10 Most Common Time Wasting Habits of Bloggers
June 26th, 2007I find myself blogging lesser and wasting more time engaged in several time wasting habits that take away my blogging time. I analyzed my time spent and found some common time wasters for bloggers that needed blogging time management.
Photo by David
1. Unsubscribe feeds – This is my major time waster. Last time I checked, I was reading over 200 feeds and my Google Reader would always show 100+ items no matter how much I followed my powerful ways to use Google Reader. I started unsubscribing from feeds and have brought the number down to under 100 feeds. I removed feeds which overwhelmed my reader by the large number of daily posts and which shared common news. I shifted many feeds to live bookmarks and iGoogle. Now I find my feeds more manageable and get the right content to blog about.
2. Leave the Template Alone – Would a link color of #0033cc look better, or maybe #0066cc would seem more blended. Maybe the sidebar could be wider, or footer look better in gray. Making your blog look better and SEO is a never ending process, so I convinced myself to not waste blogging time daily. Instead I decided to set aside a particular time slot in the weekend.
3. Test Ads Longer - Constant tweaking ad unit size, colors and A/B testing can help you make more money by optimizing your ad placement. Falling CTR and EPC makes us change the ad formats pretty quickly. At least check the revenue generated by a particular placement for a week and then tweak over the weekend.
4. Beyond Statistics - How many people are on your site right now? Is it really necessary to check stats every minute and see which site referred the last visitor. Now I check the traffic stats only once a day. Not only does it help get a broad idea of your daily traffic, but see how your SEO is working.
5. Turn IM Offline – I do not need to constantly see my online friends. Get a dedicated blogging time period by avoiding distractions. Switch off all instant messengers and concentrate on your blogging. Stay visible online only when checking email to catch the offline messages. Stay connected only when needed.
6. Email twice a day - Do I really want to reply to that email as soon as it hits the inbox? I am not sitting on a customer support 4 hour reply deadline. I have decided to check my email twice a day, spend more time blogging. No procrastination, reply the email instantly and prevent pile up in the “to reply” folder.
7. Forget Akismet Spam Comments – Far too much time is wasted searching for rare ‘not-spam’ comments among thousands of daily spam comments effectively blocked by Akismet. If the comment is so important, the comment poster usually keeps track and contacts you, then you can go searching the queue.
8. Turn Off Adsense Notifier – this is a cool firefox plugin which sits in the Firefox status bar and refreshes the adsense stats every 15 minutes. While a good revenue start boosts your morale, a weak earning day slows you down. So I turn it off and now check revenue earned once a day only. It gives more peace to your mind and helps to concentrate on blogging. Turn off all other real time revenue reporting tools.
9. Reduce Keyword Alerts – It is very easy to set up alerts notifying you of breaking news and who is blogging about your keywords. But overtime as these alerts grow in number, a lot of time is wasted in checking all of them. Delete alerts which are no longer relevant to your blogging interest.
10. Stop Thinking. Start blogging – Bring your blogging ideas on paper or e-text. It is surprising how fast the great idea evaporates from your memory, and you spend precious time worried wondering what it was. Start collecting your thoughts and ideas on a notepad. Stop merely thinking and get the action done. Prepare draft posts and future posts to keep your blog running…
Are you stuck with these top time wasters for bloggers? What wastes your time and how do you get out of the blogging time wasting trap. Share it.
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Good one.
Thanks for sharing.
Good list. I would add to turn off your cellphone, which is from my list of 10 ways to avoid interruptions.
Oh lordy this is so true.
Darn it! There goes one of my posts for this week…You’ve not been reading my “To Do” list have you?
Seriously, though – great post. It pretty much sums up my thoughts on all of the factors which get in the way. The email tip is one that I adopted last week and it’s amazing how much more productive I’ve been.
Number 2, 6 and 8 is in my case
Hmm..
Very good tips.. and I will definitely think on blog template time wasting. As I recently switched from blogger to wordpress my most of the time is consumed by theme design. But will eventually come up with stable theme, which is also important for the popularity.
BTW I observed your template broken by this post.
both your right side bars are below the post at right side!
Superb! Mailing is something, as you rightly pointed out, hits me now if I am a Customer Care? I keep checking mails almost (i dont know how many times!!!!) whole day….
Thats made a valuable read!
Excellent list and all so true. Nice work PC.
Nice post there. Would be interesting if you can list 10 things which can give you ideas about what to blog about on personal blogs.
Specially those which don’t have a specific theme or subject.
Ahhh….guilty as charged!!
Good post!
Tips 1, 2, 6, and 10 all apply to me! I’ve just started two new blogs, so I really should be spending time writing. Instead I’ve wasted HOURS trying out different blog templates and widgets. This weekend I promised myself that I would devote at least an hour a day writing instead of fiddling with settings. I am also making better use of the Draft function. If I have two or three days’ worth of posts rolling around in my head, it is better to go ahead and write them today so I can be ahead of the game.
You can greatly reduce the time to scan akismet spam comments to around 10 minutes / week or less with this Firefox extension:
http://internetducttape.com/tools/wordpress/akismet-auntie-spam/
I don’t think checking statcounter frequently is a bad thing. It can help drive traffic by optimizing towards hot terms, etc. For example I saw how many people were googling David Beckham’s first goal and since I had the video on my personal site Roystory.com I got a ton of traffic by optimizing further towards that term. So statcounter for fun = bad, to drive decisions = good!
I’m found guilty of the above :(
so good
100 Rss feeds, OMG :O
you must have hard time reading that much
i have single rss feed and that too of mininova.org
:)
this subject is very important for us . thank for subject. please write back soon
lol. Well said.. email and stats checking everyday is such a time waster.
nice list :)
this “Stop Thinking. Start blogging –” is especially good. I would add one more – built on that one -
Stop reading. Start blogging – we spend so much time reading that .. you know live is short :)