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Blogging is exciting. You get to share your opinions and advice with the world and people respond.
A few days ago I was contacted by a young entrepreneur from Pakistan who is preparing to launch his blog and he had a few questions. Jabran’s questions centered around launching your blog, updating frequency and my personal story 
.
Even if you’ve been blogging for awhile, there is a lot of valuable information in this post. If you haven’t started blogging yet, this post will encourage you to start.
Should you launch your blog with one or multiple posts?
There’s no set rule to how many posts your blog should have when you launch. I’ve seen people launch with one and I’ve seen people launch with 10+ and 20 more on auto-publish.
The benefits to launching with one:
- Your readers only have one option when they first come to your blog.
You know that everyone has the same experience and you can see exactly how many people came, how many people read that post and how many people responded to that post. - You can launch sooner if you only have one post to write.
The sooner you get going, the sooner you get feedback. - You can write that post about your personal experience and why you’re blogging about your topic.
You should launch your blog by sending emails to all of your friends and family, posting it on your facebook wall and spreading it to as many people as you know. Your friends and family might not be interested about your topic, but they are interested about why you’re blogging about that topic.
The benefits to launching with many:
- Your readers have more options when first visiting your site.
This gives them a reason to stick around for awhile to see what your site is all about. - It can be viewed as more credible.
If you put the time to write ten posts for the launch of your blog, you likely intend to continue blogging on a regular basis. Similarly, the first issue of a newspaper or magazine has to pack a punch if you expect people to subscribe to it.
The optimal number to launch with is three. Make your first one about your personal story and direct your emails to that post. Then have the other two be examples of what people can expect if they continue to come to your blog.
How often should you update your blog?
There’s no right answer to this one. I try to update every other day. Some people update Monday through Friday. Others update once a week. But the most common is, “whenever I have something to write.” No matter which option you choose, just make sure you update regularly.
If you want a definitive answer, I’d say update your blog every Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Update Thursdays and Saturdays because Friday and Sunday are the two highest traffic days for the internet (or so I’ve heard). Update the day before so it can go out to your subscribers in the morning. Then, update Monday because it’s in the middle
Bonus Tip!
I was just about to publish this post when I thought of one more thing to add. One of the most successful blog launches I’ve ever seen used a unique strategy to get a lot of important traffic really quickly.
Bradley Will launched Unstrappd.com, How Gen-Y Does Business, and it was almost immediately in the top 100,000 (Alexa). Bradley has an enormous social media following but he used this one little, brilliant trick to bring high-profile bloggers to his blog right away.
Are you ready?
He linked like a mad-man! Every single article he published during the launch phase had five or more links to other sites in his niche. Each one of those links sent a track-back to the owner of those sites. Those people noticed, came to his site, and shared it with their followers. (It helps to have an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk, but even that doesn’t matter if no one comes to the site).
So… When you first launch your blog, hand out links like hot potatoes to draw important traffic from other bloggers in your niche.
Your story?
I started blogging because it is the best way to spread my mission of teaching young people how to start businesses. It lets me publish my ideas, reach out to young people, lends me credibility and what’s most exciting is that a blog is just a precursor to what I really want to do!
If you want to know more about how I got started, read about everything I did before I posted my first ever article on the interweb!
Photo by: jurvetson
After you’re done reading this post, you should start reading the comments area below. Syed Balkhi and King Sidharth make some great points as far as whether or not you should link out to other sites.
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Okay, well you should probably do something with kids. After all, if you are a b
Hey everyone, Just thought about some of the comments I read here earlier- I see
this is very helpful i feel i could do some of these or try.
Brilliant!
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Let’s launch Saturday.
Ok!
Hey Nick,
Thank you very much for the detail of each step. Things are pretty clear in my mind now. Time to materialize things now
)
That’s great to hear, Jabran! I’m glad I was able to do that for you. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Hmm.. that names sounds familliar.
Anyways, This was great. And I so loved the bonus tip! Awesome man! You are really getting better and better…. and awesome and awesome! Keep rocking!
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Truth about Enlightenment & How to Attain It =-.
Yeah, Bradley is going to be in an online reality show about social media, or something like that. He’s a cool guy as well. Definitely check out his site if you haven’t already.
Thanks for the motivation, King! Nick and I have a surprise for everyone here in the next week
that I think you’ll really enjoy!
WOw! That sounds exciting!
Cool! I love surprises!! Bring it on Nick & Nick…
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Truth about Enlightenment & How to Attain It =-.
Hey! Nick
I try to update my blog twice or thrice in a week.
and your bonus tip is awesome !! keep up the good work
.-= Dev | Technshare´s last blog ..33% Discount Offer on $365K Blog Traffic Formula =-.
Hey Dev! Yeah, I’d say two or three times a week is a good rate. Any more and you might struggle to put out quality content. Any less and your readers may start to fall off the map.
And thanks! I need to do more of that as well.
Hey Nick,
I thought this would be a great article when I saw the title, but after reading through it I was a bit disappointed. This article didn’t even go into the more basics which was the least of the problem. The BONUS TIP is the biggest problem. It is the worst tip in this entire article and quite possibly the worst advice anyone can give.
In the beginning, you are trying to establish your brand. Why in the world would you want to send the few visitors that you are getting to other site(s)? Talk about losing the few visitors that you got <<
Second, starting with one article on the site is another bad advice in this article. Let me explain why:
It is not hard to get a visitor to your site, but it is hard to keep them on your site. You wrote your first post, you brought the readers to your site. After reading the first article where are they going to now ??? They are going to EXIT because there is nothing else on your site. That is why you need to have 5 – 20 articles on your site. You should talk with Merlin Mann of 43folders.com and he will explain this concept to you very well.
Another reason to have more than one post is so the blogger know that they can write about this subject. Majority of the blogs that get started are abandoned in the first 6 months. Reason for that is because the author doesn't pre-plan it. They don't even know if they can make past the 10 posts… You need to pre-write posts so you can see whether you really like writing about this particular topic… or whether you can really do it or not…
As an entrepreneur, you should understand that time is money. Why waste time on a project which is a dead project. You can waste less time to figure out whether it is a dead project or not by simply writing 20 posts before you start. See how it goes and whether you can write consistently.
I don't want to SPAM your comments, but here is a mini writeup that I did long time ago.
http://www.balkhis.com/for-starters/how-to-launch-a-new-blog-successfully/
The days that you mentioned when you should write posts are arbitrary. They vary from site to site. If you are targetting a business audience, the chances are your Saturday posts will be ignored. People do not have work to do, but they are with their families on weekends. I would say that post frequency and days/time will vary from each post.
Lastly, I don't mean to insult you with my comments. This is my thoughts and suggestions on how you can improve and how others can to. I know you are very smart as I have mentioned numerous times on Skype. Keep up the good work with your book.
.-= Syed Balkhi´s last blog ..How to enable BuddyPress in WordPress 3.0 =-.
Sniff! Sniff! We smells criticism! Welcome to the next level of blogging Nicky! Gollum! GOllum!
Mr. Syed, bonus tip was a bonus tip indeed. You don’t send people away when you link them but have double profit. Those who you link begin to know you and those who follow the link begin to trust you more. That’s my experience.
Don’t assume that a reader reads only one blg in whole world. I read 16 blogs on blogging and won’t unsubscribe them …. not anytime soon. They link others so much I do go away but since they linked me – I love them more.
If your strategy to keep them is by not linking than you are really poor at writing bopy and building community. You see visitors as traffic not customer or reader. It needs to be rock solid promise and interaction – a blend of brand, communication and relations.
Agree with starting out with multiple article advice. It really is better to write as many as you can (at least for next 30 days) so you know you can write on this topic and give readers a better taste of who you are.
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
Hey King! I love criticism. It’s refreshing, man. Not many people are willing to give their true feelings when they disagree with something. That’s a valuable skill to have and I respect Syed for it.
And I agree that building relationships with other bloggers is really important. Linking to them might be the best way to do that, and it might not. That’s what makes this blogging thing so fascinating! There’s no right answer. All you can really do is try it out and measure the results.
I didn’t think about how you should write for 30 days just to see if you can write about that topic for an extended period of time. Nice little nugget of advice, King!
I know! I love it too! Gives me more eyes to see from that means – cha! ching! Clearer Idea of What you are talking about.
What I meant by relation was relation whit you readers – if your copy, medium um… can’t keep myself from saying – Intent – is clear enough to connect than no matter if they leave your site – they will be back – I’ve seen it work, time and again.
It’s not about writing for 30 days, it’s writing enough content that you’d have published in 30 days on your blog -if you can do that then sure this is a go ahead blog. Well not very sure but at least that give you confidence that you would like to go on with that topic.
This was awesome. You deserved this discussion (I mean that in positive way).
Cheers!
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
King Siddarth,
I respect your experience. Let me give you a more practical approach about linking to others. Lets say you own a bakery. As a matter of fact, you recently started. There is a bakery 5 minutes away from your’s that just launched their cool cake. Why in the world would you send your customer to another bakery. Actually, you wouldn’t. Because you value your customer and you don’t want to lose it.
Trust me when I started blogging, I linked out a lot too. I used to have a day just for links. Sweet Monday << Where all I did was link to the best reads I have had the past week. But when you are blogging more professionally, then it is not something that you should do. If your blog is a personal blog, where you talk about your daily life, then sure. But if you are trying to come off as a legit source, you should not link to your competitor.
Yes, you will get noticed by other sites. A lot of smaller blogs will appreciate it and they may link to you. But the chances of your site to be linked from a high scale blog is slim to none. If you look at it from economical perspective, your opportunity cost is way to HIGH and your rewards are low.
That was one of the reasons why I abandoned it. If you want to share links, then use twitter. That is what twitter is for. But your blog is for you and your audience.
Making connection with your readers is very important. WPBeginner has over 20k subscribers. We have exchanged emails with over 1700 users. Our user interaction is high.
Another disadvantage of linking to your competitor blogs is that you are losing new content. If you are a new blog, and you linked to other sites about link-baiting.. Well guess what, you just lost that content idea. You could've easily wrote a new post with your thoughts about link baiting. But since you linked to another site that had this article, you lost your chance. Now because the little amount of readers that you had have read the other site, they will think it is stupid that you had the similar post.
When is linking to other blogs is beneficial?
When you are getting something in return. I am certain that you are familiar with John Chow and Shoemoney. Both seems like rival, but they are good friends. They link to each other very often. But that is so they can take advantage of each other's traffic. They run crazy challenges, but that is because they can do it.
I don't see John running competitions with 100 other blogs. That is what you are doing when you link to other sites. You are spreading yourself too thin. I can go on and on about this. I hope you are seeing my point.
.-= Syed Balkhi´s last blog ..How to enable BuddyPress in WordPress 3.0 =-.
And the comment area is officially more valuable than the original post!!!
Syed, I really like your point about linking through Twitter rather than linking through your blog. Your argument is really clear. Except, I value a trackback a lot more than I value an RT. As a blogger, I’m definitely going to see where that link points and read their whole post to figure out why they linked to me.
On the other hand, I can see that once your site gets big enough, track-backs just don’t make sense any more. To me, an RT from a social media person like you is just as valuable as a track-back from a mid-sized blog.
King, thanks for giving us your perspective as well.
If I go to a bakery and they don’t have the cake that I need, I would expect them to point me to another bakery that does. If they do, then I’m much more likely to go back to the original bakery when I know they have something I want. But it would be silly for that bakery to point me to another bakery if they have the capacity to bake the cake themselves.
Makes sense doesn’t it? Well pretty much. Only that a bakery business is way different than Blog – you get to eat the cakes you like, for free.. oh! I am such a glutton. LOL
But, don’t worry. I get the point and I agree, pretty much.
I enjoyed this interaction more than words can say, we took thought beyond where it has been before.
Thank you so much (both of you) for this co-creative experience. XD
.-= King Sidharth´s last blog ..Why ‘King’ Sidharth – the Secret Behind ‘King’ =-.
Hey Syed! Thank you so much for your comment. It’s super refreshing to get your perspective on all of this as well.
You should know that I wrote this post based on my own experiences and what I’ve seen that works. When I launched my site, I got about 50 visitors on the first day because I wrote personalized emails to all of my relevant contacts. And 50 visitors pumped me up! I considered it a huge success.
You, on the other hand, have a much different perspective on a successful blog launch because you’ve experienced an incredibly successful launch. I agree with everything you say if your goal is to have a wildly successful site that cracks the top 20,000 within six months.
But if you’re just getting started online, I still recommend taking the modest approach to launching your site. In my opinion, it’s better to just get going with three posts then not be bogged down at the concept of writing 20 posts before you know if blogging is right for you.
I always, always encourage young people to try entrepreneurial things and if it’s their first blog, there’s no way they’ll know if it’s something they want to continue doing. I would rather recommend launching with 3 posts than recommend writing 10 or 20 and never publishing them on the internet. It’s motivating when we see the things on our own webpage. I want them to be motivated by that.
As far as my bonus tip is concerned, I saw it work and it worked really well. I agree that you don’t want people to be leaving your site. But when those links bring people like yourself to those articles, then the people that they bring to your site are more important than the people who happen to leave.
However, I don’t know how many people came to his site as a result of those links. You’re right, I shouldn’t have made that assumption. I just saw it work, and I assumed it was because of the links.
As far as posting days, you’re right. It completely depends on the target audience for your site.
Overall, I wrote answered his questions based on my experiences at this point in my online entrepreneurial life. I’m sure a year from now, I would answer these questions very differently. I really appreciate your advice and adding this valuable content to my site.
So, for anyone else reading this comment, if you want to get started blogging for the first time just to see if it’s something you want to do, then I stand by starting with 3 posts. If you have big aspirations for your site and already have some experience blogging, then listen to every word Syed said.
P.S. Syed recently had 50,000 visitors in one day. If you want to learn more about how to do that, go to his site, http://wpbeginner.com.
I think we should just launch even though is one post, but don’t promote it first because if someone comes and think there is nothing much to see, then they might not come back anymore.
That’s another strategy, WL. I think my definition of “launch” is a little blurry… I agree, you can put up your site with the first post. But as soon as you get 3+, you can start promoting it and this will be the launch.