Depending on which blog you’re reading at any given time, you will likely read a completely different opinion on when to publish a blog post.  Some will argue that you should post right away in the morning so that you’re front and center when all the coffee drinking, early risers are opening up their morning reading tabs.  Others will say you should post late at night so that you get in front of the “oldest first” queues for those same morning readers.  Others might say you should publish several posts a day for different time zones around the world.  Yet more might say that they only post at the end of the week and over the weekend when the competition is lighter and they can command more attention.

But, this post isn’t about what others might say.  It’s about what I say. (It’s my blog, I can do that.)  And, here’s my take on publishing times.  It’s completely up to you.  Only about half of my posts are, like this one is, published in the future.  The other half are usually published when I finish them, so they are at whatever time of the day that inspiration hit for the day.  Of the ones that I future post, a majority of them are published mid-morning.  For me, that works better.  I find that if I post too early (<10am Central) the traffic is much lighter.  I think this is likely because the post gets buried under all the 8-5 west coast bloggers who are posting stuff right away in the morning.  If I post late at night, it also seems like traffic is lighter.  My theory there is that many people read their blogs and such at work.  (Shhh.  I won’t tell.)  Which is why I don’t like posting on the weekends either.

If I do future post, I tend to post somewhere in the middle of the day.  Somewhere between 10 am and 2 pm is where I usually put them.  And that seems to work quite well for me.  But, results may vary.  You may find that your readers are predominantly east coasters and like to read in the early morning before work.  You may find that your readers are overseas, in which case their schedule will be drastically different from yours and you may want to future post late at night or very early in the morning.

What I’m trying to say is that there is no hard and fast rule about when you should post.  You can’t template your blog to someone else’s blogging experience.  You’ve got to forge your own path and find the methods that work best for you.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to some one else and try what they suggest.  That’s how we all learn.  But, in the end, what you do with your site may be different.

P.S. if you want to read a great post on some blogging rules that are not worth following, check out Lisa Barone’s post on The 5 Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership.