Bush Mackel

In Part 2 of Cut the Fat, I said that the next installment would deal with Action Plans.

But now after taking a bit of time away from my blog, I don’t feel that a section about Action Plans should necessarily be in the Cut the Fat series.

So instead of that, we’re going to skip ahead for now to what you’re probably more interested in, Shaping Up Your Blogging!

Where You Could Use a Shape Up
If you remember back from Cut the Fat (Part 1), I talked a lot about how once I stopped doing all the things I didn’t look forward to I (shockingly) became a lot happier. Blogging like anything else, is the same sort of beast. I mean think about it. In a given week, list all the stuff you do that’s a part of your blogging efforts. Here are some examples :

• Writing random posts.
• Writing topical posts.
• Writing sponsored posts.
• Updating your sitemap.
• Checking your analytical stats.
• Improving your technorati stats.
• Improving your Alexa and Page rank.
• Getting sponsors.

The list goes on and on. Now take those things and figure out what you like and what you don’t. Now the trick to this cutting the fat thing is eliminating what we don’t like without negatively effecting our goals. Make sense? Let’s take the general topic of posting for example.

• Somewhere along the way you started caring more about your bottom line every month and so you’re writing way too many sponsored posts.
• You’re writing about things in your blog’s so called niche, but stuff that you personally can’t and don’t want to write about everyday.

And here’s the problem :

• If you stop writing your sponsored posts, you WILL HURT your bottom line.
• If you stop writing about things in your blog’s niche, your loyal readers who have been drawn to the topic you write about will stop coming. And of course, there’s nothing worse for a blogger than talking to her/himself.

So What’s a Desperate Blogger To Do?
Sticking with the “posting problem”, you should first realize that if you’re not enjoying it, you either have problems now or will surely face problems later. And you’ll know the problems when you can’t think of anything to write, you don’t want to write, or your posts become of such low quality that you can’t stand to even publish them. But have no fear, there are solutions to these problems, you just have to bold enough to take them…

• Sponsored posts – If you can’t stand writing sponsored posts, DON’T WRITE THEM. There are other ways to monetize your blog including direct advertising. Sure it may take a little extra work to get your blog to where it is attractive enough for others to want to buy advertising on it, but it’s worth it if it will stop you from hating to write.
• Writing posts you don’t care about – This is an easy one too. Can you guess the answer? DON’T WRITE THEM. If the problem is that you have found out that you’re not as passionate about your blog’s topic as you used to, pick a new one. Better to write about something you love, than something you don’t. And you’d probably be surprised at how many of your readers will stick around once you’ve made the switch. I mean hey, no matter how many stick around, it’s better than starting from scratch right?