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.
