[HN Gopher] When I have a slower publishing cadence my blog grow...
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When I have a slower publishing cadence my blog grows faster
Author : savagejohn
Score : 104 points
Date : 2023-08-21 17:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
| ab_goat wrote:
| I think this is a misunderstanding of the recommendation.
|
| When you're just getting started on something new where the ROI
| is going to be minimal, it makes sense to not put a ton of effort
| on perfecting when you do not have a clear understanding what
| people want/need.
|
| After you have a sense of what people are consuming, and
| therefore have some measure of an ROI, it may make sense to focus
| on repeating what worked.
| kwstas wrote:
| I already wrote and deleted 3 opening lines to this comment so I
| think I get where the conclusion is coming from. Maybe it has to
| do a bit with how much of the piece of writing is finalized or I
| guess put in order in your head before starting writing it.
|
| I tend to have an abstract, unfinished thought on a subject and
| just start working it out while typing. Maybe I'm thinking
| linearly I dont know. But at some point I may hit a roadblock or
| change my mind and then go back and rewrite most of the previous
| material. It's why I rarely comment, it takes me a while. So if
| this time is included in the writing, when it really is idea
| formulation and research then the time required to get to 300
| words skyrockets.
|
| In the context of a blog, especially if you aim for a certain
| style,flow etc I guess this is even more prominent. The more time
| you spent writing for the specific goal the better (an faster)
| you will get at it I suppose, but still I think some people just
| have a way of thinking that more robustly tranlates to text. In
| the sense that you can link sentences like you link thoughts and
| get to a conclusion rather via a well articulated piece rather
| than what I (and possibly the op) get which is a mess of
| sentences referencing different points in the cognitive process
| that may just get to a dead end.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Awesome, my blog is gonna grow infinitely exponentially
| ceroxylon wrote:
| Reminds me of an interesting comparison between the minds of the
| painters Raphael and Leonardo - the former was much more prolific
| (and successful at the time) because he had a template and would
| crank out art, whereas Leonardo would spend countless hours
| digging into the underlying context (literally studying muscles
| and tendons under the skin), which led him to make more impactful
| pieces by being able to do things like lighten the shadow on a
| chin due to the reflection of the light on the rest of a body,
| rather than a hard shadow.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Whether this is true today or not, wait a year or two until we're
| saturated with a million AI spam articles from an explosion of ai
| generated websites that all cross-reference each other for SEO.
| If you don't figure out some way to stand out, you're going to be
| in even more trouble than everyone else
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's been what ? 8 months since chat gpt is out there ?
|
| Not much changed, if it was just a matter of shitting out SEO
| riddled articles to become interesting we'd know it by now. SEO
| spam only gets you so far, you still need relevant content.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| This reflects my experience of late. It wasn't true for me in the
| past.
|
| I think the issue is straightforward when you think about it, and
| the author basically spells it out, while missing one important
| fact.
|
| When you're dealing with the long tail, it's better to have many
| small hits. Because long tail items are all pretty similar in
| their results.
|
| But when you're dealing with the fat head, a slight improvement
| moves you dramatically up the graph.
|
| Which means: When you're not very good, it's better to take many
| swings. Spending hours trying to be marginally less mediocre
| isn't going to get you much. Post often. Miss often. Score some
| hits.
|
| But when you're good, it's more valuable to spend time becoming
| great.
|
| On my newsletter[1], I like to think I'm in the middle. I'm not
| great yet, but I'm good enough that it pays to put in the effort.
| And I do see the results. The traffic and subscribers I get from
| a handful of high-effort posts (where I spent days on them) far
| outweigh the results of all my other posts combined.
|
| Additionally, I think this will only become more true as time
| goes by, because AI is making is so easy to create low-effort
| content. That long tail is getting awfully long.
|
| [1] For the curious: insurgent.ca
| mobilene wrote:
| This has not been my experience at all. The more I publish, the
| more interaction I get. The more interaction, the more people
| keep reading (i.e., subscribe).
|
| But this is clearly the author's experience, and if I were him
| I'd be deathly curious to determine the optimum number of blog
| posts per period for maximum interaction. One per year?
| ceroxylon wrote:
| You definitely have the benefit of starting in 2007 and
| producing consistent content, which means you're pretty darn
| good at blogging at this point and can produce quality content
| faster, so I can see why posting more often benefits your
| situation.
| djaro_d wrote:
| Results and quality are often not entirely linearly correlated.
|
| MrBeast said something along the lines of, spending 2x longer on
| a YouTube video might lead to 10x more views. The reason for that
| is, that a video that does decently well and a video that really
| goes viral are often quite similar in quality, it's just that
| last bit of effort to take everything from good to perfect that
| can 10x or even 100x your results.
|
| In that way, it might be better to upload 1 really good video
| every month than 4 great videos or even 30 okay videos.
|
| I'd imagine the same goes for blogging.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Results and quality are almost never linearly correlated. Often
| it swings one way or the other. 80/20 rule, or you spend time
| creating something very high quality and get outsized rewards
| for it.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It was something Marco Pierre White said on a broadcast once
| that has always stuck with me. He said "I've always said that
| perfection is lots of little things done well." Since I've
| started applying it in my own work, I have to say that I
| entirely agree with it.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > it might be better to upload 1 really good video every month
| than 4 great videos
|
| I was very confused here until I realized you rank the
| intensity of 'really good' and 'great' in a different order
| than I do.
| pjot wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Great > really good
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| Contrast this with how Twitter ranks contributors. You have to
| post and engage frequently to gain traction.
|
| I much prefer the quality over quantity model.
| hobs wrote:
| Quantity can lead to quality, especially when you have
| immediate feedback.
|
| https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-
| quality...
| hammock wrote:
| Source?
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| Stats based on 37 blog posts.
| nerdponx wrote:
| In some scientific fields, 37 data points is an absolute
| treasure trove for a causal model.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| Number of data points aside, I would like to see one causal
| model worked out in depth. Do you have a sample link?
| nerdponx wrote:
| How about a book and lecture series full of them?
| https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/
| seeknotfind wrote:
| Also hard to control for conflicting variables such as spending
| more time to post leading to better posts.
| snewman wrote:
| Actually, I believe the claim in the article is precisely
| that spending more time leads to better posts and that this
| leads to more subscribers. Basically, the author feels that
| he achieves more (in readership growth, but also on other
| dimensions he cares about) by taking the time to write one
| really good post instead of using that same time to write two
| mediocre posts; he contrasts this with the standard advice
| that publishing frequently is critical to building an
| audience.
| andy99 wrote:
| I'd say it depends on who you're writing for, or what you're
| optimizing for. If you're somehow going for virality
| (viralness)?, then continued optimization in that regard makes
| sense. If you're writing about more niche topics or ideas, I
| don't know if the same applies. Not that refining your ideas is
| bad. Just that, as in the "common widsom" he gives at the
| beginning, a bigger surface area is likely to yield more stiff
| with a broad appeal. I've written a few things that for example
| got some upvotes and views on HN and elsewhere, and some that
| were complete flops. And I have no idea which ones are going to
| get noticed or be interesting - it certainly doesn't relate to
| what I find interesting. But I'd rather just write stuff I think
| is interesting, and hope occasionally someone else finds it
| useful, that try to optimize for others interests, which I think
| even if successful would probably be more boring overall.
| calibas wrote:
| I wonder if this has something to do with ChatGPT. Maybe Google
| and other services are downranking now if a site churns out
| frequent, lower-quality articles because they assume it's AI-
| generated.
| dsmmcken wrote:
| You grow as a writer with practice, but you grow readership with
| quality. The incentive between quantity and quality can be at
| odds for a personal blog. I think it comes down to what your
| goals are for your writing. Personal growth or professional
| recognition.
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