other blogs for way longer than I would’ve liked. I could spend all day reading motivating articles from Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog, but nothing would get accomplished on AndrewPavelski.com. If you are serious about blogging, you need to find a balance between the promotion and creation of your own website, and not spend all your time reading other blogs.

Other blogs want to get you hooked

You need to know where to draw the line and put the priority of your own blog. It is definitely important to read other blogs and be active in the communities of other blogs, but don’t overdo it. Do an experiment: clock your time spent on other blogs (or even other websites that you randomly browse) in relation to the work you spend on your own blog. Unless you are great at time managing or already have a successful blog, chances are good that you spend quite a bit of time reading other bloggers blog posts when you know you really should be working on your own! To avoid getting hooked on other blogs, I’ve included some great tips to help keep you focused.

5 tips to help you stay productive:

• Stick to a disciplined blogging schedule — I think that it is essential to have a good blogging schedule. If you are serious about blogging or want to become a professional blogger, you’ve got to learn how to manage your time. I try to generate content for my blog on a daily basis, but things don’t always work out. I feel that it is important to post new, relevant content on your blog. I’ve found that the moment that I procrastinate or don’t make time to write a blog article each day, my entire blogging schedule gets thrown off.

• Set a specific block of time — Try blocking out an hour specifically for writing a new blog post for your blog from say 5:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. and then another hour from 5:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. to promote your blog. Maybe you want to take out another hour for just the act of reading other blogs and keeping yourself updated with the latest blogospheric knowledge. When your time is up for a specific purpose such as promotion, move on and walk away from your computer, shut that bad boy down and go do something else with your life!

• Read via RSS feed — If your not into commenting on other blogs or know you won’t have time to comment, don’t even waste time by going to the website, read via RSS reader. Why read via RSS? The RSS reader has all of your subscribed websites loaded and you can click between a huge number of websites in a short period of time without waiting for each site to load. By the way, if you haven’t yet subscribed to my RSS feed, you owe it to yourself to do so now!

• Remind yourself to stay focused — Do whatever it takes to keep yourself focused on your intended online purpose; be self-aware of how you are currently burning away your time. Do whatever it takes to stay focused; if it takes putting a timer or alarm clock next to your computer to keep you focused, then do it.

• Have a game-plan — Do you feel like a rocket taking off without knowing a final destination? Having a game plan is a must if you hope to be productive and get things done. Staying organized and having a good game plan is what separates the probloggers from the n00bloggers. It may help to write up a checklist of things you are gong to do online. Go right down the checklist line until all of your items are complete; this strategy helps me out.

How I stay organized with reading and commenting on other blogs

I have all the blogs that I think are worth reading in a “blogs I read” folder within my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks. I right-click on the folder and open all of the blogs in separate tabs in one page of the browser. I have them organized from fastest to slowest loading. I begin looking over the first site to see if there’s a new article that I’m interested in. If an article happens to catch my attention, I read it over and will definitely leave a comment. I go through each bookmarked blog in order and proceed to leave comments in articles that I enjoyed. I try to limit my time spent on other blog sites because their articles usually contain “links” to other articles that are recommended reading. Once I’ve commented on my last blog, my time that I’ve allotted for “other blogs” is usually up. I also try to participate in forums and drop Entrecards. If you are interested in dropping a massive number of Entrecards in the shortest possible time period, check out this article.

How I write articles quickly

I never make an effort to rush my blog articles; I write what comes to mind and for however it takes to write the article. Some days I just don’t have enough time in my schedule to write a long blogging entry like: “Blogging: Short-Term Investment Vs. Long-Term Investment Returns.” This article was definitely worth 2 days of generating blog content, it took more than 2 hours to write. While I’m writing, I always try to stay focused. Check out the article: “Blogging Productivity: Writing Concentrated Articles” to read more about my writing strategy and to learn how to increase your writing efficiency.

Remember to avoid addiction

Recognize when you are getting addicted to reading a certain blog. Maybe you are a frequent reader of John Chow and just cannot contain yourself from scrolling through the archives. Reading addicting blogs will bring you short-term satisfaction, but chances are good that you won’t even remember 1/2 the articles that you’ve scrolled through on that blog if I were to ask you what you read the following week! The problem is, the addicting blog has such good content or catchy marketing that prompts you to keep reading even when you know that you should have walked away from your computer awhile ago! Keep the time spent reading other blogs in moderation — except AndrewPavelski.com, of course ;) ! You don’t want to “read” your life away without getting any work done on your own site. Start increasing your productivity and making your blog your top priority!

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