Is it Worthwhile to Post on Sundays?
Sunday is a traffic black hole here at The Writer’s Technology Companion. Generally I get about 1/4 to 1/5 the traffic of a typical day on Sundays.
The “received wisdom” about blogging is that traffic will plummet on Sundays, so I’m not alone in seeing this. Even the subscriber count goes down, since it’s based on how many people access your feed via their reader, and not as many people open their readers on Sundays.
For the most part, this makes sense. A lot of blog reading is done during normal working hours, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. Sunday, people are at home with their families, out and about doing shopping, attending church, and doing other stuff that keps them away from their computers.
So a lot of bloggers just don’t post anything over the weekend. That’s the policy, for instance, at Lifehack, where I schedule about 15 posts a week to run M-F.
What I wonder, though, is do we not post on Sundays because people don’t read on Sundays, or if people don’t read blogs on Sunday because so few of them post anything worth reading? I got a pretty good response to my post announcing the new ebooks page, which I posted on a Saturday — better than usual, actually, because I got some traffic from StumbleUpon on that post.
As a general rule, I’d advise new bloggers to keep their hard-won content for weekdays, but I wonder if it might not be worthwhile to post something — maybe something more conversational? — over the weekend. So this post is a test: if you’re reading this on Sunday, let me know in the comments, and maybe say a few words about whether you’d like to see more weekend posts. If you’re reading this on Monday or later, let me know that, too, and tell me whether you’d be inclined to drop by on a Sunday if you knew there was a good chance of finding a new post up.
Thanks!
I read this post on Sunday via my FeedDemon reader.
I’m online seven days a week. I scan or read everything that comes to me via a feed or email subscription. So, whenever you publish a post, I get to see it in a timely manner.
NV
I read this on a Sunday through my reader and because of it, this is my first time actually visiting the site since I first set up the feed.
One of my Sunday favorites is Post Secret because it is different, it’s not newsy, and there is always some good stuff there. I think if it’s the right sort of thing, I would definitely check it out.
I think I would definitely consider posting something after keeping this in mind.
I always read blogs on the weekend, and I always post on the weekend. Hits go down on the weekend, true, and I often don’t post so many posts as during the week, but it depends on what’s happening and what I feel like writing about. OTOH, my blog follows my interests and I’m not trying to build a moneymaker or an empire—I just write about things that intrigue me. So I don’t really think that much about building traffic, etc.
While I try to schedule my most important posts for Tuesday and Friday, I also post occasionally on Sunday. I figure the true readers of my own blog will see a Sunday post, even if it’s a day or two later.
Moreover, some of my posts are intended actually to fill out my “categories,” rather than supplying up-to-date information. I have a category structure that mimics a book’s Table of Contents, which I hope readers will discover as a major reference tool about writing productivity.
I read your posts whenever I have time to go through the updates in my reader – usually the same day they are posted, weekends included. That said, yes, I would read Sunday posts. A day without a computer, some blogging, and some good reads would be so strange!!
Maybe this counts too. I’m reading this as a related post link on a Saturday morning. After the work week, the first thing I like to do is relax with a cup of coffee and catch up on the blogs I haven’t read for the past couple of days.