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Today I just wanted to share an interesting phenomenon with other bloggers out there – a case where a break in posting actually increased traffic, income, and subscribers on one of my blogs (rather significantly in the first two cases).
I used to run a PR blog at NakedPR.com. Earlier this year I took an announced 2-month break in order to devote time to other projects. During that break, income stayed pretty steady, but traffic and subscribers went up dramatically. I thought it had to be a fluke.
I came back to the blog, and the new stats stayed, but growth wasn’t quite as rapid.
In late July I decided to call it quits. That’s around the time I was making the move from PR consultant to full-time business writer (can’t believe it’s been that long already!), so I just didn’t feel right focusing on PR issues as much. And frankly, there wouldn’t be time while pursuing a few other things. While I may eventually go back to it, for now it’s a “dead” blog.
I still keep an eye on the stats though, as it was one of my “big three.” I’ve noticed income increasing oddly enough – it’s now often earning double what it used to during the day. So it’s still a “big three” without any work (explain that one to me!).
I just checked my September stats and was shocked to see the biggest jump in unique visitors the blog has had for the year, on top of the income increasing. What I’ve found even more interesting is that I still get RSS subscribers periodically (and I think, “Don’t they bother to look at the latest stuff before subscribing??” – they should know it’s not being updated anymore).
Now I know these trends aren’t necessarily the norm. I’ve seen stats plummet on other blogs of mine when I’ve taken a break (the big difference being that NakedPR’s breaks were always announced, whereas others were a matter of slacking off). So I’m certainly not saying to go out and abandon your blog(s) in the hopes of earning more!
What I am saying is that you should consider playing with things like frequency – try more, try less. You never know what’s going to make a difference in each case, and testing really is key. Post just once in a while? Try going daily. Already post daily? Try easing up a bit to see if more posts get more comments, backlinks, or get indexed faster by staying on your homepage a bit longer.
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About the Author: Jennifer Mattern
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I have a similar situation on another blog…the less frequently I blog, the higher the page views I get. Strange since you intuitively think that blogging more frequently will bring traffic. It definitely depends on the blog. Like you said, people have to experiment to see what works.
It can seem a bit crazy, right? On my business blog, income and traffic increase quite a bit when I blog more often. On this particular blog things increase a bit, but not to any huge degree (then again, I’ve tried to avoid any long slack-off breaks at AFW these days). So it can be all over the board, even with a single blogger (meaning it isn’t different marketing strategies or something playing a role). Baffling, but also utterly fascinating to me. I love things I can’t explain sometimes.