When to Spend 10 Hours (or more) for a Single Post

I’ve been writing posts for the last three or so years (has it really been that long?!?). My writing frequency, I have to admit, is quite erratic. When I started, I used to write at least three posts in a week. Now, given a lot of other commitments, I barely have the time to sit down and finish a post within a week. Though I still try, believe me.

Anyway, you might ask, how long does it take for me to finish one post? It depends on the topic of course. The minimum time (the fastest I can) for me to whip up one post is around an hour or so. Those are for posts that which I generally know the lesson by heart and all I have to do is to let my fingers to the keyboard work. But, truth be told, there are some special cases- cases wherein, yes, it takes me 10 hours (or longer!) to create just one single post.

 

What’s the Story Behind This?

You might ask, “is this serious? Is Liane just overworking this whole thing about post quality? Is she exaggerating?!?”. Actually, nope. I’m pretty serious. And to prove why, I’m going to give you an example where I’ve actually done this.

See, if you head out to Problogger now, you’ll see for yourself that the latest post… is mine. Hah. The title is about “The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Blog Logo”. Of course, I’m not here to brag about that. I’m here to share a lesson as to why I’ve managed to get a post published by one of the most popular blogs out there. After all, I’m pretty sure you have your mind set to achieve something similar.

The Law of Disproportional Results

It’s a term I heard from another blogger. I am not, in any way, claiming this is mine but I just really forgot the site where I picked this up (credits to you genius guy, whoever you are).

According to this law, it states that by exerting just a little more effort than you would normally do, you can attain exponential/greater/massive results. The example here of course is guest posting… and I think this is something that’s timely considering that Sean’s now opening SEO Hacker for guest posts.

In guest posting, what people would normally do is to find some average to above-average blog, sit for an hour or two and finish a post, submit it and then wait for it to be published and traffic to roll in. I did this a lot of times and normally, this 1-2 hours’ work would pull around 10-50 new visitors. Not bad eh?

But think about this, what if you can spend some more effort on your guest post to get massive returns? Say for example, instead of around 2 hours why not go all out and spend the rest of your day (10 hours straight if you’re free!) getting focused on one single post that’s packed with tutorial/info goodness? Then, target some really popular blog and get your post published there.

What you’ll get, dear blogger, is an out-of-proportion returns.

Take My Problogger Guest Post example

In spending a few hours (or one) for a single post I get to submit it to some decent blog and in return, get decent traffic (say 10-50 new visitors). But by going all out and focusing on one single, fully detailed post, not only does it get a shot at the big blogs, it actually gets approved! And it only boils down to giving it a really long time to be well-written, researched and reviewed.

The results? As of press time my site has been getting around 300+ hits and it was just a few hours ago when the post was published! Think if this trend continues for the next couple of days (when the post stays in the homepage) or when it gets really high rankings in the search engine (I Googled the article by the way and no surprise it lands on rank # 1!).

You see how disproportional the results are? And it’s a matter of taking some more time than usual.

Now Back at You

It doesn’t necessarily have to apply to just guest posting. In fact, the law of disproportionate results could apply to a lot of aspects. Like your online business for example. If you just spend an hour for promoting, why not make it 3-5 hours for a change? Who knows your profits might grow exponentially just by devoting a few couple of hours more.

The point here is that there’s nothing to lose as long as you have good time management skills. After all, it’s just a matter of good ol’ hard work. Cliché but true don’t you think?

Blog post writing can even help you land a post on Problogger.