Blogs get far less traffic on weekends. I presume that many of you are reading from work. Lucky. The blog-reading I do from work needs to be at least plausibly work-related. This leads to a feedback loop where blogs post less on weekends. So you are less likely to read on weekends. So we post less. Does this fit your reading pattern? I tend to worry less about missing a weekend, which often leads to missing a Monday because I write now and schedule it to go live at 12:02am Central. (And I only post once a day, or else my wife makes fun of me.)
I notice that many blogs have less content on Friday. This is a letdown for readers, who want to do something other than work on Friday afternoon, but then it also demands that bloggers work Fridays. Would it be better for me to plan longer pieces for Friday? Or pieces seeking lots of feedback/discussion/comments? Might as well fill that gap. I have hit Monday and Friday harder without great planning in the past.
Anything else in how you like things or what you want to see? I stopped the CoX Character Contemplations series because they seemed to get few views, which I interpreted as “tl;dr” (though I have a couple more written). I should do another “Recent Searches” post; I fell out of the habit after skipping a month of WoW porn searches. I have not looked at the site stats at all in the past three months or more.
And this is a Monday morning post seeking discussion, so it’s all meta. Please, your thoughts.
: Zubon
I don’t know if this affects statistics but – since I primarily use RSS – I never see the site directly unless I’m going to comment. I’ll check the reader at least twice a day, including on weekends, and enjoy the Character Contemplations (I presume the less views is due to greater specificity to CoX).
As a RSS follower who reads gaming blogs, as long as your posts are entertaining and interesting, I don’t mind you posting once a week if that’s what it takes for you to put out an awesome post. I’ve dropped some okay blogs from my reader because I’ll look back at the last twenty posts and I only find one interesting post. Your site has a great track record of posts that I enjoy reading, so I would worry less about the frequency and more about the quality.
As for what I would like to see: I like opinion pieces. Maybe revisit some older posts and see if you still feel the same way about things. Maybe look at how you wanted some game features or genres to evolve and how they have evolved. Also, I really like the weirdness stuff, like “The Birds”. Metagaming has a weird draw for me…
As far as I’m concerned write whatever you like Zubon and whenever you like. If you enjoy doing it I’ll enjoy reading it more. Opinion stuff is good.
I am the same as Jezebeau. Although I would like more CoX articles about tactics and things like that and how the game is changing. I use an RSS reader though.
I also read via RSS, and so for the most part don’t visit the site, only clicking through on the posts of greatest interest. I generally read on Saturdays, but rarely on Sundays. Like Markus, quality matters much more to me than quantity or regularity. I generally only read the first few lines of the game-specific posts, continuing on if it is delving into something that sparks my interest.
Everyone is posting what I was going to say when I read your post. I love RSS, because it doesn’t matter how often you post. If I enjoy what you write, you’ll stay on my reading list for quite a while, and when you do have something to say, I’ll know immediately.
I have a ton of gaming blogs on my RSS feed, so I’m never at a loss for something to read. Don’t worry about us having content; I’m perpetually behind on blog reading. However, enjoyable and engaging posts are a little rarer and always appreciated.
By the way, are you going to join Ethic and the rest of us for WAR? :D
I’m off CoX for at least a while. At this point, I have done almost everything. If the next issue is anything like the last, another weekend will catch me up again.
WAR is tempting, mostly for the blogger guild. I should at least try the open beta to join y’all.
I’ve actually cut back to posting only about twice a week on LagORama. The interesting thing is, my subscriber numbers rose a bit, and my unique pageviews went up QUITE a bit.
Apparently, once a day was overdoing it…at least for me.
Of course, my wife’s take on that was “Well, a little of you DOES go a long way.” Sigh.
I notice the same on my blog; weekends get little traffic. However, I also note that not many bloggers actually put up posts on weekends either so it becomes a bit of a catch-22. If nothing new pops up on the feed *and* if I wasn’t involved in a comments discussion, why bother heading to the blog?