Be prepared for your "downtime".

I learned a valuable lesson this week regarding writing in my blog and I think I may have a solution. Admittedly, this is my first attempt at blogging to create income. The income so far hasn't been too disappointing as my readership is still a bit lower than what I would like to see it (hint hint... please subscribe to my fee or link to me for a link back). But this week I got sick and wasn't able to blog at length.

There may be other times (other than being sick) that you may not be available for blogging. Maybe you are going on vacation and won't have access to the internet for a while. Or maybe you want to do anything else but blog on your vacation. One thing that I have learned in my ventures so far is that you must provide consistent and relevant material to your readers in order to keep them coming back and coming back regularly. This can wear you down sometimes and maybe writing is the last thig you want to do. You need a break.

So I realized it is important to have a back-up plan for those times that you may not be able to post to your blog. You do have several options and I would love to hear from readers if anyone else has ideas for posting in your "down" time. Here are the few that I thought of...

Write ahead of time. Take the time to write an article or two that will be ready to post just by a few clicks of a button. Either write it as a document or (better yet) save it as a DRAFT in your blogging program. It should be completely edited and ready to go. You will probably want it to be something that is relevant to your blog at anytime. For example, if your blog is about animals, I wouldn't draft an article about the latest dog food poisoning updates as this would require frequent updating and could become outdated (hopefully) soon. Instead pick a topic that would be relevant at anytime. You may even decide to head it with a disclaimer that you are away from your computer and offer this article in your absence.

Post-date your post. Some programs or blogging sites will allow you the option of posting your articles at a later date or time. Rather than immediately posting your article, you could space them out over a period of time. This is especially helpful when you are writing in a series of articles and want to have your content continue without interruption. Let's say you are writing about how to make a million dollars in seven days and are posting one post for each of the seven days. You could type all of the articles ahead of time and set the publishing date to publish an article every other day. If you don't have this option, consider drafting them all first as I mentioned above. Then all you need is a quick click or two while on vacation to publish!

Have a friend publish for you. If you have a friend who you trust to write content and publish in your blog, this is always an option. This would require that you completely trust the person as you will need to add them as an author to your blog.

Pull some content from a free content site. This isn't a favorite method of mine because it did not take me too long to learn that your own content is better than reposts of others. In fact, the only time you will see me use others content from now own will be as an inclusion of my own posts. But if you are pressed to post and don't feel creative, this it is better to pull some free content than let your blog suffer.

If all else fails, be honest. It's better to post a simple "sorry I don't feel well" or "I'm on vacation" quick message that lets your readers know you haven't abandoned them.

Remember that sometimes you may need a break or may not be up to the task of creating that wonderful content that you have been known for. And alot of programs that will pay you to blog require that you make regular entries into your blog. So having a back-up plan should be somewhere on your list of things to work on. I am sure some readers have wonderful ideas so please comment and leave them here! I would love to share them with other readers. And let me know if you think my ideas stink. I've still got alot to learn and would be grateful for the feedback!