DISQUS

Rob O'Daniel · 1 year ago

Wow, how refreshing this is! So many bloggers seem to get so wrapped up in PageRank, Alexa Stats, PPC, etc. and forget that those stats aren't the reason for blogging. Or actually, in quite a few cases, those bloggers are in this purely for the sake of trying to get rich quickly - and you can easily tell from their weak websites crammed with glaring ads, distracting buttons & banners, wonky widgets and just about anything else they can dream up to take focus away from the fact that their content is junk at best.

Our intent was never to blog for income - not in the least. Blogging is a means for my wife & me to share our interests & happenings with our friends & family who're scattered all across the nation. Working on web development has also been an incredible learning opportunity. And then finally, I simply enjoy that this offers me expressive and creative outlets. Who knew I liked to write? And blogging may have improved my written communication skills a bit too...

That said, I do still go over my Google Analytics & Webalyzer (provided by my site host) stats just to cull out interesting trends and for curiousity's sake. Once a week or so, I enjoy pouring through the wealth of trivia that GA scrapes in.

Like you, the single biggest improvement I'm eager to make is to increase the number of comments on my blog. But I dunno if the dearth of comments is is a by-product of less-than-stellar topics, crummy writing, ho-huh site design, or if the people who visit our site really do read - and maybe even enjoy - the stuff that's there, but simply don't have anything to add. The thing is, I can check stats all day to see if anyone is showing up - and traffic is steadily, slowly climbing - but that doesn't give me a feel for how much the readers are connecting with my content once they get there. Comments are an immediate validation that something you said actually resonated with someone else. Vanity, thy name be "Rob," I suppose.

webomatica · 1 year ago

Hi Rob - I suppose lack of comments might be a good sign, too - in particular, negative ones calling the blogger a moron. :)

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

And after reading to the end... the Google ad banner reads: "Triple The Traffic To Your Website... In 48 Hrs!" Contextual advertising... FAIL!

webomatica · 1 year ago

I'm as amused by these ads as you. Despite my love for Battelstar Galatica, I do not want to know the person that clicks on the ad for the ring tone.

Corvida Raven · 1 year ago

Re: ads - That is pretty funny.

I think it's a bit egotistical to try to keep up with your stats 24/7. I just my RSS subs during the weekdays, but I could care less about my traffic. I'm more concerned with my comment stats at the end of the day. You're good though. I'm not sure I'd cut off Google Analytics. I don't use it for stats as it pertains to numbers, but there are other valuable gems in GA.

webomatica · 1 year ago

If there's one metric I'd like to increase is the number of comments here, too.Most likely I just need to write better posts and comment both here and on other blogs.

Robert Seidman · 1 year ago

Jason, I don't think you can necessarily correlate quantity of comments to quality of posts. Comments typically seem to correlate to how controversial the post is. If you write X is better than Y, or Y sucks, or something else controversial, it'll generate more comments.

I'll cite Kara Swisher's "Boomtown" as an example. Most of her posts, even ones that are prose instead of videos generate few, if any comments. It's not a function at all of the quality of her prose, and doesn't really indicate anything about how much they were read either. But then she posts "Twitter, Where Nobody Knows your name" and she gets 25 comments. And way more conversation was had than just in those comments. It just was scattered throughout the blogs, Friendfeed, Twitter itself, etc. Which I'm sure was just fine w/Kara.

I'm sure many have shared your trajectory from "stats obsession" to "eh, who needs it!" That said, Corvida is right, there are some valuable gems in GA.

webomatica · 1 year ago

Robert, good point. Old habits die hard - must remember the conversation has moved elsewhere.

Well, that's one less stat to obsess over which is a good thing.