Blogging Investment

Not too long ago our good friend Fuji had an interesting question to close off his blogpost (as he is one to do). That question was how much time do we invest into our blog posts.

I've found that the answer varies depending on what the post I write about is about.

Before we start, let me just say that the timeframe I'm going to set these posts in is the time between when I finally start writing the new post and when I finally hit the Publish (or more often the Schedule) button for the last time. So I'm not counting the time the ideas have been in my head stewing and marinating (because if I included this then my unpublished/unmade farewell post would have been in the works for five years and counting).

Unrelated Scan 1

1). Less Than an Hour

I think the average amount of time I spend on a blogpost is anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour. For the most part these are fairly simple and short blogposts where I didn't go into much depth. Often times these could be shortened down into really simple "show and tell" posts or just me spouting nonsense like a sports talk radio host going into a monologue that lasts way too long. It's like once I start typing all those words just flow out. After that I usually reread what I wrote once or twice to make sure no egregious grammar mistakes are there (although minor ones do manage to slip through the cracks until I notice them six hours after the blogpost goes live). The posts that take less time are ones where I just lazily reuse the same pictures of cards I've already shown on this blog over and over again. The most time consuming aspect of these posts are likely just scanning, cropping and uploading photos for the sake of having a good enough presentation.

2). Between 1-2 Hours

Most of the posts where I recap my trips to Staten Island or Brooklyn take a good 1-2 hours to write. A lot of that is thanks to scanning/cropping/uploading pictures taking up at least 30 minutes. Every. Single. Time.

Because it takes me a good hour (and then some) to get home from the stadium(s) I usually spend the ride home thinking of what to write and say (often saving the decent lines into the Notes app on my phone). Then I just unload all of the words I deem worthy of sharing in one long ass blogging/typing session when I get home. Once the words are all written down I start scanning and putting them into place.

I know I mentioned that I'm only taking the time AFTER I press the new blog post button into consideration but I felt I needed to say that I do think ahead sometimes in the interest of conserving time. Plus even with that head start, it still takes me over an hour to write those posts because I have to look up information about the players.

3). More Than 24 Hours, Less Than a Week

If a blogpost takes more than two hours to make, then I've likely ended up writing it across multiple days. The "research" posts I make every once in a blue moon fall under this category, as well as the Clone Breaks. The post about 2004 Upper Deck Power Up took me a week to write because I wanted to be thorough. The first "Revisiting Profiles" post I ever made about Lefty Davis took me a week to write because information ended up being scattered across multiple sources and wouldn't/couldn't be gathered in one sitting. Of course my Ode to a Dodgers Prospect posts take a solid week to make too. Anything where I have to look at multiple sources at once requires more time to put them together to make one cohesive picture. At least for me anyway. In the end I'm uncharacteristically proud of how these turn out though. Like, I'd actually reread them when I'm bored levels of narcissistic pride.

4). More Than a Week, Less Than a Month

This category just has the monthly TTM roundups I do at the end/beginning of every month. The individual writeups for the people who send returns back to me are done in under an hour the day the SASE enters my mailbox, but the post itself isn't finished until the cutoff point I've set.

5). More Than a Month, Less Than a Year

I've had a few posts in the works for months. None of them ever get published the way they've existed for the better part of their draft stage. These posts that take forever are usually GIANT research posts where I have to look at and analyze dozens upon dozens of individuals for one handy dandy blogpost. Like take the one I infamously deleted where I was doing a profile on a lot of the bust prospects who got a shit ton of cards in the 1990's and 2000's. That took me several months to write (and it wasn't even done!). I accidentally deleted it and I started writing a new one. But in the time since I've decided to stop with that and have since slowly integrated the information originally gathered for that post into other posts.
And that's usually what happens to the other posts that take me forever to blog about. Most of the stuff I wrote for them get cannibalized to help spruce up other posts in the works (or to make the writing process a lot faster) and what's left ends up being deleted.

Related Scan

The only real exception to this was the post I wrote in 2017 where I reflected on Luis Torrens' first season as a big leaguer. That was written across the span of several months because it's easier to record the feelings/vibes/perceptions/stats when they're still new and happening as opposed to looking back after the season ended and with a different view than if I'd been writing it in real time. That clear vision and focus appears to be the only reason that that post survived and the rest didn't.

And that's about it. None of the posts I've written have ever taken more than a year to write.

Unrelated Scan 2

So yeah, I guess I probably invest a good two weeks worth of time into my blogposts when an entire year has passed if you were to properly keep track like some company's payroll department. No complaints from me though. The posts give the cards even more depth and meaning. Because blogging about them at all signals that these cards are significant enough for me to talk about them and share them with the world. In that regard blogging is an extension of my collecting hobby. I suppose that there is a part of me that thinks the time I spend writing could be better suited for other things, but then I remember that I've wasted a good two/three years of my life already by being on Twitter and think that my blogging is just fine by comparison.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).