You’re very welcome for the mention, and I’m glad you liked the post. Ciao for now.

http://www.jhsiess.com/2007/01/21/write-stuff-inspirationh/

That’s what I get for starting a blog with no knowledge of what they are / were. Still, I’m learning from my mistakes.

You can always re-feature your first articles when your readership expands. I think it’s a good thing to do every now and again, kind of like a Phoenix from the Flames. Chris at Blog-Op does a great job of pulling his older, popular posts to the forefront.

If your popular posts are ones that take little thought, don’t think of it as not understanding your audience, think of it as understanding them more than you realise. ;)

I wrote about 8 articles pre-launch. The awkward thing there is that your first few are going to be read by virtually no-one. Originally, I planned on writing some of my weaker posts there, but another blogger convinced me to do my best, because they would be the very beginnings of my blog. In the end, I went with his way, and I think it worked, though there are still one or two posts which I wish I’d saved until I had a bigger audience to actually read them. (But if I had, would I have ever gotten that audience?)

One point I can definitely agree on is that “some of my most popular posts were ones that took very little thought.” A couple of my posts have taken me by surprise with their popularity, while others that I thought would be my best just weren’t. Perhaps this has something to do with not entirely understanding my audience? (Something I think I’m improving at… slowly)

You bring up an interesting point, and one worthy of a new blog post.

There are questions such as, if you anticipate a less frequent posting schedule in the future, would you be better saving your ideas as drafts to promote consistency in the long run?

If there’s the worry that your blog appears new, with very little content, why not bulk it out before the initial launch?

In saying that, I might’ve shot myself in the foot by following a less frequent schedule towards the beginning, because some of my most popular posts were ones that took very little thought. Perhaps if I’d have spent more time on them, I would’ve lost that popularity.

It’s a hard one to judge - initial flood followed by more sporadic vs. a new post every two or three days with more thought in each.

You know, if I was starting again, and had thought about this question, I’d probably have gone for the latter. Who’s to say what effect that would’ve had.

“I’d much rather have quality or quantity. When I started blogging I felt wrongly compelled to churn out a new post every day, without fail. That’s just silly though.”

I think you’re entirely right here, but when your blog is new, I think you have to work harder. By writing an article every day, I am giving my current subscribers a lot of content to read, and I’m hopefully likely to accumulate some more backlinks with the wide variety of articles.

That extra work is needed at the start to pump up your blog, and lose that “new” feeling. It’s not too hard to do when you’re new, because you have loads of ideas.

In the long run though, I agree entirely. I couldn’t keep this up forever, and will no doubt fall back to a less frequent schedule sooner or later. At these times, I also hope to use the same sources of inspiration you have mentioned here. (One other source is forums. It’s the same idea as reading comments and emails; you’re connecting with other people in your niche, and hearing what they’re asking. :) )

You think I’m cute? Shucks. Or perhaps you’re referring to Vivien (inspirationbit), which is much more likely.

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Tara,

I reckon those posts I write that are spurred by reader comments end up being the most popular ones too. It’s all about writing what people want to read, although that’s easier said than done.

Simon,

I agree. I’d much rather have quality or quantity. When I started blogging I felt wrongly compelled to churn out a new post every day, without fail. That’s just silly though.

Your tips are really good and most helpful, I will be using them as a new method of getting inspiration.