I’ve been struggling this weekend with my feedburner feed. It’s my first time setting one up, and it turns out that my wordpress install and feedburner aren’t playing nicely. Right now, my rss feed is broken, and I’m waiting on someone to answer my support ticket.

That got me to thinking though about all the work that goes into a blog. I was doing some reading last week (can’t remember the blog, sorry), and the author was talking about a friend who thought he’d put up a blog, get some good links, and start raking in the ad money.

Yeah, right.

I’m approaching two hundred entries on this site. In my opinion, a blog probably isn’t going to generate a heck of a lot of traffic until its entries number in the three digits. Naturally, not every entry will be top-notch, but many of them had better be pretty darn good! That’s lots of writing, and a lot of planning. I don’t think many people realize that until they start blogging. I don’t think I realized the time investment this would be when I got started.

I probably spend 20 hours a week on this blog. Most of that is writing, but part of it is management (like the RSS issue, upgrades, etc.). I answer emails and reply to commenters. I also keep an eye out for comment spam and check the management tools to see who’s linking to me and where my traffic is coming from.

Blogging isn’t a get-rich-quick method, but is there really one? If you’re interested in writing for an audience and building audience loyalty, then blogging may be the thing for you. I know the time I spend at it is more than worth it.