Blogging Systems – Input from Philip Taylor

As you know, I spoke at  FinCon13 in a work session this year. The session was for advanced bloggers and was called “How to Build Systems for Your blog”.

During the conference I shared input I have already received from others. During and after the conference I hope to highlight some of that information and share it with all of you.

In this post, we hear from Philip Taylor at PT Money.

Phil is the organizer of the FinCon Financial Blogger conferences and the owner of PT Money whose tag line is Do more with your money in half the time. In PT’s words:

 “This site is about helping you make extra money, save more money, and spend your money wisely. All three are critical if you want to become financially free or build wealth.”

Thanks for your input Phil!

My questions to him are in bold, followed by his answers.

What blogging tasks do you think are most important to spend time on? How do you stay focused on those?

Creating and editing content in various forms. I create a content calendar with rotating categories and seasonal cues.

What tasks are your blog’s main time suckers?

• Writing.
• Round ups.
• Carnivals.
• Podcast edits.

How have you worked towards getting those areas under control and organized?

At times I have outsourced writing and I’ve hired an editor to help. Our content calendar, plus a plugin called edit flow was helpful.

Roundups are now created from my weekly twitter activity. My va goes through my tweets and compiles 8-10 into a themed post.

Carnival submissions are done by my va.

Podcasts are now recorded live in google hangout and auto fed to YouTube. The mp3 is then stripped using a free online tool and uploaded to the server.

Do you run your blog by yourself or do you enlist others?  If others, what roles do they play and how did you define the roles to them?

By myself plus a va (editor) and ad manager (commission based). I used to have a team of writers as well as a second va, but now it’s just us 3.

The ad manager role is defined by the agreement. He has complete control of ad spots and affiliate pages. He gets a cut of the revenue. The Va role is constantly evolving and bases on a running to do list.

If you were to sell your blog, how would you communicate to the buyer how to run it the same way you do?

I would create documents outlining steps. We have some of these already that my va has created.

Thanks again PT.