How Often To Blog?

New bloggers always face this dilemma on deciding how frequently to put up new posts in their blogs.

Frequency versus Regularity

Before discussing how frequently to put up new new posts in your blog, I think that we should clarify the difference between frequency and regularity.

Frequency is the number of times a new post is put up in a week or day.

Regularity is how often the blog is updated.

While it might seem that these two are the same, they are essentially different. A blogger could be putting up new posts very frequently but not regularly. This could be the serial blogger who has what I called "a posting spurt" where he posts 10 to 20 posts in a single day only to leave the blog alone for a few months before posting again.

On the otherhand, another blogger might post very infrequently but still does it on a regular basis. This kind of blogs are usually personal blogs where the bloggers update it once a week or month. Though the postings are not so frequent, they are nevertheless regular and a reader who is visiting the blog knows that when they visit the blog in a month's time, it will be different.

How Often To Blog?

How often to blog depends on the kind of readers you are expecting. If you post too frequently, you might chase them away as it is usually impossible to keep up with the quality of posts. Many experts agree that the posting frequency should be around one posting a day. New blogs should strive to put up at least 2-3 posts a day.

The issue however is not about frequency but about regular postings. If people are left to guess when to visit your blog, they will give up after sometime especially if they noticed that your blog is not updated regularly. Who wants to read stale news afterall?

How often you should blog also depends on the purpose of your blog and its audience. Once you determine who your audience are, you can safely decide how often you should put up new postings on the blog.

Blogging Does not Equal to Earning Money

Some people think that by blogging frequently, they can earn lots of money through affiliate programs or adsense. This is certainly not true.

I have a few blogs and I realised that certain blogs which I have not updated for weeks or months are still earning me a tidy sum of money each month. Talk about passive income!

On the other hand, certain blogs which I update very regularly and frequently are drawing a much smaller online income. So from this, I can vaguely conclude that though there is a correlation between frequency of posting and adsense earnings, there is certainly no simple cause and effect that can be derived.