#63: Think You Don’t Have Time to Blog? Think Again

Hello. Hello, and welcome to another fabulous episode of the unconventional RD podcast. And in today's episode, I'm talking about the number one reason why people in my Facebook community say that they don't have a blog, but that's not actually the real reason why they don't have a blog. So we'll dive into that and I will share three actionable ways that you can start blogging without it taking over your life.

So this is one of my favorite little videos I recorded on Facebook a few weeks ago, before I opened up, my SEO made simple course for enrollment, and I got a lot of great feedback on this one. People thought it was really helpful, so I hope you enjoy it too. And then next week I'll be back again with my regular longer episodes that you're probably used to,

if you are a long-time listener of this podcast. And in case you're curious since yes, I just wrapped up the opening of my SEO made simple course. If you listen to this podcast, you probably know that I spent the last like year almost trying to transition my course from sort of the launch method where I opened the doors once a year, basically,

and do this big, exciting launch to an evergreen model where it's never really like publicly open except in the very beginning. And then after that, it's just sort of like, Hey, if you join my email list, you'll get periodically invited to join the course off and on throughout the year automatically. So the selling mechanism is kind of happening in an automated way through my email,

instead of me having to do these like crazy insane launches that really burned me out. So that's what I'm experimenting with, but to kick off the evergreen funnel, I did sort of do like a big announcement. Hey, the doors are open again for the first time in six or seven months. And I sent some emails out to my current email list.

And if you're curious about the metrics, I will probably do a full episode on how the launch went in more detail. But my email list is currently around 5,500 people. And that was the only place that people were getting pitched to join the course. There was no publicly available sales page. And from those 5,500 people, I think I had maybe around 400 something.

I have to look at the exact metrics, watch my masterclass that I put on, which is where I talk about my course and gave people the opportunity to join. And that was also the only place that they could join through by watching the masterclass and of those 400 something people 90 joined the program in the last week and a half or so. So my program is currently around a thousand dollars,

so that was a freaking $90,000 week and a half, which is like, what? So definitely the best weekend business ever for me, granted, a lot of people chose the payment plan option, so that money will be coming in, in smaller amounts throughout the next six months or so, but like, that's great, cause I'm about to have a baby.

So I'm basically funded my own maternity leave for the rest of the year, which is super, just, just a huge weight lifted off basically. So thank you. Thank you to all the new students who joined. I'm getting some great feedback from everyone who's just diving right in. They love the content and the helpful community. So it was just been a really great week.

That's what I've been up to. I kind of gave myself a little downtime after that launch, but now I'm back in the saddle, ready to focus again on regular content creation. And yeah, I'm just so excited, thrilled about how that mini launch, I guess, went. And I'm hoping that the momentum continues with the evergreen funnel, but I will keep you guys up to date as usual.

So you will always know what's working in my business and can hopefully take some of those insights into your own business as well. But without further ado, let's get into this episode about the number one reason why people say they don't have a blog, the real reasons why they don't have a blog and three ways that you can start a blog without it taking over your life.

Hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the unconventional RD podcast, where we inspire dietitians to think outside of the traditional employment box and create their own unconventional income streams. We'll talk all things online business to help you start, grow and scale your own digital empire. Hi, I am here again on Facebook live and I'm doing a little bit of an experiment today.

I think if you caught my last Facebook live, I mentioned that I was using a tool called stream yard to stream live video through that program into Facebook. And at first I thought it was really awesome. The interface was way better, but my reach on that video was like 15% of what my first video was when I did it just natively through Facebook.

And I have no idea if that was just because like I never go live. So they wanted to give my first video, a huge boost, or if it had something to do with streaming through stream yard versus being live natively on Facebook. So I'm doing a test to see if it makes a difference based on whether I'm doing it through Facebook or not.

So here I am, again and today I'm here to talk to you about the number one reason why people say they don't have a blog. And this is based on actual data that I collected in my Facebook group, the unconventional R D community. I asked people a few months ago, you might remember why they don't have a blog. And then I looked at all the answers and there was one answer that came up again and again and again and again.

So it's definitely the number one reason why people in our community say they don't have a blog. So any guesses as to what it might be, you can put your guesses in the comments. If you'd like, you can type what you think. The number one reason why people say they don't have a blog type with that is in the comments or what your number one reason is.

Maybe, maybe you are right in line with everyone else and you all have the same reason. So, yes, as I said, this particular response was far and away. The most common drum roll, please. The number one reason people say they don't have a blog is time. So a lot of people are convinced that they just don't have time to blog,

which at the surface seems like a totally valid objection, right? Like we're all so busy. And the thought of adding another thing to our plates can feel completely overwhelming. But honestly saying that you don't have time is really a surface level. Objection, because the truth is we make time for what we deem important. So really lack of time. Reasoning really means that you're not convinced that that thing is worth your time.

I'll say that again. If your reasoning for not doing something is lack of time, the real reason is because you're not convinced that that thing is worth your time because we all have a limited amount of time and we have to decide what to give it to. So this could be because maybe you've tried blogging or creating content online in the past and you didn't see good results.

Maybe you're totally intimidated by all the moving pieces required to get a blog up and running in the first place. And that sort of analysis paralysis and overwhelm is holding you back. Or maybe you just know that you tend to start projects all the time and then just let them sort of Peter out before they really get anywhere. And you're kind of scared that starting a blog will lead you to that same place.

And those are real valid, solid feelings that you might be having. So today I wanted to talk to you about three ways that you can run a successful blog that brings in passive income, like ad revenue, affiliate, income, sponsored content, work, things like that, or brings you customers. So they could be customers buying your online products like an online course,

a membership site, digital goods, or booking services with you. You can get all of those things accomplished. If you know how to blog with strategy, that brings thousands of people to your website every single month. And the truth is you can do that without having to spend more than a few hours per week on it, unless you want to spend more time and you can do it in a way that feels confident and easy and clear with systems that support your business goals so that you can just show up,

do the work and know that you'll get good results. So here are three ways that you can start blogging without it taking over your life. So tip number one, go in with a plan. So Willy nilly publishing content, whenever you have time, is quite honestly a recipe for disaster because let's be honest. You'll have all the time in the very beginning when you're super excited about your new project,

but then as time goes on and life gets busy, it's all too easy to let things sort of fall to the side. If you don't have them built into your schedule and your routine automatically. So let's not do that. So my number one tip for seeing success and not feeling so stressed and overwhelmed all the time about your blog, your online business is to develop a plan and then stick to it.

And what does that look like in reality? Well, that looks like first understanding why you're blogging in the first place. I E do you want your blog to be your business and drive passive income streams through the content with things like display ads, affiliate links, sponsored content, et cetera, or do you want your blog to be an attractive marketing mechanism in your business to draw people to your brand and then get them to purchase something from you like an online course,

a membership group program or services. And if you haven't watched my video from last week on this topic, definitely carve out some time to do that. I think it's a really critical first step. You can just find that on my page, the unconventional RD should see all the videos there. There's one about the three blogging business models and that's a critical,

critical first step. That honestly gets missed quite often just because there's like a lack of clarity for people when they're first getting into this whole blogging world. So that will help clarify and ask you questions to understand which blogging business model you are trying to accomplish. Then once you know that you can reverse engineer a plan for success.

So what type of content do you need to be publishing? How often do you want to be publishing? Most people who blog as a business where their content is like the core of their business publish at least once per week, but people who blog to attract customers can still see good results publishing less frequently, even just once per month. Like when I was blogging to attract people to my membership site,

I only published something one time a month. And you need to understand how that content will lead to monetization. So for example, if you are a content creator and you're trying to monetize with passive income, your goals should probably be to create content around topics that are searched, maybe at least a thousand times per month, that will bring you faster results if you're monetizing passively,

because it's all about eyeballs. Whereas if you're creating content around a specific topic that your ideal customer has burning questions about, then you should create that if it's relevant to your niche and your ideal customer and your product, even if it's only searched maybe a hundred times per month, and that will lead you to better results as someone who is selling something, if you're creating content that attracts the right specific type of person to your website,

not just lots of people, but the right people. So once you know where you're trying to go, then you just have to create your plan. Usually this comes in the form of a content calendar. So basically, you know exactly what topics you want to cover. You do some research ahead of time. You know, that these topics are going to be worth your time and we'll bring lots of people or specifically the right people to your website.

And then you just slot them into your calendar. So you come up with a publishing schedule, like maybe every Friday, you're going to put out a new post and then you slot your topics in. And the point here is that this will save you miles of brain space. It completely eliminates the time wasted when you show up ready to write, but you have no idea what to write about.

So instead you can just check your content calendar and dive right in. And I know, I don't know, maybe you are like me. Sometimes I get a little rebellious against my content calendar. Cause I don't like things to be too rigid. So it's, it's nice to say that you're going to do this post on this day for like, you could do this as far in advance as you want really.

But sometimes I'll be like, oh, I don't feel like writing about that this month. So you can also just have like a running list of ideas and slot them in as you get writing. But the point is to have the ideas that you've already validated and you know, are worth your time, ready to go. So you only have to do that mental work once,

and then you don't have to stress about it again. And again, every time you have to open up your word document or your Google doc or wherever you're writing your blog posts, you don't have to sit there with a mental brain fart. You just know what you're writing about, or you have a list of potential topics you could write about so many bloggers plan out their content quarterly or semi-annually,

or even just once for the whole entire year. And then they maybe leave some space in there for like trending things. And then that mental load is off. So that's tip number one, have a plan tip number two. It's not all on you. So another misconception that I hear a lot is that a blog needs to be written in a very personal style from just one expert or one person.

But that's definitely not the case. One of the easiest ways to get more done and publish more content that will actually move the needle in your business is to outsource. And this could be done by hiring freelance writers or recipe developers to help you hiring an assistant or even using AI technology to help you outline posts in advance so that you can hit the ground running.

When it's time to write, you could accept guest posts from other professionals that you trust and respect, or even have students or interns create content for your site as a part of their rotation with you. And all of these are great ways to boost your output without requiring more direct time from you. So for example, many private practice dietitians are really busy seeing clients,

et cetera. So they might hire other freelance dietitians who specialize in writing to create content on their websites that can drive them traffic and customers. And that's a win for both parties involved. Here's another example. When I was a freelance writer myself, I used to write for healthline.com back when they were still kind of like health line slash authority nutrition and authority

nutrition had just been acquired by Healthline. I was writing for them around that time. And I actually had an assistant that I paid to help me draft outlines of articles before I started writing to help me avoid that pub med rabbit hole and help me focus and churn out those articles at a faster clip. That was a worthy investment because I was only paying somebody to do something when I knew I was bringing money in.

So that was great. So win-win, and there's lots of new AI technology as well. That's been coming out recently that will put together automated outlines for blog posts on different topics. So one of those tools is called conversion AI or conversion.ai. You could check that out many, many blogs like Healthline,

for example, run on the contributor model where there's actually a team of paid writers, creating content for the site so that they can grow and monetize really, really fast. The financial risk in that model is on the website owner initially because you are putting out money up front to pay people, to create content. But once you get a lot of traffic,

you can earn a lot more money than you'll need to pay those individual writers who are creating content for you. So that's another business model that you could consider, and you can also decide to accept guest posts paid or, or, or sorry, unpaid guest posts, guest posts are usually unpaid for your site in order to have more content to share that isn't written directly by you.

And the benefit there is that that person will get a link back to their website when they write that piece of content for your site. And that helps them boost their visibility for their own website as well. And the final popular model is to have interns create content while they're doing their rotation with you. And that's a win-win for both you and the students,

because the interns get to learn about content marketing and blogging. There's like strategies involved here that you could be able to teach them that they probably are not going to learn in their schooling. So they'll learn how to create content that shows up strategically in Google, which is an incredibly valuable skill. If they plan to do anything entrepreneurial or in the marketing arena in the future,

and you get much more content published on your site, technically for free than you could ever do on your own. So those are all suggestions on ways that you can outsource and make it. So your blog is not all on your shoulders, like your personal journal or something. It does not need to be like that. And finally tip number three is to focus on quality over quantity,

always. So there seems to be a perception that blogging requires a ton of content creation, 24 7, perhaps because people kind of think social media and blogging are more similar than they really are, but that's not true. So, as I've mentioned before, once I actually got serious with my blogging strategy in 10 months on my brand new site with just 10 blog posts.

So again, just posting once a month, I was able to get 20,000 people to my website every single month from Google searches alone. And then a percentage of those people went on to join my email list, purchase products that I recommended and join my paid membership site. And it was an excellent hands-off way of marketing that I really enjoyed and still enjoy to this day.

So the key really is focusing on quality of your content over quantity. One, excellent well-written and optimized blog posts strategically written about a topic that, you know, will bring you lots and lots of visitors or potential customers is worth a billion times, more than a hundred short unoptimized, low quality blog posts that won't be seen by anyone. So don't make the mistake of treating your blog like an extension of social media,

because it's not, it serves a very different purpose and it's meant to be a more in-depth high quality evergreen resource on whatever topic your niche is. And the content you publish on your blog will continue to work for you for literally years to come. If you do it right, it doesn't get lost in an endless stream of other influencers. Instead, you've created that content with a specific plan in mind that gets you right in front of the audience that you're looking for.

Simply when they Google a question and are looking for an answer on the internet and that's pretty amazing and it's free. So to recap, everything I just talked about, yes, the number one reason people say they don't have a blog is lack of time, but the real reason is that they're not convinced that blogging will be worth their time. And that's usually because they lack a strategy for creating content in a way that won't overwhelm them or require a billion hours of their direct personal time.

So today I've outlined three ways that you can run a successful blog in a low stress way. Number one, go in with a plan, number two, stop thinking that it needs to be all on you. And number three, focus on quality over quantity. And if you do those three things, you'll easily be able to start blogging and reap the benefits ASAP.

So that's it for today. Again, I'd love to continue this conversation inside my Facebook group, the unconventional RD community. If you are not a member already just search for that group on Facebook and request to join. And I will share a link underneath the video as well to make it easy. But yeah, blogging doesn't require a full-time effort unless you like really want to give it a full time effort,

but you can definitely, definitely get great results with just a few hours a week, if that's how you would like to integrate it into your business. So I hope you have a great day. I can't wait to connect with you in my group and conventional RD community on Facebook. And I'll see you guys later.