In a previous post, I explained how you can use the scientific method to work toward your goals. The idea is to define your goal as a hypothesis to test in the world.
You define the conditions of the experiment, the steps you’re going to take, execute those steps, and figure out whether those steps will lead to your goal or not. If they don’t, you either adjust your goal, or the conditions, or both. Then you execute the experiment again.
An important part of experimentation is to collect data. You can use that data to interpret your results. Based on your interpretation you can adjust your experimental setup and/or the actions you take.
Sometimes, you don’t need to collect data with your own experiments. You can simply use the data collected and published by others.
Start by Asking the Right Questions
In either case, you need to start the project by asking some quality questions. Here are a few questions I’m asking myself about my blog. If you have any answers to these questions, please let me know in the comments.
- How can I build a business around my blog?
- Which products and/or services can I provide to my Medium followers and email newsletter subscribers?
- Which products and/or services would my Medium followers and email newsletter subscribers want from me?
- What percentage of my followers and subscribers would purchase that product?
- What is the potential of the maximum number of followers and subscribers?
- Given that I have 475+ followers, 38 subscribers, and approximately 10% weekly growth rate, how long would it take to get to that potential?
- What would be the revenue potential of that product?
- How long would it take to fulfill that potential?
- How can I follow up once that potential is fulfilled?
These are the questions I need to think about and research. Moreover, I can check other bloggers who have successfully built businesses using similar tools. What were the answers to these questions for those bloggers?
I have two more questions about blogging.
What is the optimal blog post length?
I like to read lengthy, information rich blog posts. When I come across such blog posts, I bookmark them and I refer to them over and over.
Obviously, it’s not easy to come up with such a post every day, because my blog is a side project for me. That raises the next question.
What is the optimal posting frequency?
Since November 18, 2017, I published a blog post per day. Is that the optimal frequency?
When I publish a post per day, it’s not easy to get over 1000 words every day. When I look at my Medium stats, posts that are over 1000 words seem to do better.
Moreover, publishing every day has another disadvantage. It doesn’t leave sufficient time to consume quality content, books, audiobooks, and blog posts. Without sufficient research, the quality of my blog posts suffer as well.
On the other hand, I see bloggers like Seth Godin publishing every day, but keeping the length of their posts short. Would that work for me?
What are the options for posting frequency?
The options seem to be the following.
- Publish every day. Keep the posts short. Have enough time to research.
- Publish every day. Keep the posts medium length. Not enough time to research.
- Publish once a week. Publish long, information rich posts. Have enough time to research.
I am a little suspicious about posting less than every day. I have the feeling that I wouldn’t work as hard on my blog, if I didn’t post every day. On the other hand, the resulting posts could be more interesting.
A way to overcome the tendency to slack off could be to dedicate a certain amount of time each day on blogging even if I don’t publish every day and to write a certain number of words every day.
Maybe, I should experiment with that idea for a month and see what the results will be. If I could maintain the 10% growth rate with that approach, I believe that approach would be better. If not, then I’d better return to daily blogging. What do you think?
Conclusion
I like to think about a goal as a scientific project. I like to ask a set of quality questions. I try to answer them through reasoning and experimentation.
Collecting data during the experimentation helps the process. Another approach is to use the data already collected and published by others.
In today’s post, I asked a few questions about my blog that I’d like to answer in the following months. If you have any answers to the questions in this post, please let me know in the comments. Your ideas and feedback are welcome.
Burak BilginSoftware developer with a Ph.D. and 15 years of experience. I write daily on personal development and life lessons. Sign up to my email newsletter to receive a weekly overview of my latest content on personal development and life lessons.