What I Learned From the 30-Day Blogging Challenge

A little over a month ago (June 15, 2010 to be exact), I entered a blogging challenge issued by social marketing & technology expert Kimberly Castleberry.

The challenge was to publish an article – or whatever else your website produces (podcasts, video tutorials, etc) – each day for 30 days straight!

Writing a quality post everyday is difficult! Contrary to what you may think, writing these articles is NOT my full-time job. Before this challenge I was posting 2 or 3 articles a week. Therefore, I knew that in order to pull this off I would have to dedicate a lot more of my “spare” time to writing.

This challenge helped me to develop several character traits that will help me with KNS Financial, the Faithful With A Few blog, and life in general. Here are several things that I needed:

Discipline – I had to discipline myself everyday to set aside time to develop ideas for articles and to actually write them. Prior to this challenge, if I couldn’t think of a topic or didn’t feel up to writing, I would just put it off for another day.

However, in order to follow through with this challenge, I had to push through and finish anyway! I needed to discipline myself in order to meet my daily deadlines.

Focus – Whenever I write or research, I tend to do other things as well. So, while I’m writing an article or researching my next topic, I will be checking my email, playing a game on Facebook, checking my website for new comments, working on our budget, and commenting on other financial websites, ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

However, for this challenge I had to learn to focus on writing and filter out the other distractions – this is still a challenge for me, just ask my wife, but I have made huge strides in this area!

Budget My Time Wisely – Most of the things I listed under “focus” are necessary for me to do daily. However, I still need to carve out time to do each task, and give them the attention needed to be successful. During this challenge, I was able to find a lot of lost minutes in my days, and am working to make every minute count.

Plan Ahead – For many of the posts during this 30-day challenge, I wrote them a day or two in advance and just scheduled them for the appropriate day. I often found myself looking ahead at my schedule to make sure I would have time to write on various days.

Treat This Site as a Business – I love writing about perso0nal finance and all that goes with it (budgets, debt management, savings, investing, saving money, etc). I love providing people with information that can help change their lives; I also love writing about the bible and teaching what God says about everything (including finance)!

However, I have put a significant amount of time, energy, and money into this site. In order to justify all of this, I need to start monetizing my actions on this site, and with KNS Financial in general. That means publicizing my affiliate agreements, such as the KNS Financial Amazon.com store; marketing my services as a writer, and conducting more seminars and workshops.

Appreciate My Wife – Of course this is something that I vowed to do years ago, but I have even more reason to keep this at the front of my mind. With the time that I spend maintaining this site, writing articles, meeting with clients, networking with other writers/bloggers, preparing taxes, researching financial and economic topics, and preparing presentations, it can become very easy to neglect my wife.

Spending time with her and being a godly husband is more important than anything else that I do! Serving God and ministering to my wife must take priority over all else, and this 30-day challenge forced me to remember that every day.

Of course I learned many things about running a website – using keywords, SEO, social networking, etc – but the things that I listed above will help me in many areas of my life.

I want to thank Kimberly for issuing the challenge and providing a ton of support and advice! If anyone out there needs information about using Facebook, Twitter, writing a blog (especially using WordPress), or just needs help building establishing the online presence of a small business, then she’s the person to contact.

You can find her…

On Facebook

Twitter

or Her Website

If you want to know more about me, KNS Financial, or this website, visit our about page: http://knsfinancial.com/about/

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photo credit: Damon Duncan

© 2010, Khaleef Crumbley. All rights reserved.

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Tagged as: Blogging