Erick Schonfeld has a great post about his first six months working at Techcrunch. The reality of blogging becomes apparent when Erick describes their size and scale:

Despite our small size, we are a global organization. When not traveling, Michael and Mark write from California, Duncan writes from Australia, and I write from New York. Somebody is always online—often all of us. Michael literally never sleeps. It is really unhealthy.

Want to build a massive blog that gets tons of traffic and tons of regular readers? Get used to staying up all night every day. Even the once a day bloggers like Jeremiah Owyang get little sleep. Jeremiah is up in the early AM typing out yet another blog masterpiece on a daily basis. As you build a blog that gains traction the addictiveness of it rapidly sets in.

I launched AllFacebook last May and within a matter of months I was staying up until 3 or 4 AM to get the news still rolling in from the west coast and would get up by 9 AM. This is not a piece on my challenging lifestyle though. The reality is that social media will suck you in and you’ll find yourself producing content via Twitter, Facebook and your blog and suddenly there is not enough time in the day to respond to all incoming messages.

So when the competitors are ultimately willing to go without sleep for years and avoid all vacations, how do you create a balanced life? Is it even possible? Well, success never came easily so the solution is not easy no matter how you look at it. Fortunately though I think there is a way to balance your content, build a business and still have a life. Unfortunately, I’m not there yet but I can tell you what my thoughts are on how to get there and you can let me know what you think.

Churning Out Content is Necessary
Some people will tell you that once-a-day is good enough to build your brand. It really depends on how big you want your brand to be but if you really want to go big you either need to pack a lot of punch in every post (as Jeremiah Owyang or Gary Vaynerchuk does) or write like crazy. As Mark Evans points out, packing a lot of punch in one post a day may be more challenging then churning out content quickly.

Churning out content is also extremely useful for building up your search engine traffic rapidly. Take a look at Alley Insider as a perfect churn machine. They pump out content so fast that chances are you’ll never read all of their articles. This model is also extremely useful for taking up space in people’s RSS readers and forcing people to read your content. The bottom line is that content is still king.

Leverage Brand You
As Gary Vaynerchuk says, your legacy is greater than currency. The best thing to do is become well known for producing regular high quality content on a specific topic. Once you become known you can start to leverage your brand to generate revenue through both advertising as well as consulting (if you wish to do so). There is also the potential to earn revenue through speaking engagements (conferences, etc), hosting your own events and other methods as well.

Separate Op-Ed and News
One of the biggest problems when writing blogs is that there is a mesh of opt-ed and news. Each view comes for various reasons and as one Techcrunch commenter points out it eventually becomes to challenging to follow all of the articles. As such it is best to highlight those articles that have quality content and leave them at the top of the site or in a specific location for a period of time so visitors can immediately find the quality content.

Focus on More Than Blogging
Dave Winer screams that the end is near for tech blogging! While I disagree with Dave, the Techmeme pile on is an issue that will eventually be resolved. The reality though is that more people are becoming part of the conversation and that’s all there is to it. While building your blog to a minimal size is critical, once you start reaching a critical mass it’s a good idea to expand beyond blogging.

Unless you want to become a full-time blogger (which is inherently bad for your health), I suggest you expand into other areas outside of blogging. You were already willing to put in the time and effort to get your blog going, you might as well figure out some ways to profit from it. As I explained under “Leverage Brand You” there is more to this world then blogging, and some of it actually can make you money! So build up that blog but build it right because the last thing we want to see is the same old story.

Then again, we all love great stories so if you can tell it better, go for it! What do you think are some good ways to balance blogging and life? Do you think the end is near for tech blogs?

I’ve been working on designing and developing a platform for the Social Times that will embrace and support entrepreneurial communities. The more I think about the concept, the more I realize that the platform is ultimately open-source entrepreneurship. What do I mean by that? No single person can build an entrepreneurial community. Also, no single system can theoretically be designed by a group of two or three people that will effectively build the community.

For proof of that go read this PDF on “Building Entrepreneurial Communities: the Appropriate Role of Enterprise Development Activities.” This is a study that spanned twenty years, close to one thousand entrepreneurs and more than one hundred entrepreneurship assistance providers. I highly recommend taking the time to read it if you want to learn more about building these communities.

In the report, one paragraph stood out to me because I felt it most accurately described the flaw with having a centralized entrepreneurial platform.

We have repeatedly observed ambitious public entrepreneurs who take on these assignments with the primary goal of establishing model programs that would bring accolades to themselves and their sponsors. These initiatives then become competitions for attention, fueled by a talent for publicity, not performance. In these situations, such individuals act alone, under the belief that they can do it better than and without the help of anyone else in the community and under the need to do so in order to garner all the glory.

If anybody is concerned that this is what will result from the Social Times, I can assure you this won’t happen. The new tools that we will be adding to this site enables “the community” to build content that helps everybody. We will also be highlighting the community members and their content on a regular basis. It is our job to help find and support the superstars in the community and help them to leverage social technology to achieve success beyond our own.

We will also be creating programs that help to support those enterprising individuals that want to host events or create other programs that support the community. We want to help the community, not compete with it. We will start by adding a community directory as well as a business directory organized by metropolitan area. The first area will of course be D.C. but we will be expanding rapidly.

I hope to have these two directories up within a week but as you probably know, estimating when a project will be complete is more of an art then science. Is there anything that you would like to see us add to the site? Any other thoughts?

Yesterday, Gary Vaynerchuk posted one of his daily thoughts on life. The primary argument that Gary makes is that good will defeat evil through social media and the internet. I couldn’t agree more. While you can create a false image of yourself online, eventually you will be exposed for who you are. Then again, I believe that people will always be exposed eventually because in my world, the truth always wins.

You may be asking, “what about those that don’t use social media?” Every member of the next generation is using social media and the world will soon be completely connected. Am I scared? Well I’m concerned if the government tries to take over any of these organizations but given that the internet provides true democracy, I don’t see that happening in this country anytime soon (at least I hope not).

Being connected all the time and making your life public forces you to be a good person. You can’t run and hide. Instead, embrace the fact that you are good and you will be rewarded. If you aren’t good at heart you are going to be eventually exposed. It is going to become increasingly difficult to outsmart the system because it is becoming engrained within us. Watch Gary’s video to learn more. Do you agree?

Whoa, that was a creative idea. I’m thinking to myself as I watch yet another person on YouTube come up with an entertaining and interesting idea. Everyday we view engaging content that takes time out of our day and helps us temporarily escape the harsh realities of this world (well at least harsh for some). While watching this engaging content we think to ourselves, “wow, I could do that!” This moment is critical to determining and justifying the following months and often years of our lives (at least for many entrepreneurs).

Justin.tv was one of these ideas for a number of people. They were the beginning of the recent wave of lifecasting services including Ustream.tv, Mogulus and a number of other video services. Overnight, the business plan that we believed was going to make us millionaires dissolves before our eyes as we see a new competitor enter the market with more funding, a better board and significant media coverage.

Everyday I have another person contact me with their “brilliant” idea that will make them fortunes. All they need is to launch their new free service that they will begin charging for 6-months down the road. Competition is harsh and without an extremely catchy idea or a serious team of advisors it will be practically impossible for most people to build something substantial.

Conversely, now is one of the few times in history where a few thousand dollars can get your product out the door and tested by the market. Today, Michael Learmonth posted about Mogulus and how their new revenue model is charging people. Brilliant! Charging people for a service is something that has apparently alluded many dreamers.

Rather than chasing after becoming the next Facebook or Google, it’s soooooooo much easier to start charging for your service. The funny thing is that charging for your service actually differentiates you from the rest of the pack on the social web. As I told one person today, you can charge for your service or go out and chase for investment money. The latter is a great idea if you are a good salesperson and well connected. For the rest, charge for your service!

Even if you are somehow able to talk an angel investor into writing you a check for $250k or even $1 million, not figuring out who your actual client is will kill your business. There are very few services that can run for free (or ad supported) and expecting yours to be that one is not a great idea. Then again many of my ideas are ad supported but hey, I’m one of the few that can make it, right?

Maybe I should rephrase my statement. If you don’t have a revenue model for your business, don’t bet your life on it. Figure out a way to make money while building your free service, otherwise you may just end up broke. Entrepreneurship is not about risking it all, it’s about taking smart risks. What do you think? Should startups charge for their services?

The future of D.C. technology meme has spread across all of the D.C. blogs and discussion is taking place in all the comments and on Twitter. One thing is for sure, there is a strong presence of social media professionals in D.C. I would argue that this segment will continue to grow naturally and doesn’t necessarily need management, unless of course you group it with the entrepreneurs which appears to have naturally occurred.

For those of you not in D.C. I’m sorry for continuing to talk about this so much but trust me when I say that it has future implications for your city as well. The supposed lack of funding and the inefficiently organized entrepreneurial community is something taking place around the country. If everybody was blogging and Twitter I think we’d all be good to go but unfortunately that’s not the way it is.

The Social Times will be launching a new platform over the coming weeks to enhance the community and help things grow. We have already seen a disconnected set of services online and events offline. What many have discussed is an “overreaching organization.” I don’t think this requires significant management by the participants, it simply requires one central location that can be referred to when anything is taking place.

Additionally, when entrepreneurs are in need of investors, or new startups are in need of lawyer or an number of other circumstances that take place in an entrepreneurial community, all the participants can reference one location. What I’d like to see happen is this D.C. technology meme end and we all simply become participants. Not just in D.C. but in entrepreneurial communities around the country. D.C. is just the first place where we prove that such a system can be developed.

Over the past few weeks I have been browsing around, calling people and attending events to find out what already exists in the community that we believe does not already exist. Additionally, I’ve been looking for services that actually don’t exist. What I found was a number of resources that most people simply didn’t know about. With this in mind I ended up revising the vision of the Social Times to “leveraging social technology to build local entrepreneurship communities.”

My theory is that most of the resources already exist we just need to make them more accessible to the community. That’s why I am working to build a platform that will help build this community. I’m hoping that others can help build it and benefit from it. My goal is not to promote our services but instead promote the members of the community. All for free. This will take place in a matter of weeks, not months.

I also believe that providing valuable media about leveraging social technology for entrepreneurship is important and as such we will continue to produce articles on a daily basis. You will see a number of new media channels on this site and new services to accomplish these goals. Media is no longer one-way, it is participatory and as such I believe the Social Times can succeed at accomplishing its goals.

I will give out details about the features of the platform in the near future but look for the services to be rolled out quickly. What features would you like to see? Is there something bigger that you think I’m missing here?

Last night I attended the D.C. New Media Meetup. I got into a conversation with a number of people about this drive for building the D.C. technology community and more than building the community (which already exists), building an environment that is supportive of web startups. We already have a number of local web startups that are doing well but there appears to be a significant disconnect from these companies the community and the investors.

LaunchBox Digital, the local early stage investment fund, was a welcomed addition to the D.C. community. Unfortunately not everyone who applies gets selected and this has been discouraging for a few applicants. We are on the verge of something big. There is more buzz surrounding D.C. technology, there are an increasing number of investors and there is also more vocal participants than ever before.

There are still parts of the community that are learning though. As we all know, D.C. is not your traditional web startup community in that we don’t have a local university that is known for technology and we don’t have the risk taking environment. In order to build this environment I think we need a few additional things beyond the things I’ve previously mentioned.

Entrepreneur Education
If we are going to get a thriving group of entrepreneurs we need people to be educated about what it means to take risks, how to approach getting funding and how to know when to quit. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from a number of people about what’s lacking but I also think that there is plenty here and sometimes it is not the community. We read in Techcrunch about new startups getting funding everyday (well frequently at least) and it leads a lot of other people to think that they deserve funding for their crazy internet idea.

I’ve had crazy internet ideas and so far none have received funding but I have learned something from the people that do receive funding: it’s not about the idea, it’s about the team. Also, if you are going to get funding you better start networking like crazy because locally there are a lot of investors that think and act like Warren Buffet. Check out the following video and you’ll know what I mean:

Active Leaders and Educational Events
There are a lot of big named business people in the D.C. area. None of them are at any events. While I don’t expect them to attend the average happy hour, we need to have events where inspirational people can speak. When I saw Mitch Kapor speak at an event with Facebook developers out in California last year, I saw what was different about Silicon Valley. There are leaders that are at the events and are acting at mentors to the community.

I’d like to get a series of events where we have speakers talking to the local entrepreneurs. I’ve already begun planning on one but that hasn’t been announced yet. What events do you think would help build this community further? What else do you think would be helpful to continue building the community?

Tonight there will be a panel at George Washington University on entrepreneurship. The panel includes Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital (previously interviewed), Jon Jackson of Mobile Posse, Andrew Ryan of ARC Solutions and Thom Wallace of emPivot. Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs is streaming the event live. The event should start streaming below momentarily: