No blogging shortcuts
I was reading Michael Gray’s article on blogging today, and he mentioned the question of how many blogs one should have:
If you have I’d say three is my recommendation and if you go beyond five you’re crazy unless you really know what you are doing or are paying high quality writers.
I have this one, ChillyCool, Project Mai Tai and Project B-2 Bomber (which is actually three blogs). There are other authors on B-2, so I don’t post that regularly, but I do handle all the administrative stuff – keeping code clean, fixing tech problems, helping authors when they run into tech problems, and moderating comments (which, really, isn’t so bad). I’m tempted not to count the three B-2 blogs, but I dunno. Posting isn’t all there is to it.
It’s a lot of blogs. It really is. And they’re getting to me.
I recently watched someone launch a blog with three posts per day. It took off like wildfire, and I thought maybe if I posted three times a day on Chilly and Mai Tai, they’d take off. But you know what? That other blogger had some damn fine content, built over years of study on the topic. Not unlike the great content I launched B-2 with – and if B-2 was in that other blogger’s niche instead of the more narrow semi-political one it’s in, it would probably have taken off like that.
In short, what I’m saying is there is no trick to launching a blog. The better the content, the better it’ll perform in its niche. The more lucrative the niche, the better it’ll perform for you. And you can only write competitive content in areas where you really have something to say. Whether it’s great info, eloquent opinions, or just a fun writing style… you have to have the content.
For a while there I was posting some semi-crap on Chilly and Mai Tai, just to make up the three posts per day. Then I dropped down to two, and I’m still having trouble coming up with stuff worth talking about. And then I see this in Gray’s post:
Next up I’d say come up with a realistic posting schedule. IMHO the bare minimum you need to update your blog is at least once a week. I’d recommend 3-5 times a week if possible, and if the subject is right daily is ideal. It doesn’t matter to some people, but I’m a big advocate of publishing on a schedule as much as possible. For some readers knowing you publish something new every Wednesday is important. If the leading bloggers in your space are updating daily and you can only get the time to blog once a week you’re going to have a hard time competing.
Okay. The leading bloggers in this niche, which is also Chilly’s niche, and in Mai Tai’s niche, post approximately 5 billion times a day. I mean, seriously, I am not going to compete with ReveNews. But so what? I’ve been doing this site and B-2 for a couple of years now, and you know what I’ve figured out?
- If I take a week off, the traffic drops, but my revenue doesn’t change
- If I post twice a day, my traffic continues its steady growth and revenue doesn’t change
Why am I killing myself to post so much? Gray’s right – I should post once a day on Chilly and Mai Tai, 5 days a week. This site, I think it’s safe to just speak when I have something to add. It’s established, the domain age is there, you guys are there… you don’t want to read me blithering just to fill space.
It’s a bit frustrating if you look at it in terms of "So I’ll never become a hugely rich blogger". But I’m looking at it this way: I can eventually get to a full-time living with this stuff with just 3-5 posts a week on each blog. Because I have so many blogs, there’s a good chance all of them will pull in a decent bit of income eventually, or one of them might take way off or lead to something very lucrative. Instead of posting for hours every day, I can look at better monetizing schemes for my sites now. I can look at things I’ve been putting off, like buying domains to point to my sites.
Related posts:- One more note on video blogging
- Lowering standards
- Advertise yourself here
- New plan for this site and Chilly
- Online earning: no tricks or shortcuts, just hard work
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2 Comments »
June 1st, 2007 at 10:12 am
Great post, Sapphire. I’ve been going through much the same thought process as you about posting frequency.
I have two blogs that I’m very slowly building up a readership for – one of them is going very slowly indeed
But I’ve more or less decided that when I write an article, it’s usually a pretty good article, but writing several good articles a day or even every couple of days isn’t where I want to be.
So far it seems to be working. On one of my sites, I’ve been posting anywhere from once a week to three times a week, and my traffic has been building nicely and I’m staying on people’s feed readers – as soon as I post, they come.
And it’s far less stressful!
Belle
June 6th, 2007 at 10:02 am
In the end, I have to say I’ve seen some blogs get huge without posting more than twice a week and others that post several times a day aren’t really doing well enough to justify that effort, IMO.
ALL of my sites are building slowly but surely, and have been from the start. Overnight leaps in traffic would be lovely, but there’s no guarantee that more posting would make that happen, so why knock yourself out?