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How Often Should You Blog?
How often should you blog? This is a question that might be on your mind if you have recently started a blog and want to know how often to post.
And it’s a very common question that many new bloggers have!
Blogging is a great way to make money and I was able to earn a part-time income from it within a few months, and make a full-time income from it after just two years. But it’s definitely not a way to get rich overnight.
In order to make money blogging, you need to consistently publish high-quality content on your blog. You can’t expect to publish five or ten blog posts, and suddenly be earning thousands of dollars per month.
If you are wondering how often you should blog to make money, read on!
Is There an Ideal Blog Post Frequency?
One of the key differences between a blog and a traditional static website is that a blog is regularly updated with new articles, AKA blog posts.
Blog posts are often shown in reverse chronological order, with the most recently published posts appearing at the top of the website.
So what is the ideal blog post frequency?
Most blogging experts agree that you should be publishing between two and four new blog posts per week in order to get the best results.
However, this is not a hard and fast rule.
If you can publish more frequently, that’s great! But if you are only able to publish one new blog post per week, that is perfectly okay too.
The important thing is to remain consistent, and not to sacrifice quality for quantity. It might take longer for your blog to grow if you are only able to publish one new blog post per week, but as long as you stick with it, it will grow over time.
When I start a new blog (and I have started and sold a number of profitable blogs now) I challenge myself to publish as much as I can in the first month.
This usually isn’t too hard, because when I start a new blog, I typically have a lot of ideas built up. If I get in the zone, I can publish 15 to 20 blog posts in a month. But for me, that pace is not sustainable in the long term.
Once I have a solid base of content published, I give myself a break and drop down to a less intense schedule of writing new content.
For example, I might go down to only writing five new blog posts per month after I spend a month or two publishing as much as I can on a new blog.
How Many Blog Posts Do I Need?
This took me a surprisingly long time to realize, but the more blog posts that you have published, the more money you will generally be able to earn.
It makes sense when you think about it.
The difference between having 50 blog posts published and 250 blog posts published is huge. With more content, you can get more traffic, which equals more money. I have noticed that most bloggers earning a full-time income from blogging have published at least several hundred blog posts.
When I first started blogging, I was lucky to have posts go viral a few times and bring me a lot of traffic on blogs that had very few blog posts published.
One blog I started had under 20 blog posts on it, but within the first month, I had two posts go viral on Pinterest and I was able to get over 10,000 pageviews. This allowed me to apply for a good ad network and start earning money from that blog very early on. However, this is definitely not the norm.
It seems like having at least 100,000 words of content published (which could be between 50 and 100 blog posts) is the “sweet spot” for when you can really start expecting to see an increase in blog traffic, and therefore start earning more.
Long term, I would plan to publish at least 200 blog posts over the course of a few years. (Which is why it’s important to choose a good blog niche that you won’t get tired of writing about, and that will supply plenty of blog post ideas.)
How Long Should a Blog Post Be?
Another extremely common question, right after how often should you blog, is how long should a blog post be. And once again, there’s no “magic number” answer on the question of how long a blog post should be.
In simplest terms, Google recommends a minimum of 300 words if you want your blog post to have a chance of ranking in the search engine results.
If you can’t write 300 words about a topic, which is only a few paragraphs, you probably shouldn’t be writing a whole blog post about it anyway!
Typically, I aim for at least 1,000 words when writing a blog post. Sometimes if I have a lot to say, I’ll end up writing 2,000 to 3,000 words.
But longer is not always better! I see some blog posts that are up to 10,000 words in length. In my opinion, a blog post is just too long at that point. Unless you genuinely need that many words to convey your topic, don’t make blog posts overly long just for the sake of increasing word count.
I have also written a whole guide addressing the topic of how long should a blog post be if you want to do some further reading on this.
But in summary, write as much as you need to make your point!
What Happens If I Stop Blogging?
One last thing I wanted to cover is what happens if you stop blogging.
As I’ve mentioned earlier in this post, I have started multiple successful blogs over the years. And on all of them, I have gone through phases of how frequently I publish new blog posts. And that’s totally normal!
For example, on Blogging Her Way, I’ve had months where I publish ten new blog posts. But I also once went eight months without publishing a single new blog post. And guess what? My traffic and income weren’t affected at all.
This is because I had already been blogging for a few years and had a solid amount of blog posts published. My traffic was very consistent at this time.
The great thing about blogging is it can be very passive income.
You don’t have to publish new content all the time in order to keep getting traffic and making money once your blog is established.
The reason I’ve been able to start multiple profitable blogs is because once I have a blog earning passively, I don’t have to worry about it as much and can free up my time to dedicate myself to starting and growing a new blog.
How Often Should You Blog?
I hope this guide answered the question of how frequently to blog!
Remember, there is no “magic number” for how often you should blog, and you should never sacrifice quality for quantity in your writing.
Additionally, it’s more important to focus on publishing consistently and prolifically at the beginning. Once you have a solid base of content published (think 50 to 100 blog posts) you can expect to start getting more consistent traffic and earn more consistent passive income from your blog.
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