This is How Many Hours Bloggers Work Per Week
The number of hours that bloggers work per week varies according to several factors such as their writing and organizational skills, their overall level of experience, but mostly their blog’s stage of growth.
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Contrary to what many may think, a blogger’s job goes far beyond writing and posting articles.
Technical maintenance, marketing, and the search for additional sources to generate income play significant roles in how much time professional bloggers spend working on their blogs.
It’s also vital to consider that early-stage blogs — that is, when blogs are not properly set up and legal yet, there are still few articles posted, little traffic, and generating little to no money — take more work than blogs that are already well and truly underway.
Therefore, the number of hours bloggers work per week will vary greatly from case to case.
So, if you want to know how much time bloggers spend blogging on a weekly basis, in this article I will clarify which blogging tasks are required at each blogging stage and how many hours bloggers need to work on them per week.
If you want to start a blog that makes money in 2022, but you have no previous experience blogging and no coding skills, check out this guide to easily get started today!
Table of contents
- This is how many hours bloggers work per week on EARLY-STAGE BLOGS
- This is how many hours bloggers work per week on UNDERWAY BLOGS
- Here’s how many hours bloggers work per week when making FULL-TIME INCOME
- Summary
- Conclusion
Disclaimer: The information presented here represents the average blogger and may vary based on experience, ease of learning and blog niche. I.e. not all blog niches demand the same blog post length. Some niches work well with blog posts of 1200 words, others require more complex posts that easily exceed 3000 words.
Take niche variables into consideration as you read this article.
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This is how many hours bloggers work per week on EARLY-STAGE BLOGS
First, the bad news: early-stage blogs require bloggers to work a lot more compared to underway blogs and blogs that already make a full-time income. This extra work can be broken down into fewer blogging hours per week, but that means the blog will be stuck for a few more months in the initial stage.
Now the good news: after a few months, you’ll find that running a blog is a lot less work than you thought.
Okay. Right. But how much time do you need to run an early-stage blog, exactly?
Well, in the beginning, it will depend on your available time, actually. So there’s no specific answer to this question.
Chances are good that you start your blog while working a 9-5 job, so you’ll have to put in whatever time you can, whether it’s 30 minutes a day or just 2 hours on the weekends.
The important thing is that you start.
Once you get started, your time spent blogging will be to complete the following list of priorities:
Putting an SEO-friendly WordPress Theme on your blog
An SEO-friendly WordPress Theme will allow you to easily (no coding skills needed) make your blog look the way you want it regardless of the device your future audience uses.
This process is quite pleasant, as you will start to see your blog come to life and acquire personality.
However, until it gets the look you like, you’ll probably have to experiment with a lot of color combinations and layouts, which will take time.
Also, you may need to use photo stocks and an easy-to-use web design tool like Canva so that you can create banners and logos for your site. It will cost more time, of course.
Estimated time: 2 to 6 hours.
Connecting your website to Google Analytics
You must create a Google Analytics Account and connect it to your website to track pageviews, unique sessions, bounce rates, searches made on your website, conversions, outbound clicks, and much more data.
Use MonsterInsights to quickly, easily and properly connect the two of them without the use of coding.
Estimated time: 1 hour.
Installing the must-have plugins (for security and productivity)
Must-have plugins are:
- Security plugins like iThemes Security and BackupBuddy
- Productivity plugins like WPRocket (to make your website faster and better your search engine rankings) and All In One SEO (to make all of your articles SEO-optimized, so you can get traffic from Google).
Estimated time: 1 to 2 hours.
Securing your website
Every single day 30,000 WordPress websites are hacked. And to make it worse, hackers’ favorite prey are small to medium-sized sites. So you must secure your website.
Grab this free checklist with reliable instructions so you don’t have to spend hours on Google looking for fragmented information on how to secure your WordPress blog.
Estimated time: As a beginner, securing your website will cost you approximately 4 to 8 hours.
Writing your About, Contact and Resouces pages
Your ‘About page’ tells your audience your story and/or the purposes of your blog, while your ‘Contact page’ tells when and how your audience and potential business partners can contact you, usually using forms like the ones easily created with WPForms.
The ‘Resources page’ directs your audience to the content on your site that has the most important information related to your niche, as well as recommends services and products that you think may be beneficial to your target audience.
But since at this stage of your site you still don’t have any blog posts and no partnerships with affiliate programs, you’ll have to come back to create this page at some point later.
Estimated time: 3 to 7 hours (taking into account that this step involves creative processes and that they may need several updates).
Making your blog legal
Blogging is a job. And as a job, it has legal implications.
So, to avoid getting into lawsuits and other problems with the law, you need to make sure that your blog meets legal requirements such as having a Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, Affiliate Disclosure, etc.
Estimated time: 3 to 5 hours.
Writing your first 10 articles
After writing your first ten 1200-1500 words blog posts, you will have a better idea of how much time you will have to spend blogging. After all, the amount of hours bloggers work per week is mostly dedicated to researching, writing and posting articles.
Also, if you’re new to writing, these first 10 articles will help you familiarize yourself with keyword research and post structures.
Don’t be surprised if these processes get faster over time: this is a sign that you are acquiring practice in the craft.
Estimated time: 4 to 7 hours per article, counting research and editing time, and assuming you don’t have much writing and research experience yet.
Optimizing your website structure for SEO
To make your blog structure SEO-friendly, your website’s hierarchical pyramid must be easily understood by search engines. I.e. you need to let search engines know which blog posts are most important and which main topics and subtopics they belong to.
The purpose of this optimization is to improve your rankings on Google.
Don’t be alarmed if you have no idea what I’m talking about, this article has a step-by-step guide on how to do this optimization!
Estimated time: 4 to 6 hours (because it’s still a small blog with little content)
Applying to Affiliate Programs in your niche
Applying for Affiliate Programs should only be done after you have a minimum of 10 blog posts published and a professionally designed website. That’s because your website will be visited by those responsible for the companies’ affiliate programs before they decide whether to approve your website or not. Therefore, make a good impression.
This isn’t always the case. Some programs approve right away without involving any bureaucracy, but this is not the norm.
Also, it is important to mention that in most programs, you will have to fill in forms regarding the payment of fees in your country (which is not difficult to fill in, just boring).
After applying, it takes a few days for you to be informed by email whether you/your website has been accepted or not.
Estimated time: 30 minutes to 1 hour per application, depending on the information required by the program. So, if you apply for 10 programs, expect to spend from 5 to 10 hours.
Number of hours bloggers work per week on EARLY-STAGE BLOGS — Recap
Bluntly, a blogger who is just starting out will spend around 63-115 hours working on the initial stage of their blog.
That is, if the blogger intends to move from their blog’s initial stage in 2 months, it means that the blogger will work from around 8 to 14 hours per week.
This process could be concluded in 1 month or less. However, it is necessary to consider that the average beginner blogger usually has to balance their side hustle with a 9-5 job, which leaves them just a very few hours a day to dedicate to their blogs.
So don’t be surprised if, for you, this process takes not 2, but 3 or 4 months.
Note: Keep in mind that, in addition, there are other small tasks like creating new email accounts to keep all the services you use related to your blog organized, finding the mailing list service that best suits you, creating accounts in services such as PayPal and/or Payoneer for you to receive international payments, starting a Pinterest (a rare case of a social media that still has any use for bloggers) Bussines Profile, among others.
So add a few more hours into your countings.
This is how many hours bloggers work per week on UNDERWAY BLOGS
Okay, you’ve finished your blog’s initial stage. That is, now your blog is safe, SEO-optimized, and professionally designed. It’s also operating legally. And you’ve installed the must-have plugins and published the must-have pages as well as your first 10 blog posts. On top of that, you already have your first partnerships with affiliate programs.
Now it’s time for you, as a blogger, to focus on writing, ideally, at least two 1200+ word articles per week, maintenance, and promotion.
Writing two 1200+ word articles per week
Estimated time: Around 4 to 7 hours per article, counting research and editing time.
Maintenance
Estimated time: Around 1 hour per week to update plugins/Themes and check analytics.
Promotion
Estimated time: 2 to 4 hours per week to create content add share it on social media, be it Pinterest, Youtube, or any other.
That is, an underway blog will take the blogger around 11 to 19 hours per week.
Note: You may have noticed that underway blogs demand a bit more weekly working hours than early-stage ones. That’s why I split the early-stage working hours into 2 months! As early-stage blogs are still in the “setup” period, they don’t require a very rigid routine. You can take as long as you like to finish this initial setup.
However, ongoing blogs require a posting and maintenance routine. So you have weekly commitments. Not meeting your blog’s weekly requirements can cause technical problems, as well as delay and compromise the speed of your blog’s growth.
Here’s how many hours bloggers work per week when making FULL-TIME INCOME
Full-time bloggers are skilled bloggers who know their craft well. They perform researching and writing articles with speed and quality, knowing how to fix human and system errors that sometimes happen to WordPress, exchanging professional emails with agility, and always looking for new ways to increase their sources of income.
Also, many full-time bloggers outsource part of their blogging tasks (since they may have the financial resources for it), for example hiring freelance writers.
So full-time bloggers may work even fewer hours per week.
Writing two 1200+ word articles per week as a full-time blogger
Estimated time: Around 3 to 4 hours per article, counting research and editing time. Or simply 1 hour of research per article, if they just do the research and outsource the article by hiring a freelance writer.
Maintenance
Estimated time: Around 30 minutes to 1 hour per week to update plugins/Themes and check analytics.
Promotion
Estimated time: 2 to 3 hours per week to create content add share it on social media, be it Pinterest, Youtube, or any other. Or just 30 minutes to 1 hour if they outsource this blogging task as well.
So, full-time bloggers work around 3 to 12 hours a week, depending on whether they continue to do most of the work or outsource it.
Note: depending on the blogger’s goals, at this blogging stage, when already earning a full-time salary, the blogger may want to develop a course or product. In this case, the blogger will work more hours per week, the number of hours having many variations according to the complexity of the project. Therefore, these additional hours are not included here.
How many hours do bloggers work per week, according to each blog stage? — Summary & Final answer
Early-stage blogs (in their first 1 to 3 months): Around 8 to 14 hours per week
Underway blogs (in their first 4 months up to 3 years): Around 11 to 19 hours per week.
Blogs that generate full-time income (older than 3 years): Around 2 to 9 hours per week.
This is how many hours bloggers work per week — Conclusion
The amount of hours bloggers work per week varies greatly depending on a number of factors, the age and stage of the blogs being the most relevant.
If you start a blog while still working a full-time job, you’ll have to organize your schedule to treat your blog as a part-time job.
As a blogger, you will have to work a lot harder at the beginning, to not earn anything.
So when your blog is well underway, you will work a little less, but the best part is that you will start to reap the first fruits of your blog.
After an average period of 3 years, your blog will already be generating a full-time income and you’ll easily be able to only work around 2 to 9 hours on your blog per week.
Sounds good, isn’t it?
Just remember never to neglect the hours dedicated to work on your blog, even if you are feeling unmotivated! Remember that a blog is like a plant that you have to water and sun for a specific period before it starts to bear fruit and you can harvest it.
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