Kent Newsome: “TDavid says you need at least 75 posts a month to be in growth mode. Historically, I would have disagreed with that, but I come from an old media perspective, having written for newspapers and trade journals for years (where a coveted monthly column became burdensome to the point of impossibility). But having been involved in the blogosphere for a few years, I think he’s probably right. If not for the content itself, for the content and the embedded links to draw other writers to your site, and to seed the reciprocal links which are, for better or worse, one of the established measuring sticks for blog readership.”
75 posts a month? I made just 35 posts in all of 2007 (36 with this one). I only came near that in March 2005, with 73 posts.
Actually, what TDavid says is:
The sweet spot for a blog is 75-150 quality posts per month. That should be the goal number of posts for most (but not every) blogger wanting to grow their traffic. Notice I threw the word “quality” in there.
It would be easy for me to say that I’m happy with my readership levels (around 260 visitors a day, on average) but who am I kidding?. Of course I, like everybody else who keeps a blog, would like to have a thousand daily visitors, and then 2000, and then more. If that takes 3 to 5 quality posts a day, there’s no way I can make it, but at least I can try raising my pathetic average of 7-8 posts a month.
You can take this very post as the first step towards that goal.
…and how much visitors per day does planetapache.org have? Perhaps this could be added
Me personally as a reader I prefer real low noise so that planet signal wouldn’t get lost.
I have never had a desire to have a thousand visitors. I write because writing is a way to express myself. I know that people read it, but that’s not why I write. I mean sure, there are some things that I write in the hopes that certain people will read them, but a thousand? That’s never been a goal. There are at most a few dozen people who I really care about reading what I write. Writing 3 posts a day purely in order to grow my readership seems very artificial to me.
Ugo - thank you for the mention. If increasing the number of posts would hurt the quality of your writing I’d be among the first to say don’t bother.
DrBacchus - you might have missed the emphasis in my post (or perhaps didn’t follow the link above to read my complete 2,750+ word post?) on the importance of quality too? Quality and quantity are two major components.
Noticed that you used the qualifier “purely in order to grow [readership]” which I’d agree with your statement. If one only has a goal to grow readership but doesn’t care about the words, the material, the art than they aren’t really writing, they are running a post factory.
I blog when the mood takes me. And even then, my blog isn’t the only place I write. And I’m prefectly happy with a small fraction of that posting rate. Readership? I’ve no idea.
But 75-150 posts per month? It’s hard to think of a blog more successful/popular than Groklaw at its peak, but she averaged maybe 5 posts a week.
niq - most of the top visited/read blogs are written by groups, not individuals, like Engadget, Lifehacker, Boing Boing, see a breakdown of the top 10 by Technorati authority here: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20070515/4496/
It’s not uncommon to see 75-150 posts per week for some of the these blogs.
Even single author blogs like Michelle Malkin (#10 on the list) are often updated more frequently than five times per week. Heck, I just counted 9 posts from Michelle today already and the day isn’t even over.
If you look at some of her posts though they’d fit what I’d deem the less quality category.
As a reader I’m turned off by too many posts from a single publication/feed because I think the quality does tend to suffer but I’d think most readers can comfortably follow a feed with 2-3 quality posts per day.
Thanks for the comments, folks. I would like to reassure you that I’m not going to turn this blog into a dumping ground just to reach some number of postings. I don’t have the time nor the qualities to do that, especially with English not being my mother tongue.
Still, I used to manage to do at least 30-40 posts per month at the beginning and I would like to go back to those averages. This might not bring me a thousand daily visits, but even without setting me a specific goal, I’d like to see a growing trend instead of the mostly flat graph I am seeing now.
Ugo,
Posting 75 times a month is ridiculous. That would be approx. 2-3 posts a day. I agree that the quality of your posts would have to suffer. In all honesty I originally came here to seek a joost beta invite but I ended up ready most your blog for this month. I laughed at Master Yanagiryuken and I was pissed when I read about what happened to Rebekka on Flicker. If you wrote 75 posts a month, good posts like previously mentioned would we lost in the muck. You write a quality blog with a certain panache and wit. I’ve added you to my aggregator and I look forward to your next post.
Take Care
Pete