Information overload. That’s what we are in now in this digital age. You do a simple Google search and come up with pages and pages of results. You search how to do something on You Tube and everyone has their own way to do it. You ask a Facebook group what the best website platform is and you get tons of conflicting answers. It’s difficult to find direct answers when you search online. This is a problem when you are a beginner blogger and you hear about all of the different apps, programs and tools that people use to get ish done. Another factor is that you may not have as much disposable income as the next person, so though you may like a tool that they use, you don’t have the extra $60 to dish out a month for it. I totally feel you and have been there...hell, I still am! I’m still on my road to blogging and business success, so I can tell you first hand what I’ve done to combat these issues. Today I’m going to discuss the apps and programs that I used as a beginner and now intermediate blogger and how much money was spent. This is going to also help you figure out what you really need to spend money on and at what point you can start upgrading.

As a beginner blogger that also works a 9-5, you need to focus on the following things:

1 / Website platform

The platform that you use for blogging will be based on various factors. You will need to determine what your main focus is. For example, if you are a blogger that also sells products, you may want to consider a platform that has e-commerce integrated in the platform. If you are strictly just a blogger that doesn’t sell anything but you have an email list, you may want to use a platform that has built-in email marketing capabilities. If you just blog and have beautiful images that you want to post, you would need a platform that offers larger images. This is a huge debate...if you ask for public opinion of which platform is best fo a website/blog, you will hear Squarespace, Wordpress.org, Wix and others that I may not know about. This becomes confusing because there are so many options. I can tell you from my experience that I started out using Blogger for my blog and I also sold products using Big Cartel. The crappy part about that was that I had two different sites for one brand. I needed a platform that supported blogging and commerce, so I switched to Squarespace. It was one of the best decisions that I made. I pay $18 a month for Squarespace and I pay $12 a year for my URL, so $19 a month for my website. This is actually less than I was paying when I used Big Cartel and I have so many more options of things that I can do in Squarespace. It was a no-brained and win-win for me to use Squarespace.

Related: Squarespace 9 Months In

2 / Professional Email account

Perception is everything, especially in the beginning. Just because you may be a beginner blogger, it doesn’t mean that you have to appear as one. I’m not saying to lie or be deceptive, I’m just saying to make more professional decisions. Your email account is the easiest way to show how professional you are. Do not...DO NOT run a blog or business using a free email address (@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc.). You need your own email address with your own domain on it. This is also incredibly affordable. I pay $5 a month for a business email through Google. That’s the equivalent of one Venti from Starbucks a month. The great thing about getting a business email address through Google is that you also get access to other apps that you can use for your blog/biz. Here’s the link to learn more about Google for Work.

3 / Email marketing

If you are interested in growing an email list, you may be confused on which email marketing platform to use. You may hear MailChimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, Mad Mimi, Ontraport, etc. Again, what your needs are heavily has an effect on which platform to go with. I started out using MailChimp because I could do basic and intermediate functions using their free account. Basic functions are creating an email template that will be used for every email that you send to your list and creating opt-in forms to add to your website to collect email addresses. Intermediate functions were offering opt-in freebies and delivering them automatically through email and creating automated email courses that were sent on a schedule. You can do more advanced things with MailChimp, but as a beginner this is perfect. And it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers! I have since switched to ConvertKit for my email marketing because I needed a more robust platform to do the things that I wanted to do, but I still use MailChimp for a few functions that Convertkit hasn’t perfected yet.

Related: MailChimp vs. ConvertKit

4 / Custom graphics to personalize your brand

In the beginning, you should also focus on your brand. Use customization where you can. It’s important to get a professional logo, but if this is something that you can't afford currently, just keep it simple and use a particular font for your blog name and stick with 2-3 brand colors that you use on everything. Other things that you will want to customize are your blog post graphics (the big, pretty ones that are Pinterest friendly), email signature, email template (if doing email marketing), website header and social media graphics (like those quote graphics that people post to Instagram that have their brand colors and logo on it). You can create all of these things using the free online design tool, Canva, so yeah, no money spent there :)

5 / Automating blogging tasks

I believe strongly in setting up automated tasks that can step in and do things for you when you aren’t able to. Like, maybe you’re at a meeting at work and aren’t able to pin your new blog post to pinterest, or perhaps you’re in the middle of a big project at work and aren't going to be able to consistently check Instagram for everyone that posts a particular hashtag to engage with them. Automated tasks can do this for you and so much more. It’s the side-blogger/hustler’s best friend. IFTTT and Zapier are the two platforms that were built to perform automated tasks for you. IFTTT is free, so you should take advantage of this platform as much as you can. Zapier has a limited free plan that is still quite robust. I use both platforms and have used the free version of Zapier. I have upgraded to the lowest plan because I needed to create more complicated tasks and I needed access to have more active tasks on my account. I pay $20 a month for Zapier, but as a beginner the free plan is more than enough.

Related: Zapier vs. IFTTT

I hope this has helped to clear up a few things for you if you have been struggling to figure out what you should invest in as a beginner blogger. There are more apps that I use and other ways to save money as a beginner that I have rounded up in a handy free guide. The guide also lists what to use as an intermediate and advanced blogger with approximate monthly costs associated to all tools, programs, etc.

I get you. You have a day job and a blog/business on the side that you want to turn into you main source of income. You are trying to build your brand, readership, customers/clients, site visits, follows, etc. The side hustle already feels like a full-time job because there are so many levels to it. Sometimes it’s hard to stay afloat, so today I will be sharing 10 ways that you can stay productive with your side hustle while still working a 9-5.

1 / Use apps offline

Some of my most productive days have been when I didn’t have an internet or data connection. Every blogger and entrepreneur should use apps that have the ability for you to work offline. Working offline means that you can still use the app without internet or data connections, and when you have a connection again what you worked on will then sync to your account. So for example, I was without power for 2 days due to hurricane Irma which meant that I had no internet. I was still able to work on this very blog post because I use Google Docs to create my posts anyway. I typed my blog post and once I had an internet connection again, everything that I typed was then synced to my Google Docs account. This is also a great feature to have when you want to work on tasks on your breaks at work. If your employer doesn’t allow you to connect to the wifi on your personal devices, you can still use the apps and get things done without the connection.

Pro Tip: Most productivity and business apps these days have offline capabilities, so do your research and make sure that the app that you are going to download has this. For me, offline capabilities is high on the need list when it comes to apps.

2 / Take advantage of breaks

So speaking of breaks, this is a prime time when you should be working on your side-hustle tasks. Whether that be typing a blog post, planning out social media content, writing emails to your email list, planning out products/services to launch, etc. you can totally do these things on your morning, afternoon and/or lunch breaks. You don’t have to be all work and no play during your breaks (I believe in a healthy balance of the two), but you should plan out which breaks you will use to solely work on your stuff.

3 / Dedicate time in the morning or evening to work on tasks

I am a night owl...there’s no doubt about it. Some people believe that you should get up super early in the morning to work on things, but I’m an advocate of working whenever it’s best for you. If that happens to be 5am or 10pm, it’s fine either way. It’s impossible and unrealistic to fit everyone into the mold of being a morning person. I get my best work done late at night *shrugs*. Whatever works best for you, dedicate the time to it and do it. You should dedicate at least one hour to work on your blog/biz to consistently mark things off of your to-do list.

4 / Use automation

This is the secret sauce for EVERYONE that has a blog/biz and a 9-5...but not everyone taps into it. Your commute time and work hours take a huge chunk of your day away. The best way to stay productive is by having robots work on tasks for you when you don’t have the time or ability to do it yourself. Things like posting to social media, tagging people in your email list based on products/services purchased, being notified when a specific email is received, doing market research, etc. There are so many possibilities when it comes to automation, so use the resources to help you stay on top of it all.

Related: Automation 101

5 / Streamline your workflow

If you think about your 9-5 and the different processes that come together to complete a task, you will realize that you are following a workflow that has been created to effectively get the job done (that’s their intention at least!). Follow suit for your own blog/biz and create a streamlined workflow. This will take some trial and error, but once you have outlined the flow that works best for you, it will be golden! This is because your process will be documented and predictable and predictability saves time. No more time wasted trying to remember how or what you did in your process that one time that worked so well. By streamlining your workflow, there will be less room for detours.

"Major companies use workflows. You should use them in your side hustle, too!"

click to tweet that!

6 / Get an accountability partner

A great way to stay on track is to have someone else on your side that makes sure you stay on task. It’s way too easy to get off task and if you have no one to answer to it doesn’t help the procrastination situation. By having an accountability partner, you have someone else that is going to check up on you and make sure that you are staying on track. My friend Katrina of the Chic Little House blog is my accountability partner, so we keep each other motivated and encouraged to keep going. It’s nice to have someone to chat with that understands the struggles of a side-hustler and to exchange ideas with one another. Don’t limit yourself to having a local partner. Katrina lives across the country, but we always make time to chat via Google Hangouts or Facetime.

7 / Use digital organization

There are two types of people in the world...those who like writing notes on paper and those who like to keep track of things digitally. I used to be a paper note taker, but when I realized how convenient and organized my note taking process had become when I tried it digitally, I switched over. Now the only thing that I use my notebooks for is to sketch ideas for new products or anything else that needs to be sketched. If for some reason I am unable to add a note to Evernote (the only way is if my battery was dead; you can work Offline in Evernote!), I would write it down and take a picture of it to upload to my account later. So digital organization is better when trying to run a blog/biz because you need to be flexible and ready for anything. This means if you need to write an idea for a blog post but no paper/pen is handy, you would have to rely on your memory until you got the writing tools. With digital notes, you can add them quickly to an app and be on your way. This also is helpful in the reverse situation where you have a note written somewhere but cannot find it or cannot access it. If you had digital notes, you could access them anytime from anywhere. You can also search for keywords in your digital notes...good luck trying to do that in a notebook.

8 / Set deadlines

It’s easy to get caught up in the “Oh I’m so busy” phrase...but are you busy working on busy work or productive work? There's a distinct difference between the two. Busy work is work that you do that has no true purpose or deadline. You may think it's important, and though it may be slightly important there are things more important that you keep putting off. An example is creating a new business card for yourself. Though business cards are important, they aren't as important as finalizing your sales page for a new product or service, planning out your blog posts for the month or writing an email funnel. These are examples of things that are going to either bring you more coins or more traffic to your website. You also need to set hard deadlines for your tasks. Not doing so leaves too much room to procrastinate. If you're working on something that's going to launch “in the spring”, you're not being real with yourself and you're causing a disservice to your blog/biz. Set a date to it so you know it's real.

9 / Plan content in advance

We all know the old saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It’s true. When it comes to trying to juggle your day job with your side-hustle, the only way to succeed (or at least stay on top of things) is to pre-plan your content. This means to plan your blog posts, social media content, product/service launch schedule, etc. Planning your content in advance enables you to be consistent and you don't have to scrounge around trying to think of content to post. By pre-planning my content, I feel a great sense of relief because I know what to expect and I know what I need to be working on. Trying to progress in anything in life with no plan is a recipe for failure and sure to waste valuable time on things that don’t fit your ultimate goal.

10 / Change your mindset

This means to treat your side hustle as a main hustle. When you treat it as a side hustle, things tend to fall to the wayside and you become inconsistent. You don’t take it seriously and becoming stagnant is the end result. In order to progress, you need to get a little more serious about what you want to do and ultimately take yourself seriously. This is something that I also struggle with, but I have been making a conscious effort to get it together and I’ve been seeing great results because of it. The sooner you get your mind right, the better!

I hope this post has been helpful and maybe you even learned something new! If you liked this information, comment below to let me know.

Hello!

Categories

(aka things that I can talk about all day!)

Ready to up the ante on your productivity?

The 'Gram @LaurenMyersCo

Need help locating something?

5 Things That You Should Focus on as a Beginner Blogger (+ a free guide!)