This is a great question. And the answer, not surprisingly, has a LOT to do with your goals for being online and having a blog.

Let's say you have a blog to share a passion or hobby with the family, friends, and other hobbyists. Well, if that describes you, then blog when you feel like it. Add content when the mood strikes you, or you have something to say or share.

If you're blogging because you have a business or want to make money from your blog (and we'll outline the 3 basic ways you can do that), then you will want to blog on a regular basis.

And the reason is simple. As you may already know, "content is king" online. The search engines "like" content. They can "see" it, and index it, categorize it (assuming you've done your part to help out the search engines).

Additionally, adding new content on a regular basis accomplishes two things for you...

1. You add more pages of content to your site, thus "owning" more of the internet (thank you John Reese)...
2. Assuming you write post that actually contain valuable content, people will come back and check out what you have to say on a regular basis.

Not to mention, adding content to your site on a regular basis simply "looks" good (i.e. helps you get good rankings) because you are perceived as relevant.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Have you ever done a search for something and found some old "musty dusty" site that clearly hasn't been updated in years. Who knows, the information could also be out of date for all you know.

Well, that isn't good. And Google (and the other search engines playing catch up) don't like that either, because they want the person searching to have a great experience. Like finding relevant sites.

And relevancy (these days) is measured by frequency of adding content (unique content, not some junk swiped from someplace else). Because frequency is seen today and a conversation, having a dialogue, and a blog is suited to do that for the simple reason that people can post comments quickly and easily.

So posting content on a regular basis is good. But the question remains, how often.

Well, in my opinion, more than once a day is NOT good for. Not at all. Again, it's a perception issue. See, some folks have "outsourced" content for their site to a whole team of people. Which obviously allows you to post frequently. But too frequently makes it look like you're using an outsourced team of people, and therefore trying to "game" the system.

So, I would say that if you are trying to make money from your website, at the very least once per week. An absolute minimum. Once a day would be great, assuming you're posting relevant content that people want to read.

Before I close, I mentioned that there are basically 3 ways to monetize your blog. Though you can use all three on your blog, here they are listed in no particular order:

1. selling ad space
2. indirect selling (preselling, as an affiliate)
3. directly selling a product or service.

The first option would assume you have enough registered people and traffic to make it worthwhile for someone to advertise there.

The next two options are clearly related, where enough content is shared to build trust, communicate value, and then gently persuade folks to try out a service, buy a product, etc.

As you might imagine, the common denominator here is getting plenty of traffic. But then again, that's the whole point of web marketing in the first place.

Hopefully this answered the question well enough for you. Please feel free to leave a comment, question, or share an opinion. And if you'd like, you can also follow me on Twitter.