Turn off all of your statistic monitors on your blog. Right now.

Posted March 6th, 2009. Categorized under Internet. 11 Comments

At least once a day, every blogger will check his stats. How many page views have there been? What posts are the most popular? Where is my traffic coming from? How many subscribers do I have? A large amount of traffic is a big contributor to feeling successful as a blogger — you know you’ve done something right if a lot of people are reading what you write.

Does monitoring statistics cause us to blog for the wrong reasons?

The problem is, so many bloggers make traffic their entire focus. All over the Internet, there are tons of posts detailing good techniques to increase the number of people who read your blog. As Ben at Frogstr points out, when bloggers decide to change their style and focus just to receive more page views, a lot of the originality of a blog is lost in the process. Even though the blog will cater more to a general audience, the niche audience the author may have originally started out trying to attract may drift away and lose interest.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve realized that the secret to maintaining your originality is to simply stop monitoring statistics.

Hear me out.

This is an odd approach I’m sure, and it’s definitely easier said than done. But if blogs are structured so much on the outcomes of our statistics, what would happen if we just… turned them off? If we did our best to stop monitoring hits, referrals, keywords, etc?

I can’t imagine not having a general idea of how read my blog is — I’m a bit of a math guy, and I like to assign numbers to just about everything. But, in theory, if you ignored all statistics, the only way you could even guess at the popularity of your blog would be the number of comments a post receives. Of course, comments aren’t always indicative of how viewed a post is, so you could never really accurately guess at your traffic.

Without any stats to look about, worries about your traffic would go away, leaving only the desire to write.

Abandon stats completely? Are you mad?

Of course, this isn’t for everyone. Some people rely on blogs as a major source of income, and in those cases traffic is most definitely important. For other people, receiving traffic is such a large part of blogging that removing it would take out a lot of the enjoyment.

But if you feel jaded with the focus on traffic, hits, PageRank, and all that jazz, shunning stats from your web life could be relieving and even a bit inspiring — a return to the basics: just writing posts for people to read.

What do you think? Am I off my rocker?

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11 Replies to “Turn off all of your statistic monitors on your blog. Right now.”

Comments:

1. acidcloud

March 6th, 2009 8:23 pm

I don’t check my stats everyday, I simply check it once and a while to see how my pages are doing. But I do see your point – some people solely focus on this concept.

acidcloud’s latest post: Aquarium

2. spot from best dating websites

March 6th, 2009 11:00 pm

Interesting post. I think looking at your blog traffic is a little like looking at your stock portfolio. You can’t worry about the hour-to-hour, day-to-day movement of it. But not looking at it altogether isn’t really a good idea either. Knowing your traffic — what posts are popular and where your traffic comes from — is key to making your blog better. If you have 2 posts of subject A and 10 posts on subject B, and everyone is reading your subject A posts then that’s a sign that you should write more about subject A.

Still, I get the gist of what you are saying. Thanks for your thoughts.

3. Nate from Debt-free Scholar

March 9th, 2009 5:26 pm

I agree with you entirely! I read my starts way to much.

Thanks,
Nate

Nate’s latest post: 4 Steps to Passing the CLEP

4. inertz

March 13th, 2009 1:50 pm

I think statistic is just guessing. You can compare the result when you use Google Analytics with Awstat and Statpress in your blog. It will not show same result.

inertz’s latest post: Resident evil 5 is a big hit in japan

5. Ben Tremblay

March 28th, 2009 8:25 pm

I’m a bit late, but thanks for linking to one of my article! It’s appreciated and I’m happy to hear you liked the article.

Keep up the good work on your blog!

Ben.

Ben Tremblay’s latest post: Google is smarter than you think

6. Paul

March 29th, 2009 2:18 am

@Ben: You’re welcome! I’m glad you like the blog!

7. Jan from Primary Work at Home

October 5th, 2009 6:42 am

I think what is really important is keep on adding interesting topics in your blog and don’t rely too much on the stats. I like your blog.

8. carl from wheel alignment

November 5th, 2009 10:21 am

thats an interesting theory, i guess looking at my stats does somewhat affect what i write about, however i also a firm believer of giving the public what they want in which stats do help.

9. Maureen from 5th wheel campers

February 22nd, 2010 7:17 pm

I agree – the stats are where I end up wasting too much time. too much REACTIVE time.

Wish there was a happy medium – between turning them off and still getting the data :)

10. John from Colchester wedding photographer

February 25th, 2010 6:55 am

So Paul, almost a year on and how did the experiment work? Are you back on the stats? If a site is just for fun then agreed stats can take up way too much creative time. But, as soon as the site becomes a financial concern – even with something as straightforward as adwords – stats have to be of value… just try not to devote too much time analysing them!
John@Colchester wedding photographer´s last blog ..White Bouquet: Colchester Wedding Photographer

11. Paul

February 25th, 2010 12:00 pm

@John: Admittedly I do use my stats a lot, though not as much as I used to. I try my best not to revolve my site around my stats, but I’ll look now and then to get an idea how I’m doing and what people are reading, and that way I can tailor my site more towards that.