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Running a successful blog takes a lot of effort. There are many things that go into blogging that most people don’t take into account, when they attempt to start a blog.

One of the surest ways to fail at blogging for a living is to waste your time online. Your time is valuable, it is your livelihood. Each second wasted can’t be returned to you, treat your time like gold and you will become a

golden blogger, just like Darren Rowse, John Chow, or Shoemoney.

Here are the 7 time traps that will make your blog fail…

Time Trap #1: Trying to hard to monetize your blog. It is true, that you do need to have a revenue source for your blog, but you shouldn’t obsess over this.

Many bloggers get it in their head that if they aren’t making any money it’s because their advertiser isn’t working out, so they try another, and another..and so on..

My tip is to put up some bidvertiser ads, maybe a few performancing ads, and leave it at that.

Notice I don’t mention adsense, it’s because they’re not a good program to go with until you’re bringing in a lot of traffic daily, if you have even a little click fraud they’re more likely to shut you down if you’re a small site. I am still banned because some idiot clicked on my links 97 times in a single day.

I bet if someone did that over at JohnChow’s site, or shoemoney’s they wouldn’t even slap his hand. Heck they probably wouldn’t even notice.

Time Trap #2: Obsessing over your design. Web Designers sometimes tend to be perfectionists, I know I fall into this category quite often. It doesn’t matter how pretty your blog is, if people aren’t reading it.

I’ll say that again for emphasis:

“IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW PRETTY YOUR BLOG IS, IF PEOPLE AREN’T READING IT.”

Content is king, not design. I’ve seen some ugly ass blogs that earn more than most people see in 3 months. When you have 500-1000 posts and are making the big bucks, then you might decide to tinkle with your design, or theme.

Heck by that time you might as well go ahead and hire someone to create you a professional and unique blog theme.

Time Trap #3: Twitter. Nuff said? Twitter has become this huge distraction. Twitter is great and wonderful, in fact I absolutely LOVE Twitter, but there is a time and a place. Set aside a certain amount of time per day or week to focus on twitter, and leave it at that.

With that said, I would definitely use the pingpress.fm wordpress widget in conjunction with ping.fm to simultaneously post to all your microblogging sites every time you update your blog. This will drastically improve your blog rankings and traffic.

Oh and speaking of twitter, why don’t you go and follow me already?

Time Trap #4: Not planning = Planning to fail. To be successful, you need to have a plan of action. The internet is the biggest time waster on the planet, and it’s addicting. It’s very easy to start reading an article, and follow link after link to related article, till 5 hours have passed and you haven’t written one blog post.

Trust me – this is a trap that I fall into all the time myself. It is one that can get the very best of us. Having a plan of what you’re need to get done, and when you can just surf without a plan will in the end help you stay focused.

The truth is, if you can’t post at least 5 blog updates to your blog per week, then you might as well stop trying to do it for a living. It will never happen for you. I’m sorry to say, but why waste  3 years trying and come out broke and pennyless. Sometimes even 5 blog posts per week isn’t going to ensure your total success, but it is a start. If you can do 1-2 per day then you’re awesome, and should be worshipped by all the wannabe’s.

Time Trap #5: Too many household distractions. Unless your blog is about tv, or tv related topics, or you’re live blogging about some show you’re watching, it’s probably not a very good idea to watch tv while working online. It’s also a good time, if you’re a professional to find a place that you can go and work, a place that isn’t full of distractions. Of course for mom’s, I know that’s hard but this is about doing your best. If you can’t get rid of all distractions work on getting rid of the biggest ones, and you should do quite well.

Time Trap #6: Obsessed and ignoring those who matter most. I have to admit, I’m obsessed with blogging and social media, it’s hard not to become addicted. Sometimes being obsessed makes us forget those that mean the most to us.

As bloggers we need to take time out each day for those we love, or they will resent your blogging. I know this from personal experience. This is a time waster because when people are angry at you for blogging it affects your performance. It also affects your spirit and attitude, which I believe affects your ability to manifest success.

Keep your house in order, when blogging. Bring your family into the conversation. Set time tables where you’re not to be disturbed, and other times where you’re not to touch the computer, reaching a balance in your online and offline lives is pertinent to true success.

Time Trap #7: Not Using the best tools available. As a blogger there are many tools available to us. It seems like each day there are more and more. My advice is to find the one’s that work best for your daily activities, and use them. I swear by feed readers. I don’t have to patience to scan blog posts for ideas unless I’m reading it in a feed reader.

My favorite new tool is a twitter tool called monitter, and I also enjoy ping.fm.

Monitter is a great tool that lets you track live updates on keywords that matter to you. It’s a great way to get new ideas on blog posts. There are many blog tools and research tools for bloggers, that it’s impossible to name them all, and I’d be wasting my time trying.

Mashable.com is a good blog tool starting point, and perhaps I will write another post listing the best blog tools, let me know if you’re interested in that topic, and I’ll definitely post about it.

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