A Day in the Life of a Part-time Blogger

I have been spending most of December 2020 and January 2021 blogging. If you’re new to my blog, my full-time gig is selling online and I consider blogging as my part-time gig even though I don’t earn anything yet from this blog. With or without the earnings, I do spend some of my time taking care of this blog and I want to share with you guys how my usual day goes so you can have an idea of what to expect in case you decide to become a part-time blogger too.

Photo by Unsplash on Unsplash

Why just Blog Part-time and not Full-time?

As I have mentioned earlier, my full-time gig is online selling. I sell preloved clothes, bags, accessories, and other sellable items on Carousell, eBay Philippines, Grailed, and Instagram. It’s a time-consuming gig and prior to the slowdown of sales turnover due to the pandemic, I barely had time to do anything else.

However, because of the pandemic and the lockdown policy implemented in our country, I found myself with a lot of time in my hands which I opted to use to grow this blog.

Another reason why I think I will only be a part-time blogger (at least for the time being) is that I really enjoy my online selling gig especially thrifting. You might have read this already in my previous blog posts, but for me, this business feels like a big scavenger hunt game. And I’m having a lot of fun thrifting and buying tons of clothes (to sell – well, mostly LOL!).

Even if my blogging income exceeds my online selling income (I hope!!!), I really believe that I will still go out there and thrift.

You are probably in the same boat as I am that’s why you found this post on Google.

Perhaps you have full-time employment or maybe you’re a full-time mom/dad or student. And maybe you’re wondering if you can also be a part-time blogger too while you’re figuring out if this is something that you’d like to do for some time.

Personally, I don’t know if being a professional blogger is what I want, but I also enjoy blogging. But for the time being, I have decided to do this on the side.

Who knows, maybe in the future, blogging will be my full-time gig and online selling will be my side-hustle (again!).

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

How I Spend my Day and What are my Blogging Tasks

If you’re wondering how I keep up with my online selling tasks and blogging tasks (and other important things in my life), here’s a basic rundown about how my day usually goes as a part-time blogger.

7 AM – 9 AM

I try my best to wake up early in the morning, although, to be honest, I don’t get to do that very often. However, on an ideal day, I usually wake up as early as 6 AM or 7 AM. I spend my first two hours doing the following:

• Wake myself up LOL!!!
• Stare at a blank wall and decide if I’m going back to bed or if I’m going downstairs to do stuff (True!!!)
• Take shower
• Drink coffee
• Cook and eat breakfast
• Clean the first floor of my apartment where the living room and kitchen is located

While doing all the stuff I mentioned above, I’m also using this time to decide what to write about. I have a long list of topics that I’m interested in and in the morning, I usually make a mental outline of how I’m going to write the article while doing my early routines.

9 AM – 12 NN

I spend three hours writing an article. I don’t want to rush myself in writing an article that’s why I allocate three hours to write. I’m a slow writer, I know. And writing is not one of my best skills, but, I’m working towards improving this skill that’s why I’d like to take my sweet time in doing so.

Within these three hours, I also do keyword research using:

• Google Search
• Google Trends
• Ubersuggest

I don’t use any paid software or websites (yet) to do keyword research. As much as I could, since this blog is not earning anyway, I don’t want to spend money on it yet. Once this blog starts earning money, then I could probably invest in more sophisticated tools and software.

I also use this time to find relevant images that will go along with my article using Unsplash.

 

12 NN – 2 PM

I have a long lunch break LOL! This is one of the perks that I enjoy the most as a self-employed person. I can freely decide on how to use my time. I use this time to cook lunch, eat, and wash the dishes.

Sometimes, I get to finish before 2 PM. Once I’m done, I do some stretching and I go back to my blogging tasks.

2 PM – 3 PM

I will review the article that I have written in the morning and I will publish it as soon as I’m ok with it. This is something that I know I need to improve on because more often than not, I see a lot of errors in my published articles.

I also use this time to create graphics to market my blog post. I use Canva to do this. I only use the free version of Canva, but hopefully, once this blog starts earning, I can use the paid version so I can have more options when it comes to graphics. This is one of the blogging tasks that I enjoy the most.

Using Canva, I create graphics for the following social media websites:

• Pinterest: As of now, I’m a member of 12 groups and just a couple of weeks ago, I started doing one pin per group to avoid looking spammy in the eyes of Pinterest. This is something that I know I need to improve on because my Pinterest Pins look very basic.

Since I have 12 groups on Pinterest, I create 12 Pinterest Pins for every single blog post. This will further increase once I start applying for more Pinterest groups.

• Facebook Page and Tumblr: I don’t do anything extra for Facebook Page and Tumblr, I just use one of my Pinterest Pins to save me some time.

• Instagram: I create one Instagram post per article. I use the same graphics for my Instagram stories too. I do create three quote IG posts for every three IG graphics posts that I create to spice up my Instagram account.

• Twitter: I also don’t do anything extra for Twitter, I just use my Instagram graphics to save me some time.

To be honest, I don’t gain much traffic from Social Media, and almost all of my traffic comes from Google so I still have to decide if I will continue spending time creating stuff for these social media websites.

As soon as I finish all the graphics that I intend to make then I post them on social media websites and I call it a day (at least for my blogging tasks).

While doing all those blogging tasks, I usually get messages from the online selling websites that I have accounts with and I try my best to reply to my customers immediately. Most of the time, I put on hold whatever blogging task I was doing and I respond to my customers.

This is also one of the reasons why it takes me some time to finish my blogging tasks. As much as I could, I don’t like making prospective customers wait.

3 PM – 9 PM

Around this time, I usually do my other online selling tasks or I watch Netflix, regular TV programs, Youtube, etc. I also prepare and eat dinner before I hit the sack.

9 PM – 12 MN

I try my best to sleep as early as 9 PM. However, more often than not, I sleep really late which is mainly the reason why I’m such a sleepyhead in the morning. I spend my remaining waking hours playing games on my mobile phone, chatting with friends, reading blogs, Twitter stuff, etc.

And then I just repeat it all over again. Please do note that this barebone schedule only applies to days that I dedicated to blogging. There are certain days in the week when I don’t do any blogging tasks at all because I’m preoccupied with my online selling tasks.

Also, I try not to do any work-related stuff on weekends to keep my sanity intact LOL! Although, if there’s nothing else to do, I will usually spend my time writing an article.

 

What to Do if You Have Less Time for Blogging

On days I dedicate to blogging, I spend a total of four hours writing and market my blog post. This excludes my morning prep time of course which I still do regardless if I blog or not.

I know that not everyone has that much time in their day. It just so happens that my full-time responsibility provides a more flexible schedule to work with.

If you have less time in your hands and if you really want to grow a blog too for whatever reasons you have, I highly suggest that you do the following:

Focus on SEO-Optimized Valuable Content

If you just have an hour or two to work on your blog then I highly suggest that you focus on one thing. Focus on creating SEO-optimized and valuable content for your target audience.

Content is and will always be KING!

There’s no blog if there’s no content. As simple as that! (I think I said the same thing on my previous blogging blog post LOL!)

Blogs exist because they have content that people find some value in. If you have very limited time on your hands, writing content is the one and the only thing that you have to focus on, at least for the first few months of blogging. 

You will soon get the hang of it as months go by. And you will soon be a faster and better writer.

My Personal Experience: I’m sharing this not to brag but to use my experience as an example. This blog has been online for 1 year and 9 months (as of the time of writing) and it has been totally inactive for a period of 11 months (9 months in 2019-2020 and 2 months in 2020).

When I said totally inactive, I mean, totally inactive. Missing in Action (MIA)!

I didn’t even log in to update the plugins, theme, WordPress, etc for those months. I also didn’t post or promote anything either in any social media websites.

So, in essence, I have been working on this blog (part-time) for only 10 months and yet it’s already receiving more than 12K page views a month (Pageview count last December 2020).

However, in the last few months of 2020, I started writing SEO-Optimized content and my traffic started to grow. You can see my blogging reports here so you can see the history of its traffic growth.

Basically, in very simple terms, this is how you gain traffic through SEO:

• People search the internet (mostly Google) to find answers to their questions
• One of Google’s businesses is Google Search and they will put the most relevant and helpful blogs and websites in relation to what people are searching for on the first page of the search engine
• If your blog post is SEO-Optimized, helpful, not-spammy, and answers the questions of the people using Google search, then your blog/blog post will rank high in the search engine and people will find your blog
• The more SEO-optimize and valuable content you write, the more chances of getting found in Google Search
• And the traffic will flow 🙂

Monetization though is another story… 😉

 

Focus on SEO-Optimized Valuable Content

Oh, did I mention this already? Hahaha! I just want to give more emphasis to this.

Focus on SEO-Optimized Valuable Content

Ooops, I mentioned this again! Well, just to put MORE emphasis I guess! 🙂

Learn from Fellow Bloggers

When I started Thrifty Hustler, I was really confused with all the jargon that I read online. However, when I started following and reading articles from fellow bloggers, specifically about their blogging journey, then I get to understand the process more.

Bloggers wrote the blogging processes based on their experiences and they used layman’s terms which made it easier for starters to easily understand how it works.

Shoutout to Graham of Reverse the Crush for writing easy-to-follow instructions about blogging and for sharing his blogging journey on his blog.

Shoutout also to Chrissy of Eat Sleep Breath FI for being my inspiration for blog design and writing style. Her blog is one of the cleanest and yet, memorable designs that I have seen. I believe that blog design helps improve and adds value to the overall experience of readers.

I also read One Frugal Girl, Indeedably, and Four Pillar Freedom because they’re my inspiration when it comes to content and writing style.

There are bloggers out there for about every niche that we could think of and finding them is not that difficult. You can find them by searching the web or you can look for them on Twitter.

Read their blogs, observe their designs, list down the things that you like to adapt, take their best practices, and apply that to your blog.

Continuous Learning

Aside from learning from fellow bloggers, it would also help to watch Youtube tutorials about a variety of other blogging-related topics such as writing, SEO, traffic generation, etc.

 

Final Thoughts

If you are waiting for a sign before you start your blog, then maybe this is it. 😉

Sure, it’s not easy to grow a blog especially if you’re just going to do it part-time, but it’s also not an impossible feat to achieve.

Do you have additional tips to share? Feel free to comment down below. Thanks!