Systematizing My Blog to Make Life Easier

Family Money Values has been around a couple of years now and is gaining visitors and ground here and there. It is very exciting (and humbling) to realize that someone out there is reading what I write.

I started the site and this blog due to a deep interest in the subject matter being presented. Some days it feels like a really involved hobby – because I have fun working on it, but I do run it as a business. There is a business plan, an operating schedule, yearly goals, an llc, a bank account, a mission and so on and so forth.

It has been so much fun that I have started several other sites. Family Executor is a companion site to this one – for that family member who has to deal with your estate when you no longer can. Aging Bodies is a lay person’s journey into aging – dealing with the changes we all experience as we age and what folks are doing about them. I also am web master for my condo association site – as well as its site developer and secretary!

I love writing so much that I now also (in addition to the site, it’s blog and the 3 other sites I own) write for Prairie Eco Thrifter, Broke Professionals and Life and My Finances!!!

Even though I am ‘retired’ from my career as a Software Development Project Manger, I work full time plus (like 10 hours a day 6 days a week) to keep up with all of the above writing, its consequent research, marketing, record keeping and etc.

I’ve come to realize that just m-a-y-b-e I’m not being q-u-i-t-e as efficient as I could be on the tasks involved (uh-hem, understatement of the year). Since I would like to grow all of the sites (and have a life aside from this business), I envision the need to operate more efficiently and perhaps start getting some more help with things.

In order to become more efficient, I’m hoping to build some blog systems to help me run this blog and my other sites.

What is a blog system?

I envision the overall blog system as a guidebook that tells me (or someone else if they take over) what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, how it needs to be done, with whom it needs to be done and most importantly, why things need to be done.

Inside this guidebook, there will be chapters for each aspect of the business (which by the way is called Family Money Enterprises, llc).

There may be a guidebook for each site, but I will start with this blog and then decide if it’s guidebook can be used for the other sites as well.

What will be in my guidebook?

I believe I’ll start with a general description of the business, my overall goals for it and a listing of its current contents.

I’ll use my pre-existing project plan and business plan to start examining the processes involved in the business. Then I will de-compose each process into it’s specific steps to show it’s reason for existence, who needs that step, what the start and stop points of the step are, what the step produces and what it needs to produce that and who is responsible for the whole process overall.

Once I do that for all the various jobs I do in running the blog, I’ll step back and think about that job or process to decide if it really needs to be done and done by me. I’ll try to figure out how to do it faster and better and then I’ll draw a picture of it and document my findings.

This will take some time! I hope it will be worth it.

How will a guidebook help me?

Once I’ve done this for all of my processes, I will end up (hopefully) with better ways of doing business, ideas on things to outsource or automate so that I have more time to grow the business and a procedures manual that can be handed off to a new owner or a new hire.

Help me?

Do you run a website or have a business? Have you built systems for it? If so, what are some of those and how long did it take you to get where you are with them?