How Much Time Should Professional Writers Spend Blogging?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Tim Ferriss, star blogger and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, recommends posting no more than two to four times a week (although, lately it looks like he's posting more frequently than that); he prefers to post twice a week, focusing on quality over quantity. His reasoning is that it takes an average of three days for a post to really penetrate the blogosphere, and by letting truly quality posts stand for several days, he can generate more comments per post, enhancing the popularity of his site. In an interview with Darren Rowse at Pro Blogger, Ferriss says, "if I post just infrequently enough (for me, once every 4-6 days), the comments add up on each post, making the site look very popular, and rss subscriptions spike. If I post too often, it doesn’t look popular (since posts get pushed down and comment-count is low), so it is actually better for my site to post less often!" His approach seems to be working--his last five posts have accumulated 50, 57, 43, 47, and 114 comments each.

Strongly arguing against that perspective is Deborah Ng of Freelance Writing Jobs, number two on Michael Stelzner's Top 10 Blogs for Writers for 2007/2008. She writes in a guest post on Performancing.com, entitled, How Often Should You Post?, that daily posting makes a blog more successful. She says the reduced frequency that Ferriss and others advocate is insulting to readers and decreases your traffic and revenue while increasing the same for your competition. Ng says, "The best trafficked blogs are those that post often, meaning several times per day....So don’t post often. Meanwhile, other blogs in your niche will post once or several times a day and that’s where your traffic will go."

I don't think Ferriss has been blogging as long as Ng, who runs several blogs and clearly knows what she's talking about, but Ferriss is an expert at reductionism, reducing things to their essence and finding what really works and what doesn't, and spending time on only those things that really matter. He is the author of a book entitled The Four Hour Workweek, after all.

However, whether frequent posting or minimal posting leads to high traffic and increased revenue is a different question altogether than the one that may matter most for professional writers. Unless you make most of your income directly from your blog (through advertising or direct sales), you're probably much better off spending 95% of your time actually working on projects that you get paid for and marketing your services when you're not actually writing. Spend the remaining 5% on your blog as a side enterprise or hobby that may begin to reap significant results over time. But your main focus should be on what is actually paying you money right now, and you should look to enhance that.

Bob Bly, one of the best known copywriters there is and the inspiration for this post, argues this as well in a post entitled, Bly’s Theory of Blogging.

He says, "I am obsessed with not wasting time and being as productive as I can. After all, my income is directly linked to my ability to produce quality work at a rapid rate. This November will mark the 3-year anniversary of the launch of this blog, and the experience has led me to Bly’s Theory of Blogging and Personal Productivity, which states: '“Personal productivity is inversely proportional to time spent blogging.”'....the more time you spend blogging, the less work you get done."

Here's the quote that really jumps out at me, what he calls Bly’s Rule of Blogging Time:

“Anyone who blogs more than 10 minutes a day — or more than an hour a week — is spending way too much time reading and writing on blogs.”

Bly does what he advocates--he generally posts only once a week, very short, to-the-point posts based off one clear idea or question. His blog is also extremely simple: it's basically just black text on a white background. He's not looking to monetize his blog with Adsense or that type of thing. Certainly, he doesn't need to, as he's already perhaps the world's most famous copywriter. His point is still well-taken, though. You should spend most of your time on what actually works, what brings a real return on investment and do the other stuff in your spare time.

Newer writers still trying to build their credibility and client list might protest that they have much more free time than Bly has and they need to find a way to market themselves so blogging is a great, forward-thinking way of doing it. There's something to that, but honestly, I think it's an easy way out, the path of least resistance--what new writers should probably be doing, instead of blogging and reading other blogs and commenting on other blogs and brain-storming ideas for their latest blog post, is what many writers hate doing--cold-calling for leads non-stop. That doesn't necessarily mean phone-calling; you can email pitches and queries directly to editors. The point is, instead of passively writing your thoughts (however insightful they really may be) and posting them, you should be consumed with doing what really brings results.

I know that I have gotten all of my writing clients from directly contacting the editors--I simply emailed them and gave my best marketing pitch. Lately, as I've caught the blogging bug, in my enthusiasm for creating my new blog, I've let working on my blog take up time that should have been spent on writing articles I contracted for and marketing for new business. Now, I am getting the articles done on time, and done well, but I could have knocked the projects out much more quickly and used the extra free time to directly market. That's what Bly is getting at and Ferriss, too, when he talks about the 80/20 principle in his book, the idea that you should spend 80% of your time on the 20% of things that actually net results, and eliminate the 20% of things that contribute to 80% of your problems or wasted time.

So, writers, by all means blog. Just don't spend too much time doing it, UNLESS you are, or are planning to, make most of your income directly from your blog, as it appears Ng is doing. Rather, use it as a tool, a small one, that can enhance your much more productive direct marketing efforts. Ferriss got me thinking about this approach, but Bly's views as well as a comment from a relative, really smashed me in the face with the truth.

I'll keep blogging, but only after I've completed all my paying projects and my marketing goals for the day.