One of my new favorite voices in blogging and social media is Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never seen any of his videos, here are three that every blogger should watch (1, 2, 3). Interestingly enough, he’s a passionate speaker who consistently restates something both very true and very obvious, yet very ignored: success with blogging, social media and online entrepreneurship is all about ‘hustle’, in other words, hard work, persistence and most importantly, sacrifice.

The point that inspired this post was made at 12mins 15secs in Gary’s recent Web 2.0 Keynote in NYC, where he suggested that an online entrepreneur who wanted to be successful should be prepared to work on their business from 7pm to 2am every night. The audience laughed as if he’d made a joke, but Gary’s face was a picture of seriousness. “It’s not going to happen if you do it any other way!” he said emphatically. Of course, the hours between 6pm and 7pm could be designated ‘family time’ in this fictional schedule. But that’s still 1 hour family time, 7 hours work time (15 if you count the day-job). That’s also five hours sleep every night if you have to get up at 7, and assuming you don’t need any wind-down time before stumbling from the computer to bed. I know whenever I tried this I had emails dancing before my eyes.

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Photo by wannes deprez / ony one.

The idea of blogging as a source of passive income has always seemed a little off to me (and others). In fact, I’d suggest that most bloggers earning significant money from blogging devote as much time to it as a part-time or full-time job. That’s not as close as we can get, though: passive income should be just that, passive, meaning income for no hands-on work, or income that is hugely disproportionate to the hands-on work required.

If you’re writing blog posts each week, moderating comments, answering email and trying to propel your content forward on social media, you’re not earning passive income. You’re still exchanging time for money.

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Photo by Aidan Jones

It’s been almost a month since I launched blog #2, Anywired. Having never maintained two blogs at once before, the last month taught me a lot about managing multiple commitments: more than one blog, freelancing and the negotiation of even more projects.

In this post, I want to share everything I’ve learned about successfully managing multiple projects (for you, this might be running more than one blog, more than one business, or more than one freelance project), from the planning to the execution stage. I’ll talk about time-splitting, leveraging, batching focus and my new favorite word, elimination. Read More…

Photo by (Bill & Mavis) B&M Photography

True productivity is not about doing more in less time. It’s about doing less in less time. It’s about defining what is truly worth doing and sticking to that alone.

Bloggers often tell me that there’s not enough time available to do everything they truly want to do: to start that dream project, to write that value-packed post, to guest-post on a popular blog. If I said to them: “You can have that, but you need to stop reading feeds and outsource comment moderation,” most people would respond: “It’s not that simple.”

But it is. If you can eliminate three hours of the inessential from your week, and doing your dream takes three hours a week, you can have it.

I’m not suggesting that you do all the below, but I’d like you to ask yourself each question and consider the pros and cons of your answer. How much time would you save? What’s the trade-off? A mental exercise rather than a prescriptive list, I want you to start thinking about where elimination fits in your blogging routine. Read More…

Photo by striatic (CC license).

When it comes to new projects (for me, a new blog or a website), you could say that I’m commitment phobic. For a long time I was more interested in the ideas behind a new project than the execution, leading to a long trail of half-finished projects — and some that never made it out of my notebook.

I found my mind wandering as I was trying to sleep a few days ago and hit upon a project idea that excited me. I could run it alongside Skelliewag. It would only be a hobby thing — nothing serious. My neurons started firing as I began to plan what I’d do when I woke up (ensuring it would be another hour or so before I finally drifted off).

One moderating influence I’m grateful for — in hindsight — was being unable to get online the next day. When I finally sat down to think about this new project, I noticed that something had changed since I started working with this blog. Read More…

Photo by mugley.

This is a guest post from Leo Babauta, who blogs about productivity, simplicity and happiness at Zen Habits.

I’m a pretty prolific blogger — between regular posts at Zen Habits, and writing regularly for blogs such as Web Worker Daily, FreelanceSwitch, NorthxEast and more, and writing guest posts for other blogs (such as the excellent Skelliewag), I write a lot of posts every week.

And what’s asked of me most often, besides “How can you write so much?”, is the more difficult question: “How do you come up with so many ideas for posts?”

That’s not so easy to answer.

Coming up with ideas is a skill, actually, something that’s become easier with practice. And I don’t have one single method of coming up with great ideas for articles, except this one:

I’m ALWAYS on the lookout. Read More…

One question I get a lot is: “Where do you find the time?” It’s a good question, but it’s the wrong one. Few of us have vast reserves of free time lying around, waiting to be found. If you want to do something, you have to make the time.

Making time is like budgeting money. You need to work out we’re you’re spending your time and cut out unnecessary expenses.

One hour less television a week is one extra hour to work on your magnum opus: whatever that may be.

(This post is an attempt to practice the Little Words, Big Meaning principle.)

Photo by gadl (license)

Any successful blog or website must be innovative. If you’re not innovating, you’re not offering potential readers a worthwhile choice.

Solve the same problems and fulfill the same needs as a bigger site in your niche and readers will consistently give their attention to your more authoritative counterpart.

Innovation, on the other hand, will make you the only choice suited to solving the problems and fulfilling the needs of your target audience.

Innovation is only worthwhile when it’s useful. It needs to satisfy a need that currently isn’t being met (at least, not in the same way). That’s when you start to stand out.

In this post, I want to describe a simple exercise you can use to create innovative content by problem solving. Don’t worry — this kind of problem solving is a lot easier than the kind you might have done at school. Read More…

Tips, tutorials, exercises and inspiration from the fields of visual art, writing, photography, blogging, design and invention. Next time you’re stuck for ideas or inspiration I hope you’ll find something here to get your right brain firing. A tip: sometimes the best sources of inspiration often lie far outside your own creative field. Read More…

Photography: ground on down by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

The word ’success’ is a troublesome one. A self-criticism I would make is that, reading back on previous posts, I’ve sometimes used it like its meaning is obvious, and agreed upon by all. Nothing could be further from the truth: I can’t think of a word that is more vague and subjective than ’success’.

Success, for one person, could mean keeping a record of interesting daily events. For another, it could mean breaking into the Technorati 100. For another, it could mean making a full-time income online.

What’s your definition of success? Could you encapsulate it in a sentence? Most importantly, is it concrete and attainable, or is it a moving target? Read More…