Are you feeling overwhelmed with the unlimited amount of tasks you need to get done daily for your blog? Are you finding it hard to stay organized? Don’t worry, we feel that way at times! Today I will be giving you a rundown of what I do to stay organized and I hope you find some useful tips that you could start incorporating today. I know it could be hard to stay organized and productive while working from home. So here are my 5 tips on how to stay organized as a blogger! 🙂
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Track Your Expenses & Income
If you plan on turning your blog into a business, it’s important to stay on top of your expenses and income right away. That way when tax season comes by, you will have everything set and ready. I write down all of my expenses and income on Microsoft Excel and this helps me stay on track on how much I have spent and how much I have earned.
Something else that is important is to save receipts of all your blog expenses. So make sure to save all your paper receipts and email receipts for future reference.
Another tip is to make a list of all the companies and brands that you are affiliated with so that you could log in and check how much you have been getting paid.
Create A Weekly Blog Schedule
I have a planner that I specifically use to schedule in my blogging tasks for the week. I use the Productivity Planner and it helps me stay on top of my blogging goals and blogging tasks. You can read more about the Productivity Planner and why I recommend it here.
Create a weekly schedule that is realistic and will work for you. Here are some tips and tools:
- Schedule Blog Posts: Consistency is key, so have designated day(s) for when you will publish your blog posts. For example, I post once a week on Mondays and I use an editorial calendar to schedule my posts. You can use the editorial calendar plugin for WordPress (It’s FREE!) 🙂
- Schedule Your Newsletter: Make sure to have a day when you send out a newsletter to your subscribers. They want to hear from you so don’t take them for granted. I send out an email to my subscribers on Monday and I use Convertkit to schedule out my newsletters and I love it! If you are a new blogger and would like a free newsletter option then you can choose Mailerlite.
- Schedule Your Social Media: I am so grateful for scheduling tools! They save you so much time and energy. I use Hootsuite to schedule my Facebook Group, Facebook Page, and Instagram. Hootsuite is free for up to three social media platforms, which is great! For Pinterest… I use Tailwind to schedule my pins and it is such a game changer, your followers increase drastically as well as traffic to your blog.
Set Work Hours
Even if you work from home, you should still set work hours for yourself. That way your mind knows when it’s time to work and when it’s time to relax. Whether you are working on your blog part-time or full-time. This helps you have work/life balance and helps you get things done and not procrastinate.
Working all day long doesn’t help with your productivity or creativity. So having set work hours is also something very important to implement in your everyday life to have freedom outside of your work life.
Keep A Notepad For Your Creative Ideas
It happens to me all the time, it could be midnight and I could get this amazing idea for my blog and if I don’t write it down, I will completely forget the following day. So keep a notebook or notepad close by so that you could jot down your ideas there. I use the notepad on my phone and that really helps to keep all my creative ideas in one place.
Setting work hours is so important and definitely much needed! I need to work on making my work hours a little more consistent…
I totally agree with you on writing everything down! There’s a lot of ideas you get while you work, so I think having a planner is definitely a must!
http://www.clairebearblogs.com
Keeping a notepad/journal had been huge for me! It’s important to write down your thoughts when inspiration strikes.
I totally need to be more organised. Your post comes at a good time! Looking forward to checking out the productivity planner. I’ve been in the market for a new planner that keeps me on track with blogging, but haven’t found the perfect one yet.
Great tips here. I often get bogged down and find myself disorganized.
Thanks for the tips! You are so right about having to jot down ideas. It has happened to me that I had an idea but didn’t write it down and never remembered my full line of thought.
Great reminder post to stay organized. I follow all of these otherwise it’s so easy to get behind on tasks. And you have to keep track of all your expenses and also keep receipts.
I recently started organizing my content calendar for both my blog and email newsletter and it feels so good!
Putting deadlines on all the tasks really helps me get stuff done! But this post gave me a few new ideas!
Thank you for sharing!
xoxo,
Ana – Blogger at http://www.TheSheApproach.com and big supporter of women who are building an empire online through blogging!
Setting work hours is something I am going to start doing ASAP! I find that I always just dive into work until I “feel” done for the day and it ends up being midnight, haha!
http://www.insearchofsheila.com
Love these tips! I used to not be on board with the scheduling posts in advance. But now, I’m SO happy I have stuff scheduled out just a few days in advance for when my life gets hectic.
Also, I keep a running list of blog posts and ideas in my iPhone notes…because I will 100% forget without that!
I am trying to bunch tasks together. I find that it keeps me organised. That and very specific files in my blogging file on my computer.
Great tips! I really struggle to set those Work Vs Relax hours but for sure will eliminate those procrastination times.
I never thought about setting work hours but I think that would help from overworking.
https://modestbudgetbelle80.blogspot.com/
I need to set myself proper hours! Thanks for the tips!
Lorna
I’m not great with Excel. Do you have a spreadsheet template you recommend for expenses?
Stay organised is difficult. I will try your tips!
Ohh wow editorial calendar! How cool thanks for the great tips. I will be adding that to WordPress right now.
Love these tips! I need to get better about saving my receipts! I haven’t started making any money from my blog yet, but hope to soon 🙂
Excellent tips!!Thank you for sharing. 🙂
To add to your suggestion of writing down blog ideas, I use the Wunderlist app to enter them into my phone. It makes it easier to keep track of ideas when I’m not at home and don’t want to carry around a notebook and pen.
~Anna
http://cozyandcarefree.com
Keeping track of income & expenses is so important. I did a terrible job of that during my first year of blogging and tax time was a nightmare. Great tips!
I’m so excited about that editorial calendar tool from WordPress. Thanks so much for sharing your tips!
Great tips. My problem is try to do too many things at once. Next thing I know 5 hours passed!
Loved these tips. Very helpful. 🙂
Great tips! Waiting to open up my own blog and make those tips useful 🙂
As a new blogger, I knew I needed to organize! This has helped, thank you so much for sharing.
Great quick tips – thanks for sharing. I’ve been ‘thinking’ about Hootsuite for far too long. Just decided the time is NOW. Thanks for the bump 🙂
I have started scheduling weekly blog tasks and I think is the best thing you can do as a blogger. Thanks for sharing these tips.
These are great tips! I really need to follow these and I definitely need to keep a journal of ideas. Thanks for the awesome post!
Now that I am pursuing freelance full-time, setting work hours (and sticking to them!) is my biggest challenge. I’m hoping to get a handle of it soon!
Awesome tips, literally on point. I typically blog during the day when I’m fully awake (usually after 10 cups of coffee haha) then browse the groups the rest of the day where I introduce myself and post my blogs and my site for others. I really need to check on my affiliates as well…i’ll start with that once a week as you mentioned. Thanks.
Very informative, Awesome tips. Vaya Con Dios!
Thank you, and yes I frequently feel like this. A schedule is essential to keep me focused otherwise I feel pulled in too many directions, and it really hurts being efficient.
These are great tips. I’m always using the notepad on my phone when I have random creative ideas. It’s so helpful.
I think all the tips you mentioned are very helpful and important for staying organised and being successful online. Thanks for sharing!
I definitely gotta get better at setting work hours! My mind never stops working!
I agree with all your points. I mostly use use spreadsheets for planning and brainstorming posts and even my editorial calender. I plan my social promotion on spreadsheets too and then schedule it with buffer. I try not to overwhelm myself but it does happen.
Gayathri @ Musings Over Nothing
Very helpful! I just started blogging this month, so this is a good starting point for me 🙂
Love these tips! Great post very informative
This is something I definitely need to work! Thanks for all the helpful tips!
Great tips, will definitely be implementing them. Pinned!
Great idea on scheduling out your posts. Thank you!
Love these tips! As a newbie blogger it can all get a bit overwhelming sometimes. I think I need to invest in some scheduling tools!
This is so awesome! I can definitely apply this advice to my life as a blogger! It gets hard sometimes to keep up with it!
I really struggle with getting blog post out every day and I need to do something sweet for all of the people who subscribe to my blog I also need to add a rrs feed reader I need to get my butt into gear and start setting things up to be more organized. I love the planner idea thanks so much for sharing such helpful tips and suggestions.
Great tips, Janett! As I’m not so much a paper and pen person, I’d prefer jotting down my ideas on my Trello’s “brain dump” list. I installed it on all my gadgets. Every morning before working, I’d check my Trello board, move and map those ideas to the days, and write how long it will take to finish the job. I also set an alarm based on those time and really be strict about it 😀
Great tips ??
Setting working hours is something I am going to try for today itself. thanks a ton for these tips
Super informative! Thank you!
Wow, great article! Congrats! Very useful
Needed this at the moment. I suck at organisation and time management.Thanks for the tips.
Awesome tips. I need to keep a notebook with me, too many ideas escape me if I don’t write them down right away!
Wow this is jammed packed with great advice. I am pinning for later reference so I can better organize myself and my blog.
Great post, i needed to read this today as i struggle with keeping a schedule!
There were some great tips in here! I’m a new blogger and this has been the best advice on managing time I’ve read to far. Thanks! I pinned it 🙂
Great, blog very helpful! I am new to blogging when I first started I was unorganized which lead to frustration. I agree that making a schedule is really helpful and helps you stay on track. I love the tip set work hours, I will be starting this asap! Thanks for the tips
These are helpful tips because it can be so overwhelming! I love being able to schedule but hate actually sitting down to do it- sigh
Keeping a notepad for all my post ideas has saved my life! Now I can keep all my ideas together. Really needed this as my organisation could use some work at the moment. Thank you for the tips haha!
Having a schedule has really helped me this year to be a lot more productive and consistent. Still haven’t made anything yet, and spent a ton, so I haven’t done the income report because it’s sad haha- but guess I should keep that in mind for taxes in the future!
Loved all these tips!
I’m definitely downloading that calendar plugin!
Thanks
xx, Victoria
http://www.airofsimplicity.com
The creative note book I really need to do. I always think of things and honestly, my intention is to remember and it just slips away.
scheduling is so big and i know its the key to my success! now i just have to schedule my scheduling time!
Having a notebook is a great idea because it helps you to keep track of posts and brain storm. Thanks for sharing these tips!
I’ve become super organized when I made my blog schedule. My blog schedule helps me to do every blogging task on time.
Thank you for your blog post!
I’m regaining my footing in the blogging world and staying organized is becoming the top of my list – so much to do with so little time!
Thank you again!
I’m a new blogger and these tips are exactly what I needed! Thank you for this!
Getting organized is my biggest challenge as a blogger!! I just freeze when I’m overwhelmed with the amount to do and keep up with! Thinking of giving Hootsuite a try!!
I love all the tips. I have learned the hard way to keep a notebook and pen handy at all times.