This is part of an ongoing series about becoming a blogger for Families.com. If you missed the beginning of it, please check it out here.
Yesterday, I talked about the magical moment you’ve been waiting for: Getting hired by Lisa! As I explained yesterday, there is usually a waiting period between when you get hired and when you start posting the blogs, though, which is the perfect time to stockpile blogs.
Many people apply for a topic because they love it, but once they get hired, they get overwhelmed with the thought of having to write about this same topic over and over again. What if I run out of ideas? seems to be everyone’s worry. I know that I too wondered about that. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to write 75 blogs a month on your topic alone, you can write about other topics (for more information on that, please check out this article, if you missed it the first time ’round.)
When I was waiting to be able to post blogs, I went to work-at-home jobs sites and ask questions in the forums (I even conducted a couple of surveys about working at home!) and I also went to job-posting sites to get even more job ideas. At first, I worked off of a random notebook that I had happened to have, where I wrote down a list of ideas that I could write about. I eventually numbered them, put them in order, and then started at the top of the list and worked my way down. I wrote every blog idea on that list, and that gave me a great springboard into becoming a prolific Jobs blogger.
I have found that it is really easy to start a blog by simply typing an idea into my word processor (example: The pros and cons to being an independent contractor) and then saving that idea as a separate blog. I then made a folder in My Documents called “Job Blog Ideas” that I saved these idea blogs into. When I am suffering from writer’s block, I go back to that file and start to read through all of the documents I have in there. When I find one that strikes me just right, I start expanding on it, until I have a 300 word blog on my hands. It really helps when my idea well has run dry. If I am writing a blog and an idea pops into my head, I’ll quickly open up a new document, type the idea, save it, and keep going with my original blog. If I tried to write each blog as the idea came instead of one at a time, I would have 21 blogs started and none finished. I tend to have a lot of ideas running around in my head (some of them even good!)
Still worried about having enough to say? Tomorrow, I will be giving some more ideas on how to keep the idea well primed. Don’t miss it!