[gonzogone]

So I'm wondering what everybody's theory is on getting a new blog started. How many posts do you get scheduled and ready to go before you 'open the doors'?

Initially, I was looking at being a week ahead and that was just ok. Still working to stay anywhere from a few days to a week ahead on existing while I'm still updating 2-3 times a week.

About to launch a new one and spending a little more time in the prep stages. My target is to have a months worth of posts scheduled before I release on Thursday. I'm about half way there right now. I've also got a couple feeds setup, but went back in and scheduled each of those posts for two a week through like January.

I figure that will give me a little breathing room while I'm working on the next one.

So how do you approach them?

[Gaystoryman]

Myself, I like to start with about 15 to 30 posts, already in place, with a month's scheduled.

I know many don't bother as much, but I like to have things ready to go, before I set the site live, more or less.

I use a lot of templates, where I add other advertisements at the bottom of many posts. Especially in my video blogs, so that I can gather up a few gravy sales, though these days they are more the meat 'n taters sales.

My reasons are to check out the theme, once it is a bit populated, and if I need to tweak it, well, not a huge task with so little in place.

Another "pre launch" routine is I set my sidebars, especially the various blogrolls I'll have in place. I like to include a separate blogrool for membership sites I promote, along with my own sites, and break them down a bit, rather than simply one long link list on the sidebar.

Many themes are also now allowing for descriptions to be shown, and that also can throw off the length of the individual page.

Customizing the site map is another thing I like to do in advance, which includes adding some advertising directly into the page.

[Tigger]

15-30 jesus Ian give us a break I've got some blogs that are 6 months old that don't have 30 posts on them............................but there again I go for quality rather than quantity

I think you need to ask yourself Brent does it have something to feed G when it comes along, yes ?? then fine put it live, I've seen blogs ranking well that have 5 posts, so so long as you have the content as the Mrs would say " get the thing up"

[gonzogone]

I'd love to have that many posts stocked up before going 'live', but I don't have that many words in me. Right now, I just want to have enough scheduled that I don't have to worry about the next post for at least a few weeks. I'll still write them to get scheduled, but I want to try to NOT feel like... crap, I've got to write two for this one this week and three for that one this week...

Trying to keep on a release schedule between sites that I'm tying into Tweets and such so followers get something regularly and the SE bots get fed regularly.

[Tigger]

how often are you looking at putting post live Brent? daily, weekly.................. monthly

[gonzogone]

I'm doing 3 times a week for the first month with actual hand written content. Then down to 2 times a week for 2-4 weeks and then once a week after that point. Part of that is actually part of my Twitter experiments. I'm trying to feed my followers at least something daily from one site or another and I'm doing it strictly with new blogs for now to also see what traffic patterens end up being. Until I've got enough blogs that are only being updated once a week that I can Tweet daily about, I've built a nice little trap for myself...

Various feed content gets scheduled for at most one a week per feed and I've got 2-4 feeds working per site right now while I'm getting a feel for what each of them does with updates, text per post, etc...

[Tigger]

sounds like you have a plan .......now sticking with it

be interesting to see how things work out for you

[gonzogone]

Originally Posted by Tigger

sounds like you have a plan .......now sticking with it

be interesting to see how things work out for you

I think so long as I don't beat myself up over really hard core time schedules, I can stick to it. I've got a schedule of what day each blog will release a new post. So long as I make a post on that blog 'sometime' that day, it's all good. Ideally, I'm done with them the week before and they are scheduled. I'm running a little late this week only because I've been trying to get so far ahead on the next one. But I do already know what I'm writing about, just gotta get it done.

So far, I've been setting myself up with resources for where posts are coming from. I've got a running list of fall backs if I don't find anything fresh easily. The programs I'm working with the most send out email updates with their latest stuff and as I go through those, I categorize them for what site they would fit into and if the set is something I'd want to feature someplace.

Like this morning, I went through about 15 links from emails in a few minutes. Of those galleries, I found 4-5 that I liked enough to add to something, so they are flagged and I'll write something as each site they fit into needs a new post.

Still need to work on adding more monetizing options to blogs, but that's something I can keep doing as I go along and figure out what I think is the best way to deal with them. Traffic is already building nicely though and I'm getting some natural links resulting from Tweets, so happy with that effort. It's going to be interesting to see how the Tweets work out over the next 6 months or so.

No matter what, I'm happy with how things seem to be progressing at this point. As always, need more traffic, but that's a constant. In 2-3 weeks, I should have niche blogs at basic acceptable levels over three different hosts, so hopefully a bit more to offer when it comes to link building.