I notice that most of the huge blogs, such as engadget.com, gizmodo.com, joystiq.com and many more (excuse my tech focus) have very long front pages, usually including 10-15 posts on one page. Does anyone have a view on whether that is the best option for blogs? Is it because they are updated many times per day? Of course, the blogs mentioned enjoy the benefit of being premium adsense publishers, which means they can include more than 3 units per page.
My guess is user interaction with blogs that post regularly. I tend to glance over the posts on the sites mentioned, because there are so many per day/week - so a long format allows that. But whether it's better for click-through, revenue etc - I'm not so sure. I am posting 1-2 times daily to my blog, so wondered what views were on number of posts for the front page.
i have played with this also -- i find having a huge main page that scrolls down too far so that it has no sidebar info looks odd -- i try to keep it at 10 posts on the main page...also tried a recent post plugin to show the last 15 posts -- didn't notice much difference in click or revenue -- i think for me it is more about the look and feel of the main page -- i am not a fan of massive main pages -- i just won't scroll that much
Blog magazines - those with multiple authors seem to do better with long pages because posts are updated very frequently. Then again it all has to do with design, your blog needs to look attractive, regardless of the number of posts on the front page