Rebelbagwan left a comment on my last post asking about posting goals. He writes that he intends to:
“write 5 posts of some quality a day , so far starting from zilch getting currently 60 uniques a day and will try and double this every week , do you think this is realistic and what is your reco for amount of posts per day ( 11000 divided by 3 years per day= 11+ per day in your case ?)”
It’s a good question and one that I’d like to take the opportunity to say a few things about.
- I think it’s a great idea to set yourself some posting goals for your blogs. Goals give you something to work towards – they help keep you on track – they motivate and help you to be more disciplined in your task.
- The number of posts that you choose as your goal will vary from blog to blog depending upon many factors including the topic of the blog (some topics naturally lend themselves to more content than others), the length of your posts, your available time etc.
- I generally advise people to start with a goal of 2-4 posts per day when they are just starting out with their blogging and to gradually increase their posting levels over time. The beauty of starting out smaller is that you get into the rhythm of your blogging, you develop your research and writing skills and so then when you go for a larger number of posts as your goal it is a more realistic and achievable target. It’s like going to the gym for the first time – if you do too much too early you can end up burning yourself out.
- Realistic yet challenging posting goals are very important – don’t set your targets too high – if you do you’ll either burn out or you’ll see the quality of your posts decrease. Set your goals too low and you’ll become lazy, lethargic and become undisciplined.
- Don’t overwhelm your readers with posts. One of the pieces of feedback I had here at Problogger a few months back was that I was posting so many times a day that I was overwhelming some readers. I’d recommend that you consider starting a second blog if you’ve got the time and enough inspiration to write more than 4-5 posts per day.
- Quality posting is just as important, in fact it’s more important, than the quantity of posts you do. Anyone can post 50 meaningless, low quality, unhelpful and boring posts per day – I’d prefer the bloggers that work on my blogs to post 3 original, engaging, witty and informative posts per day than 12 junky ones.
Rebelbagwan’s goal of 5 posts per day is great. Over a year this will build his site to over 1800 pages of content – a substantial sized site. My own posting targets at present seem to vary quite a bit from day to day depending upon what other things I’ve got on. As I’ve taken on a number of projects recently that are not directly about me blogging (eg b5media, six figure blogging and two others that I’m looking forward to announcing in the coming weeks) I’ve found that it’s harder to consistently reach the goals I was working on a few months back. As a result I’ve taken on a blogger to assist me in this.
My own goal is for 25 posts per day on weekdays. Weekends I tend to relax more these days and only post a handful of posts. Keep in mind that I’m a full time blogger and that I have 20 or so blogs. Some of these blogs only get posts a few times a week – others are posted to multiple times per day.
I hope that answers Rebelbagwan’s question – feel free to add your own two cents worth in comments below.
Darren, I think you make a really great point about posting too many times to a single blog. Today I dropped my subscription to Engadget’s feed because to be honest with you, 29 posts in one day is far too many for me to even want to keep up with. If I miss a day or two I’ve got 100 posts to go through.
No thanks : (
Also, I have found that writing good posts really does become easier and easier the longer you do it. I can easily write six posts in a day now, where I used to only manage 2 or three.
One problem I’ve been seeing with a lot of blogs is the reliance on linking to other people’s posts. I mean, it’s pretty boring to read about the same gadget or news story on three different blogs in the space of one afternoon. Sometimes it just seems like a giant echo-chamber. I would think that it would be very difficult to get much of a readership for a blog that just links to everyone else, unless of course you are one of the very few successful link-bloggers.
I guess that would fall under quality of content, eh?
That’s some good advice, as usual. For me, I aim to post at least 1 entry a day, but often go up to 3-4 entries a day. I plan on making it more, and even expanding out to other blogs that are more focused on particular subjects, thanks to your advice. Cheers!
Very good advice for professionals. My personal experience so far:
Me and my friend write about 3-5 entries per week, yup I know that is bit low but we are not professional blogger like all of you ;) but still I get around 600+ unique hits per day. The main reason is quality of content that is useful to readers, sure if we write more, then more hits we get (like 1000+ mark per day).
Other experience is that Adsense work very nicely but Chitka failed to work out; may be chitka suits more for gadgets and tech news kind of site… or may be we need to find out goldan spot :)
The other thing to consider is making some of the posts you write on “burst” days into scheduled posts instead of posting them all at once. It can help buffer the posting frequency a bit. I’ve currently got 3 postings in my queue that will show up over the next day or 2 while I’m doing yard work. I’ve also got a pile of postings that are part finished that I can quickly sit down and polish off into full postings any time I need one.
This all works better if your posts aren’t time-dependent. A post about the score of a sporting event from today isn’t something you’ll want to put on a 3 day delay, but an article like the one we’re responding to (setting posting goals) could just as easily come out on Sunday without suffering from being out of date.
Incidentally, posting “timeless” content also helps for long term traffic building as well. If your article takes the timely discussion and frames it in a timeless way, it’s more likely to continue to be relevant as Google and other viewers over time. I usually just ask myself what about the current event will still be relevant a week from now, a month from now and a year from now and write from that perspective.
Almost every site I’ve worked on has new content go through phases and “waves” of traffic. The first wave is the avid fans of the site. They hit the new content because they’re visiting every day. Then they post pointers back via blogs, places like Technorati and delicious, etc.. The visitors to *their* sites follow those links and become a second wave. At about this time Google usually starts sending the 3rd wave, which becomes the long term source of traffic. Whether that last wave stabilizes into ongoing traffic or not is determined in large part by the timeliness of your content.
Darren, your post itself covered the topic so well and the comments filled in the nuances beautifully. I only have a tiny addition. Posting too often not only overwhelms readers, it discourages comments. That cuts down on the dicussion and also takes away from the sense of community.
Depending on the blog and the topic–Some posts require thinking time before people are ready to comment. Like good wine, they need time to breathe. Give that time and the discussion can keep people returning to the post every ten minutes.
Yes, I agree that posting too much can be a problem. I’ve unsubscribed from some feeds because they’re updated too often. Some authors also rely far too heavily on excerpting their content from elsewhere in order to achieve such a high posting frequency.
Very true ME Strauss – in fact I’ve found since decreasing my posting frequency here at ProBlogger that the comment levels have skyrocketed per post. It means everyone gets a chance to add their two cents worth before the post drops off the front page.
Another tip about writing too many posts: Start small. I’d say 1-2 posts a day is great for the first couple of months. Unless you’re agressively promoting your site, if you post 5 times a day, you’re scrolling posts down the page before anyone has had a chance to read them. If they’re all timeless posts, that’s great – otherwise, slow down and save some of your posting for after the honeymoon period.
Maybe offtopic but I think its a good suggestion to build another blog especially when you own a ‘niche’ blog. Is that what you call it? Sorry, english is not my mother tongue and I’m so used to random ramblings kinda blogs. My current blog is about music and there are times when I desperately need to post alot, I tend to use alot of ‘copy&paste’ posts and it’s kinda killed the whole blog. Looks like a splog to me. Before reading this post, I planned to change my blog to a more open… But I might change my mind and build another blog for other topics that sometimes came out alot but couldnt put in my current blog coz its offtopic?! At least with more blogs, I got more posting options. Hope i didnt confuse you guys.
So my next plan will be, post 1-2 good posts in my current blog and the soon-to-be.
Thanks Darren for taking the time to answer that question and for all the others who offered their opinions , there is certainly a lot there to digest, can’t say I have come across another blog to date where the comment section ( as well as the text blog ) is so so informative.. cheers
Wow, 25 posts per day. Thanks hectic.
I’m a ‘pro blogger’ too, from South Africa, so I have the time to post quiet a bit but clearly I’m slacking with only about 2 or 3 posts per day across 3 different blogs. Ok, its time to get into the blogging gym, and build some posting muscle.
[…] Darren and others discuss different ideas for the number of posts to have per day on your blog. I like all of the ideas, especially about being consistent and and developing some kind of regular schedule. […]