Reference: research-first cadence by operation type — 1 piece/month to bimonthly print
Created 2026-05-22
Realistic cadence for research-first content operations, by operator profile (2026):
| Operation type | Realistic cadence | Reference point |
|---|---|---|
| Solo, primary focus elsewhere | 1 piece/month | Bits about Money (Patrick McKenzie self-describes as "roughly monthly") |
| Solo, primary work | 1 piece/week | Construction Physics (Brian Potter's stated target: "every, every week or so") |
| Small team (2-4 people) | 1 deep piece/week + ongoing notes | Anthropic Science blog (Features + Workflows + Field Notes) |
| Quarterly long-form house | 4-6 major pieces/year | Works in Progress (shifting to bimonthly print) |
For a small service business operating research-first, the realistic answer is one public article every 2-4 weeks, with foundation-research notes drafted continuously in the background.
The trap: benchmarking against high-volume content marketing (HubSpot's 16+ posts/month threshold) and concluding research-first "doesn't work." It works on a different axis: per-piece authority, AI citation likelihood, and conversion among readers who already trust the category.
The right metric is not posts per month. It is whether the next piece you write makes the previous one more valuable, or just adds another file to the same folder.