Pro Blogging: What to do when you have no internet

Sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed describing myself as a professional blogger (Hi! I’m Kate! I make stuff out of paper bags and playdough for a living!) but I guess that’s what I am. Yes, I’m a stay at home mum too but this blog is my job, it’s how I put food on the table so I have to treat it with the same kind of seriousness as I would any other form of employment. Over the last year I’ve had a few real technical struggles with blogging – not great for me as I’m a secret technophobe – and one of the main and most obvious was having no internet at home. Twice in fact because we moved house twice in a year, so today I’m sharing what I learnt about blogging and broadband as well as how to keep your blog running if you don’t have access to the internet at all.

 

Know what kind of internet you need

As a family we use the internet for Facebook, Youtube and Netflix. Add on my work and that’s even more time online. Oh, did I mention that my husband works from home on the internet too? Yep. If you work from home using normal internet then it’s only really meant to be for that – normal usage – so if your broadband doesn’t work you can’t really expect them to stress about your deadlines for you. If you’re building your blog and even taking on additional people another option is Talk Talk Business which means that you have specialists able to deal with your business needs, not just your kids desire to watch Minecraft videos on Youtube (that’s not just us, right?!)

Talk to people straight away

If you are moving or if your internet is a bit slow the most important thing is to talk to your provider straight away. If you learn anything from my #BroadbandAndMe story then make it that you need to keep calling people! Moving your broadband can take a while (it took us four to five weeks each time after our move) so you want to get on the list to have things changed as soon as possible.

Find out where you can work for free

If your internet is only down for a little while then coffee shops are a great option as for the price of a coffee you can use their wifi. Bonus here – you get to go out for a coffee which makes a nice change from working at home.

Invest in a dongle

I am ashamed to admit that I had no idea about dongles and mobile internet-y things before we moved – as a blogger I feel like I should know all the tech stuff but the reality is I’m very much a Pre-Industrial Revolution kinda girl. We bought a dongle for our laptops and loaded it up with some data, much more expensive than normal broadband at home but a total lifesaver if you need to keep your business going! These are also really handy if you’re going away on holiday and want to be able to do a bit of work while you go. While some places have free wifi it often only lasts for an hour or so so one of these is great as a back up plan! Above all my experience of moving made me really thankful for the good broadband service that we have normally, you really don’t appreciate how much you use it until it’s gone. For bloggers ensuring that you have a good broadband service is an essential so it’s really worth making sure that you get the best service that you can.

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