My Publication Schedule

August 26, 2004 | 12 Comments

Summary: I’ve had a loose publication schedule for quite awhile now. As part of my re-branding efforts I’m going to make it public and do my best to stick to it.

A while back I decided it was a good idea to try an put into place a loose publication schedule. Even though I’m not really a professional publisher, I thought I could benefit from running my independent publication (that’s pretty much what Asterisk is when you break it down) just like the pros would.

While I don’t have much in common with many professional publishers, (I don’t have an editor—shame on me—every good publication should have one) I do try and do what I can. While a publication schedule can be a complicated endeavor, I’ve found that a simple schedule can be quite helpful.

I’ve recently decided that it might be beneficial to my readers to clue them in and in doing so hold myself more responsible to keeping to it. You may ask yourself, why does he bother? I know I have. Well, there are actually lots of good reasons. And it’s not really that hard to do when you’re just one person.

Why Have A Schedule

For someone who writes as much as I do (I’ve usually got a backlog of posts saved in draft mode) it helps me to stay organized. I can write posts and schedule them out, thus allowing me to take advantage of creative “ups” and the less and less frequent free time I’ve got to write.

That’s why you don’t see me “disappear” for too long. I really want to try and post at least a few times a week and while the frequency will vary, I should almost always have at least one good post on the back burner. I do kill posts quite frequently, more and more as I learn how to write and publish, but more often I will take a chance on a half-baked post than just give up on it. Some of those generate the best discussion, and that is what it’s all about!

It’s not rocket science, but having a publication schedule simply makes things a bit easier for me, and hopefully for you as well. As much as I love try write about things other than Web design and all that goes along with it, I realize that many of you don’t want to read all of that. I imagine it would be helpful to know when I’m going to publish what.

It’s one of the reasons why I publish a “no play” feed. I think choice is important and if I write about my cat, y’all should have the choice not to ever see that. Speaking of news feeds, I realize that, in some ways, they make the idea of a schedule a bit obsolete, but I don’t think that totally eliminates value of a public schedule to the reader.

I know quite a few folks who don’t use feeds, and others who don’t check them every day. Those folks are reason enough to make my publication schedule public and try my best to stick to it. It also allows me to better separate the business from the fun stuff in everyone’s mind.

As a result there will probably be more off-topic posts, the difference moving forward being that my readers will know when (usually) to expect them.

For more, Gerry McGovern has some other good reasons why a Web publication should have a schedule.

The Asterisk Publication Schedule

My schedule is pretty simple, really. It’s also pretty flexible. In general it goes like this:

Mondays - Thursdays: Topics related to Web design, usually more relevant earlier in the week. I may not publish every day.
Wednesdays: If there is one, I usually try to publish my “featured” post of the week on Wednesday.
Fridays: The Song of The Week and occasional off-topic posts like reviews.
Saturday and Sunday: Personal, inspirational (like photos) and other off-topic posts.

That’s it. I’m going to do my best to stick to that, but obviously there will be times when I decide to break the schedule, just as any publication would do. Anyway, think of the Asterisk publication schedule as a mullet. You know, “business in the front, party in the back?” I’ll post design and Web related stuff Monday - Thursday and other stuff on the weekends.

Filed under: My Sites

Comments

1. Bogdan Manolache said:

The schedule idea is great. I wish you to stick with it. But sometimes you won’t have a great idea for a post so you better don’t write anything. Othertimes you will have many great subjects to write about so you will have more posts. This doesn’t mean that you have to write just for the sake of it.

Your readers can find out about the new posts using an addon for Outlook called NewsGator. I’ve been using it for 3 days now and it’s great. It checks for new posts every 10 minutes and I get the posts in my mail program. It’s lot easier than having to browse every blog I read every hour for news.

Posted on August 26, 2004 06:15 AM | #

2. Adam said:

Bogdan: Don’t forget that when your newsreader sends out a call for a syndicated feed, you’re taking a little bit of that site’s bandwidth each time. I think once every 10 minutes is a little overkill … maybe once every hour or so? I mean, there’s never going to be anything Earth shattering that you just have to know right NOW coming through your web design syndication feeds. Try to remember and be courteous to whoever’s feeds your reading.

Keith: I had started noticing your off-topic posts on the weekends, I think that’s brilliant. How much does your traffic usually go down on Saturday and Sunday? Mine drops somewhere around 40% I think. Interesting stuff.

Had not noticed that Wednesday was your “knock it out the park” day. May not want to have given that nugget away, now people will be chiming in with, “Yesterdays post was much better than this one, make it ‘the Wednesday’!”

Posted on August 26, 2004 06:33 AM | #

3. Mike P. said:

Anyway, think of the Asterisk publication schedule as a mullet. You know, “business in the front, party in the back?”

Holy crap, I forgot that I could laugh that hard!!

Posted on August 26, 2004 06:38 AM | #

4. Bill said:

Hmmm…
Asterisk - the mullet of web design blogs.
Not the branding you’re shooting for I hope! ;-)

In all seriousness, I like knowing schedules, even though, as you pointed out, I don’t need to know, since I use a feed reader.

I appear to also like an excessive amount of commas.

Posted on August 26, 2004 08:00 AM | #

5. Mike D. said:

Be careful about the mullet references. I’m sure the same people you speak of who don’t use newsreaders yet are probably still sporting mullets as well.

With regards to traffic and user comments, I’ve found that Monday and Tuesday are by far the best days to post. I’m not 100% sure why, but I think it’s because people are more likely to update their own sites during the week, hopefully linking to your madness in the process, and thus creating more and more traffic throughout the week.

Also, the traffic dropoff on weekends (not just on blogs, but commercial sites as well) is indicative of how much more people surf the web at work than at home.

Posted on August 26, 2004 08:50 AM | #

6. Chris Vincent said:

That’s a pretty good idea. My own posts have become so sporadic, I could use this to keep things halfway consistent.

Posted on August 26, 2004 10:55 AM | #

7. Bogdan Manolache said:

Adam: I think you are right. That is why by default the newsreader was set to check out for new posts every 60 minutes. Back to old settings now :) I am new to newsreaders … what newsreaders do you use?

Mike D.: Very interresting statistics about traffic. I will use that too. THX

Posted on August 26, 2004 11:03 AM | #

8. Jim Foster said:

Thanks for sharing this, and for sharing your knowledge in general - speaking from personal experience, it really helps make it through some of those steeper than average learning curves.

Posted on August 26, 2004 01:41 PM | #

9. Richard MacManus said:

Good luck with your schedule, I think it’s an interesting way to tackle the issue of posting personal things/reviews/etc along with business/professional content.

I thought I’d mention that because I’m a New Zealander, we’re actually one day ahead of most other people. So eg it’s a Friday morning as I write this, but Thursday afternoon over there. So while I’m already in TGIF mode (Thank God Its Friday), everyone else is still in business mode probably. Likewise Monday morning blogging is dead for me, as it’s Sunday where most of the bloggers are!

Posted on August 26, 2004 01:48 PM | #

10. chuck said:

Hey Keith,

we’ll hold you to it! :)

I don’t think I’m ready to make that commitment yet of promising to write on a schedule like that, but that’s why I’m not a ‘design community hero’ :)

at the risk of going off-topic, what’s your writing process? do you just pull up MT “create new entry interface” and start writing? do you usually go through any type of draft version first? maybe that’s a whole ‘nother entry, but I’d be interested in your take.

10-four

Posted on August 26, 2004 07:30 PM | #