I’ve covered this topic many times from many different perspectives. I publish on my blog mostly for myself and for the added benefit that someone else will find the information useful.
Recently Jeremy Keith wrote similarly. But this other bit about how one cannot predict what will resonate with others keeps coming up too. He wrote:
I’ve noticed—and other bloggers have corroborated this—there’s no correlation whatsover between the amount of time you put into something and how much it’s going to resonate with people. You might spend days putting together a thoroughly-researched article only to have it met with tumbleweeds when you finally publish it. Or you might bash something out late at night after a few beers only to find it on the front page of various aggregators the next morning.
If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you know I’ve also experienced the same. In fact, I would wager it is more likely that something I spent less time on gets more attention than the things I spend more time on.
I’ve had a few blog posts that went pretty crazy. My most popular post has had millions of unique page views. Before publishing it I would have never, ever guessed it’d be the most popular post.
I publish each post with the expectation that a very small number of people will ever read it. I also expect it to be just a blip in their day and will be very inconsequential.
