5 Simple Rules Which Helped Me to Blog Daily for Over 6 Months And Still Going

I originally started blogging way back in April of 2006.

I remember when I first started my Blog I wanted to build the habit of blogging daily.

I managed to put together a few streaks throughout the years where I blogged for 10 days straight, 20 days straight or even 30 days straight …

… however, I was never able to stick to blogging daily for more than a few months.

Why?

For some crazy reason, SOMETHING always came up!

Meaning, I would be blogging daily for a period of time, and then one day some weird thing would happen like some emergency or some kind of unexpected situation where I wouldn’t get home until 2am in the morning, or I would have to travel somewhere last minute and I would miss one day of blogging.

Once I missed on day of blogging, that was it – my streak was broken and it became WAY easier to not blog for two days in a row…

… and then three days…

… and then my daily blogging habit would pretty much disappear…

And then I would re-start again, and go through the same cycle until I would have that ONE DAY where I would miss one post, and then my streak and habit would be broken.

I did this for almost 9 years of my blogging career, never being able to establish a daily blogging habit.

However as of Dec 30, 2014, just a few days before New Years 2015 I started a new daily blogging habit and have now maintained it for over 6 months without missing a single day.

Here’s how I did it…

Rule #1 – No Blog Post, No Sleep.

I started off by setting a rule for myself.

I can write my blog post at any point in the day, or night.

Knowing my schedule, I knew it wouldn’t be realistic to try to set a specific time during the day when I had to write my post as that would never work for me.

Too many things change in my life, day-to-day, for me to stick to a specific timed schedule.

Instead, I just made the decisions to not allow myself to go to sleep until my blog post for the day is done.

For example, I’m writing this post at 12:34am.  I could be in bed sleeping right now, but I’m not allowed to go to sleep until my post is done.

If I write my blog post after midnight, I set my publish time back to before midnight the day before so that my blog post publish dates are always one day apart.

This way I don’t have two blog posts showing up for one date and zero posts on another date.

I also allow myself to write or create video blog post post on ANY TOPIC and it can be ANY LENGTH, so technically if I wanted to I could write a one sentence blog post and publish that and then I would be allowed to go to sleep. 🙂

By giving myself this option to write any blog post or even to just embed a video as my blog post for the day, it eliminates ALL excuses for not being able write a blog post.

Rule #2 – No “Making Up” Posts

Another thing that tripped me up before was the belief that I could “Make Up” blog posts if I skip them one day.

Meaning, I used to think that I could skip one blog post one day and think to myself “Oh, I’m really tired, I’ll just skip this one post today, but tomorrow I’ll write two blog posts.”

That NEVER works!  It’s not the same thing.

If you skip one blog post, you break your streak and that’s it.  It’s over. 🙂

So this time around I told myself that I’m not allowed to even entertain such thoughts.  I either write a post TODAY or I break my streak.  There’s no “Making Up” crap allowed in my plan.

Rule #3 – No Shiny Object Chasing Allowed

Another thing that tripped me up before was that I would be happily blogging on a daily basis and then I would watch a video, or take some course from some Internet Marketing guru and they would teach some kind of super amazing marketing strategy for making money online which was supposedly better than blogging.

I would then look at that strategy, think about it, and think to myself “Hmm…this DOES sound like it could be more effective than blogging.  Let me put my blogging on hold for a bit and let me test this system out for a few weeks, and see what happens.”

And you know what?  Whatever that new strategy was, I would try it out and it would usually produce some quick results short term but then within 30, 60 or 90 days it would fall apart and I would then have to go back to blogging and start my momentum from scratch.

So this time around, what I told myself is that I would Blog daily and if I encounter any marketing strategies or business systems that are supposedly better and more effective than Blogging, I am totally allowed to try those strategies out and test them – BUT I have to still blog daily anyways. 🙂

This way, if the strategy works great, then that’s awesome, but no matter what I still do my daily blogging.

And if the strategy is a flow, then I don’t have to start all over again as I was still blogging daily even while trying out those other strategies.

Rule #4 – Surround Myself With Blogger Energy

Yet another thing that tripped me up before was when I would blog on a consistent basis for a period of time and then I would start hanging out with people who are NOT into blogging and their opinions and energy would affect my thinking in such a way that I would lose my interest in Blogging.

So this time around, I joined Empower Network – which is a community of like-minded bloggers, and every single day I plug into training, hangouts, audios and facebook wall updates from people in Empower Network who are also blogging and making money as bloggers.

By plugging myself into this type of energy, I stay inspired to keep blogging on a daily basis.

Someone once told me that if you’re an eagle, but you surround yourself with turkeys and you hang out with turkeys, pretty soon you’ll start to believe you’re a turkey and they’ll eventually convince you that you can’t fly!

So instead of being an eagle, surrounded by turkeys, I put a lot of energy and time into making sure I surround myself with other eagles who are making money as bloggers. 🙂

Rule #5 – No Excuses

For over 8 years I kept making up excuses for not blogging daily.

I can tell you though that every single excuse that I had seemed like a 100% legitimate “reason” for me not being able to blog that day… NONE of them seemed like excuses.

This time around I just told myself “no excuses”… NONE!

Not even the ones that seem “legitimate”…

… and you know what… in the past 6 months I’ve had about 50 situations come up which I could have EASILY used as a “legitimate excuse” (there’s no such thing) for not blogging that day.

Life gets in the way.  Stuff comes up.

But I don’t allow myself any excuses…not even the so called “legitimate” ones. 🙂

What’s cool about this rule is that once you make the decision not to allow yourself to have any excuses, your mind stops making so many excuses because it knows it’s a futile process of making them up.

The interesting thing too is that I hear other people who want to blog daily making excuses every single day.

Something always comes up.

The only decision you have to make is whether you’re willing to blog daily DESPITE things coming up every day, or will you allow those things to stop you?

What’s REALLY funny to me now is that it’s so clear to me how all my past excuses were all just a bunch of BS.  None of them were “legitimate”.

I mean, in the past when I would skip a day from blogging, because supposedly I didn’t have time to write a blog post, I still somehow found time to respond to emails, and post things on facebook, but somehow I didn’t have time to blog? No, that makes no sense.

I see it all the time today as well.  People tell me they don’t have time to Blog, but throughout the day they post 15 facebook wall updates, and 5 new pictures onto Instagram. 🙂

Blogging daily is not for everyone…

… but if you DO want to build an online business and you want to use the daily blogging strategy that has worked for so many ultra-successful bloggers, you MUST DECIDE to not allow yourself to accept ANY excuse your mind throws at you, regardless how “legitimate” the excuse is.

Summary

This is it.

These 5 simple rules I created for myself have been my secret strategy for being able to blog every single day for over 6 months now.

I created them, and I stick with them, and so far it’s been working out great for me.

What about you?

Are you blogging daily?

Would you like to be?

Leave your answers in the comments below.