People often ask me how much time I put into blogging each week, and honestly, I can’t give them a good answer. Sometimes I feel like I am working on this blog always and forever because, um, food is what I’m thinking about 99% of the time. In the June income report from a few weeks ago, one thing Bjork talked about was how much time actually goes into all the different aspects of Pinch of Yum, but we didn’t have any hard numbers to put around that in terms of hours, so I thought it would be interesting (okay fine, very mildly interesting) to take a week and document how much time I actually put into creating posts and working on other blog-related projects.
Of course, the week that I chose to do this documentation just happens to be the week that I’m “on vacation” at the cabin.
I almost decided to throw in the towel and wait to do this until a regular week. But then I realized that maybe vacation blogging hours are even more interesting than my hours in a regular week. Last time we came up to the cabin, I did a much better job of scheduling my posts out in advance so I could disconnect a little bit more, like Bjork talked about in the May income report. It’s one of those awesome bonus perks of blogging – you can do it from anywhere and you can work ahead in order to unplug later. Howwwwever. This time I wasn’t that good at being organized in advance, so between picking blueberries with my grandparents, having leisurely coffee and lemon coffee cake under the pine trees, and baking perfect chocolate chip cookies just because, I was working little bits of blogging into my day.
Here’s what this week has looked like, part cabin and family photos, part blogging hours.
Saturday: a Regular Non-Cabin Day.
Total Time: 3 Hours
8:30am-10:30am: breakfast meeting with Bjork to plan and organize for Food Blogger Pro and Pinch of Yum
3:00-4:00: grocery store trip
Sunday: a Preparing-For-The-Cabin Work Day.
Total Time: 10 Hours
6am-9am: testing the bread recipe, recording new editing tutorial videos for Tasty Food Photography
2pm-6:30pm: testing the bread recipe again, baking dessert pizza, grocery store trip, photographing dessert pizza
9:30-9:45: another grocery store trip (wahh)
10:45pm-1am: responding to emails, sending book downloads, uploading and sorting photos
Monday: Leaving For The Cabin!
Total Time: 2 Hours
5:00am-7:00am: making and photographing salmon, writing recipe, uploading photos
Tuesday: At The Cabin.
Total Time: 3.5 Hours
12pm-1:30pm: responding to email, editing photos
4pm-5pm: editing photos, writing post
11pm-12am: editing photos, writing post
Wednesday: At The Cabin.
Total Time: 3 Hours
6:30am-8:30am: responding to comments, responding to emails, publishing Wednesday’s post
9:00pm-10:00pm: organizing and editing pictures
Thursday: At The Cabin.
Total Time: 3.5 Hours
11:30am-1:00pm: editing pictures for a blog-related project
3:00-5:00: responding to email, responding to comments, writing and uploading photos for post
Friday: At The Cabin.
Total Time: 1.5 Hours
5:30am-7:00am: publishing post, responding to emails and comments
Total Time: 26.5 Hours
I added that up really fast so you might want to double check me. Or not. One thing to realize with these hours is that many of them have nothing to do with actual blog posts. I have several other Pinch of Yum projects that I’m working on in between recipes and posts, so you can take that total time with a grain of salt. Or a pinch of yum. Bad, bad, bad.
I’d love to hear from you on this one! If you have a blog, how many hours do you think you spend working on your blog each week? Do you blog on vacation, or take time off, or schedule posts in advance?
PS. Lemon coffee cake. It’s a good idea.