Writing for Your Wealth

One of the hardest parts of being a blogger is staying motivated to keep knocking out content on a regular basis. (I write this as I notice it’s been two weeks since I last updated this site, ahem.) It helps (immensely) when you start making decent money from a site, but it can take a while before the bucks start flowing in. So how do you stick with blogging in that first year where the rewards often aren’t financial (or at least not financial to the extent we wish!)?

When I look across the several blogs I maintain, I find that the only one I update daily (and have done consistently for more than three years) revolves around short posts. They’re usually in the neighborhood of 150-200 words and focus on one product or one tip or a short series of ideas related to one specific concept.

You’ve probably seen quite a few blogs like this (just think of all the gadget blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget for starters).

Perhaps the biggest benefit (and what motivated me to write this entry) is that it takes less time to write short posts. There’s usually less research involved, less actual writing, less proofreading, and less all around procrastinating. It’s easy to convince yourself to sit down and knock out a post that takes 10 or 15 minutes to write; finding an hour or more of time can be busy, especially when you’re also working a day job and–we hope–having a life.

There are some other benefits to the short-post style as well:

• More pages of content to attract search engines — If you’re writing the long monster posts (as I’m often guilty of on this site!), it can take a year to get 50 or 75 pages of content out there. Even if you post every weekday (let’s at least take the weekends and holidays off, shall we?), you’re only looking at 250 pages or so in a year. This may seem like a lot, but compare this to a site such as Gizmodo that publishes thousands of posts a year. Now we don’t need to be that prolific (especially since our blogs usually aren’t the work of multiple authors), but remember that every page of content you write is another doorway through which people can find and enter your site.
• Every post is a chance to get noticed — Other bloggers spend a lot of time monitoring their feed readers, watching for news on certain keywords. Professional bloggers, in particular, (those who have committing to posting X times a day for someone) are always looking for story ideas. If they spot your post and use it to launch a post of their own, chances are they’re give you credit for the story with a link to your site. Those freebie links are the best kind!
• Internet readers often have short attention spans — Numerous studies have shown that folks read differently on the Internet. They treat websites more like newspapers than novels. You might even be the same way. You zip through pages, only reading the stories that interest you, and even then you often skim. Maybe you’re reading from work (with a boss who might wander by at any time), or maybe you’re watching the kids, or maybe you’re multitasking and working on some of your own projects at the same time. Anyway you roll it, short posts can be attractive to busy web surfers.

Now, lest this entry itself get too much longer, I’ll end by admitting that the short-post style may not be a fit for every blog. Still there are enough benefits that it may be worth tinkering with on occasion.

Instead of publishing a 2,000-word list of the Top 10 Movies Comic Book Fans Must Rent Right Now, try breaking it across 10 posts and a few days. You might just find the task less daunting!

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