Behind the scenes of a work from home day is kind of difficult for me to explain what a work day looks like when I work at home. Seems like I just stay home and do nothing all day but au contraire, a work day has many steps and I have to complete all of them. Today I will take you behind the curtains and show you what really goes on behind the scenes.

You’ll see my daily routine and how I structure and manage my time efficiently. After all to get results, this type of work is pro-active and performance based.

Ok so let’s get into it.

It all starts with the set up. I move my furniture around to align the camera and teleprompter for the best shot possible (sometimes I move that later on, like when it’s time to shoot).

Next, I open my blog and log into the back office of my website, once I’m in, I click add a new post to get started.

From there, I open my keyword research tool (Market Samurai) and I do my keyword, check out, what’s the competition, what people are looking for online, I assess my competition and I look what it’s all about, if there’s a keyword I’m not sure about, I just go check it out and see what it’s all about and from there I assess what my competition is so I can make an informed decision on which keyword to target.

After that’s done, I open up some Private Label Rights articles that I have and do research on the internet to get my mind creative and get brainstorming ideas. I read some stuff and what I like I talk about it in my article and just start to write.

I like to get ideas and point to Wikipedia as it’s known as an authority site online therefore when I point to it from my blog post, I’m perceived as a publisher who gives a great user experience to my readers therefore am rewarded in search rankings.

Sometimes you get writer’s blog but that’s ok, that’s normal, you can take a little break, come back or just plow through that. Once your article is done, you want to make sure your keyword is in your meta tags, so title, description, keywords, images etc that’s really important for SEO. When you get your images, make sure you use images that are a part of the public domain, or make sure that the copyrights allow you to have them on your site. Once you have your image, rename it with your keyword.

When I talk about different tools or products, I like to find various resources available on the internet. From there I look if they have an affiliate program available. This means that if someone coming from my website buys something from them, then I’d get a percentage commission on it. That’s one way of many ways to monetize your blog.

My rule of thumb is that if I’m talking about one service or product, I like to offer my readers the choice of various opportunities and not “pressure” them into one. By giving 2 or 3 choices, then the reader makes their own decisions.

I keep track of all my work in an Excel document. In there I right the names of my saved articles, if I recommend products, the link of my blog site, Youtube URL and many other things related to that piece of content.

Coming back to my article writing, it’s good to take a look on the actual website, that way you get an idea of the look and feel to see if you’re going in the right direction.

Once I’m happy with my article and it’s published on my blog, now it’s time to make the video. I copy my article into Word, save it on my memory stick and put it into my other laptop with the teleprompter software, set-up the camera and teleprompter then I’m ready to go.

I change into more presentable clothes (shirt and tie usually) for a good first impression. Turn on the lights, then action. I get started. What I like about having the teleprompter is that it keeps me sharp, I don’t fluff talk, I don’t side track, I’m very precise, stay on target and I actually really, really enjoy it that way.

Behind The Scenes After Filming

After I’m done recording (which is the fastest part, big chunk of the day goes into writing and preparation), I take everything from the camera and upload it into the computer so I can start editing in my video editing software. I personally use Sony Vegas but there are many other good ones out there.

The first thing to do when editing your video is to cut all the scrap out. So bloopers, tongue twisters, distraction noise, telephone interruptions, etc. All that’s got to go! So you keep it nice and clean and precise.

Coming back to the video, when I talk about specific companies or sites, I like to take screen shots and insert them in the video. So when I talk about it, my viewers can get a visual reference. It also gives it a clean professional look. It kinds of separates you from the rest, you’re going the extra mile.

When I do the final play, I double check for any mistakes, quite often you’ll pick up on a few things so you just go in and re-adjust. Once everything is to your liking then it’s time to render. It takes a little bit of time for that however you don’t have to be there the whole time it renders, you can do something else.

Next you want to do your “poster” or your Youtube thumbnail while you’re uploading your video on Youtube. Update the thumbnail image with yours, copy and paste your article in the Youtube description, put in the tags (same as your keywords), add it to your playlist (optional), then click publish.

When I’m done that, I take the Youtube URL, then embed it into my blog post, take note of it in my master Excel worksheet and voilà! A brand new article with great content has been posted.

That’s what I do every day, that’s my process.

In conclusion, my day is broken down into 6 sections, brainstorming, writing, publishing, recording, editing and uploading. A typical work day is about 6 hours of productive work (if you don’t count any breaks or education) but sometimes can go up 8 or 9 hours depending what I’m doing.

In my case I chose to do one video and blog post per day from Monday to Friday but if you want to do it part time, nothings stops you from doing like 2 or 3 per week. The idea here is to have a schedule and be consistent.

What about you, what does your behind the scenes look like?