How long do I spend on each post?
In the previous entry regarding how to measure the quality of your posts, I was asked by my friend Jimmy Reimer “how long does it take to write a post?”.
Well, it all depends of course… I’ll classify the type of posts I have into 4 large categories in terms of how much time goes in, and what I get out of it. So here is my classification system :
Type A
Simple posts that have just writing would be considered type A, and they are the easiest and least time consuming. They usually have 1 or no images embedded (and usually the image is there just for visual enhancement and to make it more attractive for readers to delve in), and maybe 1 or 2 links or trackbacks. These ones should take less than 15 minutes. I am a fluent writer overall and I have no trouble expressing myself effectively.
Examples :
- Piracy of Software, and why it helps software companies
- The Sneaky Conservative Party of Canada
- Screw Microsoft
One thing to remember is that some of these short posts can still be popular, although the time wasn’t spent on it. For example, the article Screw Microsoft received 10 Diggs, which I believe is a record high for me even until this day.
Type B (the one I’m writing here is a type B)
More complicated posts often involve screencaps, photography, such as my statistics, other websites, or creating long list of items etc. Or it could involve delving through other blogs or my own blog to find posts to link back to, as is this one. These take more time because of the time spent on Photoshop to crop the screencap, or to search for articles to link to, copying/pasting the URLs back and forth. These usually take 30 minutes or a bit more depending on how many links you need to find and place.
Examples :
- 5 Etiquettes to keep among bloggers
- Search Engine Query Reciprocity (SEQR)
- My Favorite Firefox Add-ons
These often do get more attention as they are filled with more interesting content, screencaps, and these are also good for generating extra pageviews by embedding links to other posts. Also, these can help other bloggers as well and they will be thankful for it.
Type C
In type C, I include my own videos. These ones take nearly an hour usually, because I need to encode the videos to the FLV format, and then put the player skin on it, upload it, and then write out the code for the Flash to appear on my post. These do take up a lot of bandwidth (unless you put it on Youtube and embed it), not to mention time, so I don’t do it too often. And, if I do it too much, it loses its novelty!
Examples :
Type D
Type D are the tutorial type of posts where I carefully explain steps of how to do things, and this involves making tonnes of screenshots on Photoshop as I go step by step, and also it needs to be carefully worded, as they are meant to be guidelines and instructions. The creation of the images is time-consuming, as well as the writing process. One thing that’s also very difficult is the crappy way Wordpress handles line breaks in its posts - there are so many times when the line breaks between images and paragraphs mysteriously disappear after saving, and I need to go back and forth to set it right. These can often
Nonetheless, these are the most engaging and interesting topics that gets people reading the most, so tossing it in occasionally is good. These posts usually take well over an hour because of all the difficulties and the intensiveness.
Examples :
- How I hacked a site, and how to defend properly
- Create your own LED/TV Screen Effect on Photoshop
- Extendable CSS Title Graphic Trick
I would like to note that I do have a very busy schedule these days with multiple projects. I have… 3 websites on the go as well as 1 on the backburner, plus many other smaller design jobs here and there, so it’s very difficult to spend TOO much time on it, although, considering my schedule, I think I put a LOT into my blog, and the readership shows it. This is a classic example of effort paying off for me.
My readership has been hitting a solid average of 600+ unique visitors a day for over a week, and yesterday I hit an all-time high of exactly 800 unique visitors, and my Technorati ranking jumped from 100,000 + to 20,626 in 2 days. In January, I was ranked at 2.4 millionth or so, and I made quick leaps to the 6 digits, and now I’m at the 5 digits for ranking. 170 blogs link to my blog.
My devoted visitors (you all know who you are) would all know by now that each post I write has my thoughts and effort into it, and I do believe in sharing information. I gained so much wealth of education and tips on all sorts of websites and posts that people spent hours on - giving back that favour to the public is something I will gladly do to the best of my ability and availability.
Got your second banner. We are going to include it, but we arn’t able to reset the polls. So we’ll have people comment on it and take that under consideration. Thanks for submitting the 2 banners…you da man!
no problem!! I do my best.
I got that top commentator widget up…you are number 2 on it…we’re having issues with it because we can’t get the background to show, we arn’t able to move it up on the page right now because it distorts all other widgets (the sidebar widgets below the top commentor list are moved to the very bottom of the page and the widgets go accross the whole page) that are placed below it. Also, we are trying to figure out how to take my name and John’s name out of that list. Any ideas?
on mine, it was “Administrator” as the blocked ID.. in the top commentator plugin php file there is a blocker line where it filters out certain users. “John” would work too.
good post to know. I usually spend 30-60 minutes on my posts just because I read and re-read everything. I type it quick, but always look it over a lot before submitting it.
Type errors are embarrassing - may as well be careful and not make them.. I’ve made type-os in the past.