In the case of blogging, writing is (typically) one's product. Writing is relatively cheap and depending on the subject is highly commoditized, so you need to write a lot to incentivize audiences to return and to continue to consume, and presumably pay you somehow.
This isn't always the case. You might be an otherwise famous individual who will have an audience regardless of your publishing frequency. But I think for most bloggers, you have to have enough material that people will visit, and continue to make more so people will come back.
I published between 1 and 3 times a year on my blog/website. But then I'm not doing it for income.
Quite a bit. I would say my blog has been successful, but it only happened after I had written a lot, which was about 100 posts and about 150 posts in a blog that now doesn't exist.
To be successful, your need to get an audience. To get an audience, you have to either build one over time or go viral at least once. I've done both.
To build an audience over time, you need to give them a lot to read so that they won't forget you and will keep coming back.
Going viral is a luck thing, but you sure do get better chances of going viral the more you post.
My first viral post was posted on Hacker News at a time when I thought it wouldn't go viral for sure: on Saturday night (my time). I didn't want that one to go viral, but I thought I would post it anyway to attract some readers.
Oh boy.
I woke up the next morning to a headache.
Since then, when I want to make an impact, I post during my nighttime. Turns out, posting that on a Saturday night was perfect because my most viral posts have been, with one or two exceptions.
But I wouldn't have been able to sample that enough to know if I didn't have 50-100 (tech-oriented) blog posts to try with.
I find there are two types of writers - ones who are working on a massive tome or tomes of perfection (often in their are of expertise) and those who are writing about a ton of different things.
The second definitely improves with consistent output. I assume the first does too, but they often are continually revising their “masterpiece” so it can be harder to see
Its an empirical rule of thumb that to build an audience online, post at least once a week (more often for low-effort posts for smartphones). If you can think of any well-known online writers who do not post a lot, I think you will find they generally had an existing audience (eg. Paul Graham is a venture capitalist with a crowd of admirers). Rules of thumb are not laws of nature, but this one matches my experience and my observations.
How much truth is in this often-repeated statement?