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In the last few weeks, I've received quite a few emails from new (or hopeful) bloggers asking for ideas to help their blogs succeed. One of the most common questions has been "When should I schedule my blog posts?" As I thought about it, I realized that I didn't have a good answer - and in fact, I don't usually follow a set pattern of time stamp posting (except with the recent group break because it would have been chaos without it). So what does any intrepid reporter (or blogger in this case) do to answer the question?
A little experiment.
You may recall that a week ago from yesterday I did a 24 packs in 24 hours marathon session. The intentions for that were two-fold, one: Plow through a bunch of packs quickly in order to speed up the group break process, and two: see if I could figure out any type of "viewer habits" based on the incredibly small sample size. At 11:57 PM EST I logged into my SiteMeter account and took a screen shot of the day's visits and page views which you can see below.
As you can see, each hour is represented by a stacked bar (specifying hits and page views). There is also the numerical hour by hour breakdown on the far right for those that would rather look at lists of numbers (all times EST remember).
What did I learn from this admittedly small sample size?
I'm not sure - but here are some observations:
First, I have to consider each post equal in reader interest to any other post for the day - obviously if one is titled "my lunch at McDonalds" and another is titled "Free cards plus a winning lottery ticket for a lucky reader" it's pretty easy to tell that one blog entry isn't equal in reader interest to the other. In my case, the group break was far enough along in the process that the "novelty" had worn off - and probably any one pack was no more or less exciting than any other.
Second, it's fairly obvious that there aren't many readers up in the wee morning hours (Night Owl excepted apparently). From 2 AM until 6 AM, I only averaged 4.5 visitors an hour. Surprising to me, the 7 AM hour was one of the least read hours of the day - only 4 visitors. However, after 7 AM blog traffic increased quite a bit - culminating during the evening hours (especially 8:00 PM EST).
Third, we have to remember that this little experiment was done on a Tuesday. I would guess that the results would be quite a bit different on a Friday for instance - there probably aren't a lot of people sitting on their computers Friday night looking at baseball card blogs...but I could be wrong about that I suppose!
Thus, I think it is safe to say that while interesting, there aren't any conclusive findings (especially since it was only one day...and only on my blog which certainly isn't as popular as many other blogs out there)... However, if I had to make some broad generalizations, here they are:
1. If you only post one blog per day, maximum readership would suggest making it go "live"sometime in the early evening eastern standard time.
2. If you want to do a bit of reverse psychology and avoid the "posting boom" of early evening (where new blog entries can quickly become buried on the various blog rolls), the next best time to post is either right after lunch (1 - 2 PM) OR late at night (close to midnight).
Hopefully that little experiment proves as interesting to you as it did me - and to all my readers out there (no matter what the hour), thanks for stopping by! If anyone else has some ideas or suggestions that they would like to share, by all means do so in the comment section below (or email me if you'd rather remain anonymous - I can post a blog of all the suggestions at a later date if there is enough interest)!
A little experiment.
You may recall that a week ago from yesterday I did a 24 packs in 24 hours marathon session. The intentions for that were two-fold, one: Plow through a bunch of packs quickly in order to speed up the group break process, and two: see if I could figure out any type of "viewer habits" based on the incredibly small sample size. At 11:57 PM EST I logged into my SiteMeter account and took a screen shot of the day's visits and page views which you can see below.
As you can see, each hour is represented by a stacked bar (specifying hits and page views). There is also the numerical hour by hour breakdown on the far right for those that would rather look at lists of numbers (all times EST remember).
What did I learn from this admittedly small sample size?
I'm not sure - but here are some observations:
First, I have to consider each post equal in reader interest to any other post for the day - obviously if one is titled "my lunch at McDonalds" and another is titled "Free cards plus a winning lottery ticket for a lucky reader" it's pretty easy to tell that one blog entry isn't equal in reader interest to the other. In my case, the group break was far enough along in the process that the "novelty" had worn off - and probably any one pack was no more or less exciting than any other.
Second, it's fairly obvious that there aren't many readers up in the wee morning hours (Night Owl excepted apparently). From 2 AM until 6 AM, I only averaged 4.5 visitors an hour. Surprising to me, the 7 AM hour was one of the least read hours of the day - only 4 visitors. However, after 7 AM blog traffic increased quite a bit - culminating during the evening hours (especially 8:00 PM EST).
Third, we have to remember that this little experiment was done on a Tuesday. I would guess that the results would be quite a bit different on a Friday for instance - there probably aren't a lot of people sitting on their computers Friday night looking at baseball card blogs...but I could be wrong about that I suppose!
Thus, I think it is safe to say that while interesting, there aren't any conclusive findings (especially since it was only one day...and only on my blog which certainly isn't as popular as many other blogs out there)... However, if I had to make some broad generalizations, here they are:
1. If you only post one blog per day, maximum readership would suggest making it go "live"sometime in the early evening eastern standard time.
2. If you want to do a bit of reverse psychology and avoid the "posting boom" of early evening (where new blog entries can quickly become buried on the various blog rolls), the next best time to post is either right after lunch (1 - 2 PM) OR late at night (close to midnight).
Hopefully that little experiment proves as interesting to you as it did me - and to all my readers out there (no matter what the hour), thanks for stopping by! If anyone else has some ideas or suggestions that they would like to share, by all means do so in the comment section below (or email me if you'd rather remain anonymous - I can post a blog of all the suggestions at a later date if there is enough interest)!
I've always wondered this myself of blog reading peak hours. Nice experiment!
ReplyDeleteI think the best time to post is between 8 and 9am. That way I have a little time at work to peruse the blogs before crap hits the fan at the job. Or do what I do and post directly after finishing the last work without reading and go back and make edits after you see all the typing and sytax errors you made and missed since you didn't reread the post very carefully and now you look like a dingus. That's how you get the ladies people!!
ReplyDeleteI meant word not work, see genius!!
ReplyDeleteNice study. I was actually thinking about all the people I've traded with, and wondered if I've traded with people from all 50 states.
ReplyDeleteI don't keep track of this data, but I remember you saying that you keep an excel spreadsheet with everybody's address that you've traded with. I'm curious what states you've traded with and which ones you have yet to trade with. My guess is that you've traded with people from every state except for Hawii, Alaska, and Montana... I don't think that baseball cards have made it to those states yet!
Ryan: Yes, I do keep a spreadsheet. I'll have to take a look at it and see what states I've managed to trade with! Perhaps that can be a post in the near future!
ReplyDeleteA future post would be awesome!
ReplyDeleteI can say personally that I've traded with people from like 25 or so states. You've been trading longer that me, so I wouldn't be surprised if you've had trades with with people from 40 or 45 states.