This week’s Ask the Readers discussion should be an opportunity to collect a number of profound lessons in one place. The question I’d like you to answer is: what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about blogging or being a webmaster?

When I sat down to write this, I thought I’d answer the question from my own perspective here. I was worried that it would take some time to nut out a reasonable answer. I’ve learned a lot of things in my various engagements with the web and anticipated that it would be hard to pick out the most important one. Strangely enough, it wasn’t hard at all.

Realizing the importance of giving if you want to receive as a blogger has been life-changing for me. It’s transformed blogging into a passionate hobby and led to some incredible opportunities and experiences (and continues to do so).

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One of the most potentially stress-inducing aspects of web publishing is that few of us have a safety net of content developed.

The trite-but-true central principle of personal finance is to “spend less than you earn.” When it comes to writing content, though, most of us spend exactly as much as we earn: we live hand-to-mouth, so to speak. We write an article and hit ‘publish’ on the same day.

This is a bad habit. There will always be times when real life gets in the way, or when you want to take a break but don’t want your site to suffer, or when you get sick (as I discovered recently). When those times come, not having a ’savings account’ of content hits you hard.

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This is the first ‘Ask the Readers’ post at Skelliewag. Each weekend I’ll pose a question or discussion topic to extract some thoughts, wisdom and tips from readers.

This week, I want to discuss the art of making time to do the actions that grow your blog or website.

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