What time of day do you like to post?
I am a morning person, at least used to be prior to blogging. But nowadays, I’ve been staying up later and later every night. So its not unusual for me to want to write the post and publish it at night. But it does not always happen after working all day, which causes huge frustration, that in turn results in writer’s block! And I am beginning to feel that its a vicious circle to fall in. Do you have a set schedule as to the time of day when you feel more motivated to post?
I talked to a few of my friends who also blog and they emphasize that mornings work best for them since the mind is fresh and there are no interruptions. As much as I would love to concentrate in the mornings, I am not able to wake up early these days. I remember writing a post about not staying up till 2am let alone past that time sometimes, which is what I am doing these days and then have to work all day but somehow I am not able to follow those ideas.
While I was thinking about this issue, a friend emailed to let me know that my Alexa rankings had shot up in the past few days. While checking my traffic patterns for Alexa, I noticed that most of my traffic was coming from the US. So, does it really affect your readership, what time of day you publish your posts? I understand this is going to be different for different people because of being in different time zones but do you look at your statistics as to where your most visitors are coming from? And at what time of the day they hit your blog?
My most readers coming from US means that posting at late night would work for me in that most people would be able to read it in the morning while I could still be curled up in my bed with some peace and not have to worry about thinking and writing.
Another reason to post at night comes to mind and that is that every time I want to write something, I feel I need to check my feeds to see the trends, what people are writing, if there is something I need to know in news category etc, and million other things that can be very distracting. Besides, I do not like to post something that has not been carefully written and proof read and edited and in the mornings, just before work, how can you do all these things?
By now you can probably tell that as much as I would love to be able to post in the mornings, I am building a justification of why it is really better to post at night.
Obviously I have not reached the point where I have a month’s worth of posts waiting to be published. I plan on working on that schedule or having no schedule so to speak with a post bank, but until that happens, I would love to hear what you have been doing and what time of the day you feel works best for you for posting.
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Targeting the time for your reader is sure a nice idea. But how about if your reader comes from several countries like Asia, Australia, Europe and America (not dominated by US only) ?
Basically, I will not care much about the posting time. Instead, I will care much on the day which my traffic is on the summit. I believe, everybody have a “lucky day” in one week.
For example only, I love to write my highest value post at Tuesday because I see in the stats the traffic is the highest thorough the week. And Yes, it bring me a lot of comments and clickthrough rate in what I’m endorsing.
I post at night, but it’s simply what works for me with my schedule. I spend evenings searching for topics and seeing what’s going on in the world, collecting my information, then write thru the night as I find the one that grabs me most.
But by the time I’ve gathered everything, written the post and formatted it, it’s usually in the wee hours of the morning in North America when it’s hit to publish.
I think the key is targeting a general time each day for consistency so your readers know when they arrive they’ll find something new, and when. I used to be able to get mine posted by 2am MST, but lately it’s grown later and later … recently as late as 8am!
Ken - I was thinking about other countries too so yes it shouldn’t really matter what time of the day you publish posts… but I felt if you target your post to the area your most traffic comes from, and if they expect to read the post in the morning, and you don’t have it ready, then you may never see them again during the day… just a thought…
and you are right, middle of the week does sound like most people are back and active in blogging after a bit of work on Mondays
I haven’t compared the traffic on a day by day basis!
yeah Deb.. I was actually thinking about you for a few days now
you and I are up all night like owls 
Except at 8am you can take a nap and I have to head out to work… no wonder I’m falling apart 
I just read your dilemma post Deb… I’ll be over to comment… hope all is well with the site now….
thank you so much for coming by!! tc
If the subject is something that is time sensitive, then of course I post it right away. Otherwise I post early in the morning. Even if I write it the night before.
Sometimes I do a whole bunch of writing on the weekend, and then schedule the posts for the mornings of the following week.
I really like to be a couple of days ahead, just in case I don’t have time to write anything.
I agree with Mike above. If time sensitive, then post immediately. I am not a morning person but do most of my reading at night. Love your site by the way!
One of my bad habits has been to post at the end of my day - too many times I’ve caught myself literally falling asleep while typing my post up. For some reason it manifests itself as a line of k’s in my post…
Generally, I think I write my best posts earlier in the day, but not first thing in the morning. I also need to do some writing in advance so that I can post them on the day I want to post them, since Blogger doesn’t have “publish to the future” available.
Sephyroth
http://www.sephyroth.net
[...] think I am unable to do a full review for now but I did read her justifications of why she prefers blogging at night. Pretty interesting but I think it varies from individual to individual. According to one of my [...]
@Scott - I like your idea of writing content over the weekends and scheduling it for the week mornings… I am working on picking up some speed too one of these days!
@Mike Russotto - Welcome to the blog here Mike… thanks for the compliment!!
I agree with Scott too about time sensitive material and I am trying to keep up with that although I have wanted to post in similar times but missed and really regretted…. a reason for having a lot of posts ready!!
@Sephyroth… yeah its not a good idea to be writing when you are sleepy
and that is one reason you need to move to wordpress 
thanks for stopping by guys….. tc and kit
Nice post but I have never thought about that!
Hi Kaylee…. seems like you are back in spirits
good to have you here …
I normally post on 11.30PM IST. It will be 6PM in UK and the day job workers would have already returned from the 9-5 work. I don’t whether US readers find it easy. But I’m getting most readers from US. I’ll have to try posting at different times and do a research. Good post.
I usually blog at night till 1am
Yes definately am thanks
@Ramkarthik……..welcome to the blog …
thats really what I struggle sometimes…. I’ll be experimenting posting at different times and see what happens…..
seems like you have it figured out for all of your readers
Hey Chee…. you seem to be following the same pattern as me…:) its just not working out to post in the mornings with having to go to work!
HOW ARE YA?
Well, I prefer to write in the mid morning, but I don’t get time to blog most of the days during mid morning. That’s bad
Hi Shankar - aren’t you at school at that time?
I am struggling to find more time during afternoons so I am not up late at nights….
thanks for stopping by… kit
Yup that’s what.. I can’t blog during that time but I’d love to
yes thats when my brain is most active too but I am at my job! guess this is a struggle most bloggers have.. finding time is always hard, especially for things you love to do!