1

I rarely visit the actual blog site anymore. Using Bloglines, it makes no difference to me if a blogger posts five times aday or five times a month. Frequent posting is no more a bother than infrequent posting.

Every once in a while, if I notice a blogger hasn't posted in a while, I will re-evaluate whether or not I need to subscribe to it but in the year and a half that I've been reading blogs I've only cancelled one subscription. There are 45 on my Bloglines subscription list right now.

2

Frequent posting can have a negative impact, because it's easy to get behind. I like Doug Wilson's blog, but I frequently deleted it from my bloglines simply because of the frequency of the posts.

3

I would agree with Gregory. I use Bloglines and have started experimenting with Netvibes and Pageflakes. My favorite blogs can go days or even weeks without posting, but I know within hours if they post something new. I find it much more difficult to keep up with frequent posters (such as news sites) through RSS readers. I leave town for a long weekend, and I come back to find 175 new postings from cnet.com! Those are the types of sites I will actually visit.

4

I tend to agree that there is such a thing as "too many" posts in a day. How many? That, I don't know.

Reading via SharpReader, it auto-downloads all new posts from all subscribed blogs. If I get behind, the sites with a huge number of posts do tend to get skipped.

But is one post a day too few? It doesn't seem to matter in regards to traffic, that's for sure.

5

I think a few times a week is plenty to keep readers interested. I also read with considerable interest, Joe, your third anniversary post. It seems to me that you may be feeling some letdown regarding your blog partially because of feeling the pressure of daily posting. You write great stuff, but few of us can come up with great stuff every day. Just for what it's worth, I think most of us would still be around if you cut back a bit. Just a thought.

6

RSS is great. I love it myself and check it daily but I wonder at how many web users actually know how to use it? Though I only use it to show me what's been updated so that I can go directly to that blog instead of reading it in the reader. I currently use Wizz RSS News Reader's FireFox Plug-in.

Surely those that have been in the blog-o-sphere a while are up-to-speed on the RSS tech but I would think that a great many unwashed Internet users have no clue what it is or how to use it. At least that's been my experience when speaking to the average person "on the street".

Another thought, if many of a blog's readers use the RSS feeds to read complete posts how does that affect a blogger who is selling ad space on his weblog with, for example, BlogAds?

I too, think that frequent posting can become a negative, depending on the blog's focus of course. Some topics may lend themselves to frequent posting.

7

I don't like reading blogs through readers like Bloglines and Google Reader. I'd rather go to the site. For my money, I like somebody who does either three or four short things a day or one substantive piece every day or two. The best, in my opinion, are the group blogs that blog on a particular theme and thus keep the content coming without burning out.

8

Thanks for linking to my post, I am happy you agree with some of the points. Actually this very post proves my points since it was connected to by over 150 bloggers. I thought you would enjoy the follow up post that evaluates how this post spread throughout the blogosphere.
Eric

http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/2006/10/01/1683.html

9

I can see how a blog's content might somewhat dictate the pace of updating. A newsblog or political blog may "need" to update more frequently than one that blogs philosophical essays, for example. A blog that particularly encourages discussion might work better with less-frequent posting (depending on amt. of traffic).

(Actually, the term "update" itself encourages a type of prejudice -- sure, fairly regular posting is good, but just how updated does "updated" have to be?)

The problem I have with frequent posting at the blogs I read is that it obviously makes it harder to keep up with them all. Yes, that's my problem, but, it necessitates some sort of limit.

Multiply the number of good blogs out there (that continues to increase exponentially) by frequent updates and you get -- glut. Kintz' #9. There's greater chance that good material will be overlooked.

And maybe that's OK -- there are lots of blogs for lots of people in a good ol' consumerist type of way. But then the blogging community becomes more and more diffuse. And perhaps that can't be helped, and perhaps it doesn't matter...

10

I put the RSS feed of the blogs I like onto my personal Yahoo page. Then, I can see when new posts are added to the blogs I frequent. That way I don't have to be checking blogs for no reason. Sometimes, if the title doesn't appeal to me, I won't read at all.

11

get your own cheap airfare