This post was actually going to form part of my tutorials that are going to be released soon but I thought it was a good message to put on here. I get asked a hell of a lot how I do it with a full time job and a young family. I also get a lot of people, even probloggers saying they don’t know how I do it at the rate I do.

Well this post will hopefully outline the way I approach this site, I know I have done a timeline of my typical day, but everyone is completely different and there days are never the same. So hopefully this breakdown will help you produce more in your day, it’s a system that I call SAPAS;

  • Site

First things first you have to sort your site out and that means produce your content. Ideally it’s good to have a few ideas in draft that you can just click edit and then finish. I have over 100 draft titles, most with some bullet points and some that are around half written. The rest are just idea titles, which I will be making available for people to use in the up-coming members page.

Now the most important thing of your day is to make sure your site is up to date with fresh content or you have scheduled your post ready to be published soon. If you only have time to do one thing during your day, make sure it is your site. If you don’t make sure your site is tip-top then all the promotion and other work that goes into daily running of your site is pointless, because people will be visiting a site that is starting to get stale.

Now the initial stage of working of the site everyday cost about 1-2hrs in time, that is purely writing content and working on the upcoming posts, tutorials and filming the videos etc.

  • Admin

The first bit of admin I do every day is to backup the site, priority get it done. While that is backing up I backup at the server too. Now I know the site has been backed up properly I then reply to all the comments on the site. To me this is massively important, if you don’t give your readers and visitors the time of day how do you expect them to actually give you a second thought, look after your readers.

Once I have replied to all the comments I then log in to my emails and make sure everything is dealt with, delete the spam, reply to any emails that need it, this can be from someone asking for help or advice or myself actually emailing people I know who I think I could help etc. Another thing that drives me mad is when so called social media guru’s never reply to emails, mental.

There can be other tiny bits of admin to do like upgrading your plugins if necessary or shifting through spam to see if there are legitimate comments in there and then mass deleting the rest.

This first bit of admin can take me anywhere between 30mins-2hrs

  • Promotion

OK you need to let people know who you are and where they can find you, essentially promotion boils down to all the work you do on the social networks twitter, facebook, digg, stumbleupon etc etc. The most important part of promotion for me is to comment on all the other sites, especially the ones that have a featured post about me or a guest post from me.

The reason I am active on others sites as I am on this one is because of the audience reach. I’ll admit the techniques I talk about aren’t for everyone and I’ll also admit in the same breath my work ethic isn’t for everyone, that said all of this makes me unique and because I am being honest to who I am I can maintain this right the way through my promotion so it’s easy to spot my work.

Promotion also incorporates email broadcasts to my mailing list  which I only send on average about twice a week and never hit them with anything other than things on this site, I just don’t go for all that affiliate ”Hey this is really great” kind of stuff, it just isn’t what I am about.

All of this can take anywhere from 30mins-2hrs +

  • Admin

Haven’t I said this already? Yeah I have but you have to keep on top of it, keep replying to your comments again, then check your emails. You absolutely need to reply to everything that needs replying to, seriously it’s something I stand ferociously by, no reply-no respect.

The next thing I do is to back everything up again both via the wordpress dashboard then on my server, I know twice a day may seem a bit of an over kill but it needs to be done, even if you are just starting out get into the habit of backing everything up regularly.

Once you have replied to all the comments and emails then you can quickly re-check your social media replies and updates, all of this second batch of admin usually takes me anywhere between 30mins – 1hr

One small step
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kevin Saff

  • Site

Back to site again and start working on some more content, working on adding a bit more to your products or services you are about to release and for me I use this time to actually learn how to write, being dyslexic I’m really working hard on my grammar and vocabulary. The best thing about coming back to the site work again is to work on guest posts and re-searching new ideas and furthering your knowledge so you can pass that on.

I’m a big believer in helping those around you to do what you are doing, as those people around you get stronger so do you and the relationship continues to grow as they get stronger it forces you to get even stronger to maintain that bond. In the military you always taught the rank below you how to do your job, if it hit the fan then could replace you. Now you don’t want anyone replacing you, but by helping everyone you can regardless of background then it forces you to learn more and keep striving to improve yourself so you can improve the quality of work for others.

Second time round all this can be anywhere from 30mins-2hrs+ depending on how long is left in the day.

If you add all the hours up for my system it comes to between 3hrs – 9hrs+, now yes I work an average 12hr day so it doesn’t leave much room for sleep if I do a lot of hours on this site, but I work a lot of this system into my work, you can see my typical day whilst at work here.

Below is a quick video which adds a bit of voice to this post;

What does everyone think?

Please Comment

Please Digg, Re-Tweet and StumbleUpon