Building a successful blog is quite a challenge, but building a successful blog while working full-time, it’s a whole other level.

The good news is, it can be done.

Most bloggers started their blogs while working full time, which means you can do it too.

Despite what many people think, your success doesn’t depend on working tirelessly and sleepless nights.

The secret to creating a successful blog while working full time is to work smart with the right strategies in place, the right mindset, long term vision, and purpose.

Start With This: Why Do You Want to Start a Blog?

Before you figure out how and when you are going to work on your blog, define why you want to do it.

Why is it important to you to create a successful blog?

As trite as this sounds, knowing your why is the most significant motivational factor.

I’m not going to lie, at times, trying to make it as a blogger is rough.

It takes a while for a blog to succeed, and patience is key.

When you have good enough reasons, it will be much easier to find motivation and keep moving forward.

Time is Your Biggest Asset

How come some people manage to do so much in a day, while others can barely handle their 9-5?

The day has 24 hours for everyone. The difference is in the choices we make.

If you take a look at the past few days, where did your time go?

Chances are, like most people, a lot of it was wasted on social media and dealing with emails.

When you want to become a successful blogger while working full-time, wasting time is not an option.

Where Can You Find the Time?

For the next few days, take inventory of your time.

Write down everything you do hourly.

It will give you a pretty good idea of what you can cut out of your life to buy some time.

Another idea to get more done in one day is, either waking up earlier or going to sleep a bit later.

If you can wake up one hour earlier, that’s one extra hour a day you’ll have to work on your blog.

Other times to work on your blog might be during your lunchtime, breaks or even vacation.

• Lunchtime: If you have one hour for lunch, you can eat in 30 minutes and use the other 30 for research on blog topics.
  
• Breaks: Even during a 15-minute break, you’ll have time to connect with other bloggers and build some relationships.
  
• Vacation: When you have vacation days, you can take one solely to work on your blog.

Whenever we get more time, for some reason, we tend to get caught up in busy mode.

But being busy doesn’t necessarily mean being productive.

What do you need to make your day count?

• Preparation – Have an action plan
  
• Organization – Make sure you have everything you need
  
• Time-management – Be vigilant and allocate your time on tasks that matter (Don’t go down the YouTube videos’ rabbit hole)
  
• Smart decisions – Choose what deserves your focus

Get the Right Strategy

To make your time worthwhile and make sure you’re focusing on the most important things, you need an effective strategy in place.

Many bloggers have come before you, and you can take advantage of that, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

They already made the mistakes and learned things the hard way, so now you don’t have to.

Most likely, you won’t have time to do everything a full-time blogger does.

So, you need to work smart. What are the essential tasks that will bring in maximum results?

Creating your strategy:

• Research your niche and the market to learn what resonates the most
  
• Analyze your competitors to figure out what works for them and what’s the audience’s response
  
• Find out possible paths, and “blueprints” other bloggers have used successfully

How to speed the process?

A fantastic way to get a leg up in your blogging endeavor is to get some assistance from pros.

For instance, Wealthy Affiliate is a platform that gives new bloggers and affiliate marketers the best possible blueprint to create profitable blogs.

More than that, you can get guidance every step of the way.

When you don’t have a minute to spare, a platform like Wealthy Affiliate can help you increase your productivity and build a successful blog faster.

What are the Absolute Musts?

Our “musts” always get done.

If you must meet a deadline, it’s most likely that you will.

If you should, on the other hand, you might not meet that deadline.

It’s how our brain works.

So, once you know your strategy, define your priorities.

Prioritizing also helps you avoid traps of working on less important or not as profitable duties because if everything is important, nothing is important.

Structures are Your Friends

Having proper systems or structures, though it sounds boring, can be highly effective.

What that means is, creating a set of steps for each of the main tasks that you have to follow every time.

• What are your steps to defining a topic and its keywords?
  
• Then, once you define a topic, what kind of blog post will it be and what’s its writing structure?
  
• How is your research process?
  
• What’s the step-by-step to publish the post and after it’s live?

When you have a system in place for each of those questions, and many other blogging duties, it will be much easier for you to just get down to business every minute you have a chance.

What Do You See as a Successful Blog?

As I mentioned above, building a successful blog takes time.

That’s why it’s vital for you to set clear goals based on realistic expectations.

I can tell you right now, it won’t happen overnight.

Start by defining what a successful blog looks like.

That can be your long term goal.

With that in mind, you can set clear goals or milestones that you’d like to hit.

Make sure they are SMART.

• Specific
  
• Measurable
  
• Achievable
  
• Relevant
  
• Timebound

It will help you keep track of your progress and motivated to move forward.

Measure and Optimize from the Start

Many new bloggers fail to optimize their website because it doesn’t seem profitable when there aren’t many visits.

But, tracking your results and tweaking your blog, right from the get-go, can help you get more visitors and create the habit of improving it constantly.

In other words, optimization can help you grow your blog faster while working your full-time job.

Don’t Wait to Monetize

If your goal is to create a profitable and successful blog while working full-time, monetize it from the start.

Don’t wait around for a bigger audience or more traction.

Any profit that comes in is already a win.

There are many ways to make money blogging.

You’ll have to decide which ones you want to use.

When creating your strategy, consider your monetization options and outline your action plan accordingly.

Outsource Whatever You Can to Save Time

When we talk about outsourcing, many new bloggers see it as an expense.

But, when you look at it as an investment, things change.

Let’s say, it takes you three hours to create the images for your blog post and social media posts.

In three hours there’s a lot of important work that you could be doing, instead of looking for an image.

If you pay someone to do that for you, you’ll be giving yourself three extra hours, and you’ll still have the images you needed in the first place.

Support is Crucial to Building a Successful Blog While Working Full-Time

You’ll have to put in a lot of hours to succeed as a blogger.

At times, you might feel overwhelmed with so much to do in so little time.

Or, you might feel lost, not knowing where to go.

Nothing is more valuable at this point than having access to a community of like-minded people that are ready to help, every step of the way.

When you join Wealthy Affiliate, apart from the step-by-step strategy and guidance, you become part of a massive community of bloggers and affiliate marketers.

That’s paramount to build a successful blog.

Joining Wealthy Affiliate also means that you won’t have to waste hours on end learning the technical stuff.

They can even help you get a domain name.

It’s a huge advantage having access to a platform like WA and probably one of the best ways to monetize your blog from the beginning.

By the way, you can start a free trial to check out what they have to offer.

You won’t regret it.

One Last Thought About Building a Successful Blog While Working Full-Time

Though it might seem like a disadvantage at first, having a job gives you financial stability and allows you to create a blog that you are proud of.

Since you’re not desperate to make ends meet, you can focus on building a fantastic blog instead of any blog just to make money.

Plus, your full-time job and income might allow you to invest more in your blog.

That’s when you get ahead.