Is there any serious disadvantage to publishing blog posts and improving them later?

The only thing that comes to mind for me is that if you have readers of your blog, they might not go back and re-read the updated articles. But if you don’t have anyone who reads it and its just for you then… whatever makes you happy.

I find that this is not only acceptable, but often necessary. One of the cool things about blogging is that if you get something wrong, you will hear about it eventually and it would be careless not to go in and make corrections.

To @mrlaconic‘s point, while it is true that those who read your blog pre-improvement might not realize you’ve made improvements, if your readers start to learn that you go back and improve your old blogs it earns rereads on old blogs. I know many of the readers of my blog know that I go back in and add pics, lengthen previous posts, etc. and I find that sometimes my older blogs get spikes in readership for no real reason.

Giving your readers a reason to go back to older blogs is a good thing. Making sure that you’re putting out the best possible content is the most important thing.

I think it depends on the subject of the blog and your goal in creating the blog. If it’s just writing, then you can throw it up, and improve it later. People who come later will see the better versions. News organizations do this all the time with breaking news.

If you are selling something, then it’s more important to get it right the first time. If you are doing something that is legally sensitive, getting it right is important. If you want to maintain a reputation for quality, getting it right the first time is important.

It all depends.

You should make every effort to get it right the first time. What you put out on the internet is published content, and if someone links to your content for a particular reason, and you change it you diminish the value.

Perhaps don’t be so hasty to post. If you do have to make changes, do a call-out at the bottom of the article, identify it as EDIT: and clarify what you would like to change about the original post. Some blog sites allow you to write and save in draft form before you publish. I would think that the only change would would want to make to a blog once published, is to correct spelling/grammar errors.

I’m someone who goes backs and improves blog posts.

It’s a personal blog, so I can do what I want. I think of it as an extension of myself, or my image to the world; and I would like to think that anyone who can spot the difference will only see an improved version. I’ve even pulled entries back from the blog (back to “pending review” that at a later date, I’ve judge to be not of a significant quality.)

I too, have a perfectionist bug. One thing I have found helpful is to let a piece of writing cool overnight, because sometimes it is hard to tell the quality of a piece of writing when it is fresh, oven hot. At that same time there are entries that seem important to publish asap because they contain important information to get out in the world (e.g., a recent entry about my involvement in a local activism, which I knew might serve to encourage people to come to an upcoming rally). As it is a personal blog, the majority of my readers come in via facebook; so in a way, I can publish it on my blog, but it doesn’t really go “public” in a significant fashion until I publish the link on facebook.

Actually, as someone involved in the creative arts, I’m fascinated by process, and I think blogging allows this type of malleability. I agree with @BarnacleBill that if you change your point of view significantly / retract major statements it can be annoying to people to link to you. And @wundayatta that there are certain types of blogs (legal, commercial) that you don’t want to revise. But I think of my blog as an exploration of the writing process, and as my edits are, like @crazyivan,‘s largely on improvemenets in photos and writing, then I invite my readers to go on this journey with me.

Thanks for all your great feedback.

This is a personal website, on my own domain and hosting account, with Wordpress.

I have more than 1500 posted links on facebook, about a wideish range of topics, and I thought, why not choose some of the best of these links, write a bit more about them, and build a cool venue for people of various areas of interest to go see what I have to say?

Also, I have some original material to write (or post, some is written already), some in the areas of technology, others philosophy, others… anyway, a lot of topics and content.

The kind of edit I’m thinking of doing, is about improving without removing anything important, without changing the overall meaning of each article.

Let me give you an example. I found and installed an awesome application for Mac a week ago that has given me an AMAZING upgrade in productivity at the computer and around the computer. It’s called http://www.dejal.com/timeout/

I am going to write a post on this application, and well, having read and understood your feedback, what I’m going to do is write the best that I can in a sensate amount of time. If later I have anything more to add to make the post more useful for readers, I shall edit without too much worry.

By the way, I intend to make money with this blog, via Adsense, Amazon affiliate links, other affiliate programs…

Obrigado!