How Often Is Often Enough — Part Two
A few days ago I wrote a post on how often is often enough to post to you blog … it’s here: How Often Is Often Enough … and there I made the major point that regardless of the type of blog or the goals for the blog it’s important to post only when you really have something to say.
But it’s undeniable that the frequency and timing of the posts has got to be given important consideration. If you’re shooting for a niche like this one, for example, you certainly are not going to come out on top unless you make a decent post per day, at least on average, and 2 or 3 would be better.
I mentioned time of posting also, briefly, and in doing a little looking I find there’s a lot more to making a recommendation on time that I had first thought. Mainly this difficulty come from the fact that there are so many times to consider.
- Your web server (or the server that hosts the application if you use a blogging platform such as www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com runs in some specific time zone. You may, or may not, be able to change this. Whatever this value is set to will decide everything about your server stats … visitors per day, month, etc., because the server day will begin and end based on this time zone, no matter where you are posting from. My server, for example, is located in the Dallas/Ft Worth area of Texas, USA, and the server runs on US Central time … so no matter where I am, and where my readers are, a certain amount of my statistics and planning are irretrievably tied to Texas … pure and simple.
- When you install WordPress … or at any time you wish, you can tell WordPress on the very first Option Page to add or subtract hours from UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) also commonly called GMT or Zulu time). Since this is the only time that is the same all around the world, and since the international “flavor” of your readers will amaze you, even if your think they are going to be in the US only, I’d vote that all websites and servers be run on UTC … we’d at least all know what time was what … but this idea won’t fly.
- If you install any “outboard” statistics software such as Google Analytics, SiteMeter, 103bees, Performancing, et al, you will need to know what time these services are using. WordPress Stats, for example, make sit clear: All times are in GMT. Google, though, like all things Google, believes the day begins and ends at the GooglePlex. You can change the time Google Analytics uses for statistics to whatever time zone you wish, but Google AdSense is fixed … All reports for your AdSense account are based on United States Pacific Time (PT), and a day is considered to be 12:00am PT to 11:59pm PT. This means if you want to coordinate clicks and/or earnings from AdSense with posts on a particular day, you will have to correct for whatever difference exists between your server time and “Google Time” and if your blogging software is set to yet another time you must factor that in too. beats me why a company like Google, among the most universal of all on the Internet, ties its time to a local US time zone, including the nonsense of twice a year “Daylight Savings” time changes, but we live in the world we are placed in, not the one we wish to make.
Now that I am sure you’ve read more than enough to put you off time. forever, you can see the foundation of what’s to come. In order to decide how many posts per day and when to post those entries, you first have to decide what you and your blog/site will consider a day and “what time it is” on your particular piece of the Internet.
For my own blogs I find I’ve been inconsistent. Writing this article I’ve seen big differences in statistics between visitors, times of day and earnings. Analyzing them I see that they can almost all be explained/corrected by changing blogging times to the time of my server … which is only two hours from Google time … so I guess two hours is about the “fudge factor” that will have to remain in the equation.
What time do you run you blog on, and how does that differ from your server’s time?
As always, I welcome comments, constructive criticisms, disagreements, questions or just plain talk. You can leave a comment to this post or email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. I’m usually on Yahoo messenger (davestarr) and will be happy to chat there. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.
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It seems that a lot of the big guys only post once per day and still see no drop off in revenue.
It is hard to tell