I was chatting with an acquaintance recently and she commented that she thought it was cool how I blog for a living, but she could never do it. I asked why she felt that way and she said she had tried working from home in the past, and wasn’t able to stay on task like she could from an office building. She said once she was at home, she was just in a relaxed/cozy mode and couldn’t’ find the effort to work. I thought it was a great point, working from home can be tough for many. It does require you to find the ability to be in ‘work mode’ while still at home. A lot of people seem to envy being a full-time blogger. I do love what I do, but I don’t think it’s for everyone. I thought I would share what I think are some of the requirements for being a full-time blogger.
You have to have the self-discipline to work from home and be productive. This is going to be harder for people who have young children at home. I don’t have kids yet myself, so I have a lot of respect or people who manage to blog full time while also parenting full time. I’ve heard some say that having a spouse at home can make it a lot harder for them to get work done when their partner has the day off. My boyfriend works from home as well, so we can both be in work mode at home without disrupting each other’s workflow too much.
You have to be a decent writer, of course! I don’t have a degree in English or anything, but spelling and grammar certainly count. Spellcheck and grammar check programs can be a big help.
Photography skills or willingness to learn. People seem to think of blogging as being all about words, yet human brains are primarily visual. A blog with excellent writing but terrible photos isn’t likely to do well in the modern social media world online. I am not a great photographer, but I am constantly trying to improve my photography skills because it is key!
You have to be able to find your social outlet outside of work. Another reason why working from home is hard for some people, is the lack of coworkers. I network with other bloggers in Facebook groups but it isn’t the same as having a coworker to share your weekend stories with every Monday. For really social people, it may feel lonely to work from home.
Financial self-discipline and a willingness to adapt to an irregular income is also necessary. Blogging isn’t going to earn you exactly the same amount every single month. We have to budget carefully and we try to stay ahead of finances, paying bills in advance so that money we get this month is paying next months’ bills, and so on. This way we aren’t alway sweating whether or not that sponsored post payment will come through on Monday or if it may not arrive until Thursday and so on. Last year, my lowest income month was about 1/3 of what I earned in my best income month of the year. I have to be able to have the self-restraint to not spend the money on those ‘extra’ months to make sure we are secure for the not-so-hot months.
Willingness to adapt to social media and FTC changes. This is a tough one for me personally. I am a creature of habit, and social media is always changing. I have to be willing to adapt how I an promoting on social media and various websites though. If a social media company like Facebook changes their promotional policies, I may have to adapt how I share posts in order to stay compliant with their policies. I also have to watch the FTC’s guidelines for bloggers, and Google webmaster guidelines to keep in compliance with them.
Willingness to share your life, thoughts, feelings with strangers. It’s somewhat of an odd thing to share personal details of your life with people you don’t know. People who want a lot of privacy in their personal lives are probably not cut out for blogging.
You have to be willing to barter or negotiate if you work with brands. I’ve never been one to enjoy negotiating so it’s sometimes hard for me to debate the details of a project and the rate I’ll be paid with a brand. However, it’s really important to have this skill. I get emailed every day by brand who want me to promote their product or website for no pay, without receiving a product, etc. Bloggers have to be willing to negotiate, or at least willing to say “No, I’m not interested because that isn’t a good deal for me.” or you will end up spending all of your time working for peanuts.
You need some basic technical knowledge, or you need to be willing to hire someone who does. Installing a layout, putting up ads, editing your sidebar, changing servers, all of these things require some tech knowledge.
Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
I admire what you do. Several years ago I aspired to be a blogger. I was starting out learning while I still had a full time job. It was hard but I tried. Circumstances changed and I had to stop and never started back. I understand all you were talking about on the technical side. That is hard too if you don’t understand web development. Classes are a necessity.
I can understand that, for sure. I started this blog while I was in college but not working, and was just intending it to be a hobby, nothing more. Honestly, when I started I had no clue it could be anything more than a hobby. I got lucky that I had the time to invest in it as a hobby until it grew into something that could help pay a small bill or two, where I could more easily justify giving it even more of my time. I stopped working on an Etsy shop I had to give myself more time for the blog and little things like that, so that I could keep growing my blog. Many people don’t seem to get how time-consuming it really is. I sometimes think people think that blogging is just typing out posts, so they assume it can be done in an hour per day or something. There is so much more ‘behind the scenes’ stuff that is far more time consuming than just typing out posts. I’m sure you get that, given how you weren’t able to find time for it with a full time job. I completely understand how it would be extremely difficult to juggle both!
I admire what you do. Several years ago I aspired to be a blogger. I was starting out learning while I still had a full time job. It was hard but I tried. Circumstances changed and I had to stop and never started back. I understand all you were talking about on the technical side. That is hard too if you don’t understand web development. Classes are a necessity.