by Skellie
Aristotle contemplating the Bust of Homer, by Rembrandt
The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC — 322 BC) believed that happiness did not lie in honor.
Why? Because only others can give it, and only others can take it away.
I think this philosophy can readily apply to bloggers and webmasters. We tend to gauge our success by statistics and subscribers. When they go up, we feel elated. When they go down, we feel distressed, and wonder what we’re doing wrong.
To have our happiness and sense of achievement pushed and pulled on a day-to-day basis is quite a stressful state of being. If you benchmark your success on reaching subscriber targets, or breaking a certain ceiling of unique visitors per day, you’re bound never to feel consistently fulfilled. Some days traffic will be abysmal. On others, your subscriber count will drop.
Why should numbers hold so much importance when they actually matter so little?
They’re not useful to us. They represent growth, but they say nothing of how it was achieved. Instead of orienting your goals at numbers, why not orient your goals at the actions that produce them?
For example, instead of aiming for 500 subscribers by the end of the month, write up a list of actions you think would be needed to achieve that. Guest-post, write an article each day, comment on 5 different blogs each day, write a link-bait article each week, and so on.
As you complete each action, you can check it off the list, and enjoy a different kind of happiness. The kind that rests squarely with you, and doesn’t surge up and down depending on the whims of a crowd.
When stats are useful, and when they’re not
Statistics are useful for approximating the results of your actions. If something you did brought in an influx of targeted visitors, it’d probably be wise to do it again.
However, I know of many bloggers and webmasters (and I used to be one of them) who check stats repeatedly throughout the day. The habit is at its worst in the first few weeks of your site, when each new visitor is a milestone.
There are two problems with this: firstly, it’s a useless action. You can’t react to inbound traffic, unless you’re someone who likes to say “Thanks for the link” — and even so, you can probably wait until the evening to do that.
Secondly, it’s a time-sink. It might seem like you only take five minutes to check your stats and go through your inbound links, but if you check them ten times a day, that’s almost an hour wasted on an unproductive task. An hour that could have been spent generating new streams of traffic, rather than simply watching those you already have.
If you can limit yourself to checking stats and subscribers once a day, you’ll realize that you’re not missing out on anything, and gaining some important time. Once you get to that stage, you might realize that the intervals can be stretched, until you’re only checking stats once a week. After all, stats inevitably fluctuate from day to day, and its’ the long-term trends you’re looking for.
An increase in average uniques today doesn’t mean much — it could be lower tomorrow. If the average is higher this month than it was last month, however, you’re doing something right.
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16 Comments, Comment or Ping
John Lampard
Yowzers! You check stats only once a week?! I check at least once a day… usually first thing in the morning. It seems to have come part of my wake up routine! True though, too much time can be spent analysing webstats, and I certainly try and avoid checking them multiple times a day
Sep 25th, 2007
Ankesh Kothari
Thanks Skellie for talking about an important topic.
Most people spend so much time over their statistics because they don’t know what they should track. And so they go over every little detail that fluctuates over and over again.
They see their statistics as a sport. Easy way to get over your statistics addiction problem is:
* Know what you should track
* Know why you should track it
* Create a checklist of the factors and track those only
Just knowing “what” and “why” will prevent you from spending time over frivolous elements.
Sep 25th, 2007
glblguy
Skellie, this is so true, but I can’t help it. I think I might be addicted!
Hi, I’m the glblguy and I am a statistiholic…
No way I could go a week, but I’ll make a commitment to only check once a day
Sep 26th, 2007
Valeria Maltoni
Skellie:
You had me at “Aristotle”
When you say “write up a list of actions you think would be needed to achieve that,” you recommend (wisely) that once we cede the control over our destiny (=happiness here) to some external factor, we may find that the target keeps moving.
Sep 26th, 2007
Hans
Hi Skellie,
just few words to tell you that I really like this article. Especially the relation you do between webmasters/bloggers reality and the philosophers. In fact, this is two areas I really like!
Thank you and congratulation for your blog!
Sep 26th, 2007
pearl
I check visitor or referral stats only once a week now but I still keep checking my subscriber counts
need to stop doing that too…
Sep 26th, 2007
Lyndon Antcliff
Socrates however, now there’s a guy who was into stats.
Sep 26th, 2007
Michael from Pro Blog Design
I check my stats every day or two usually. It’s not for vanity though (The RSS one is for vanity! xD ). Your stats can be used to tell you a lot about improving the site.
I’m not so interested in unique and pageviews (Though I do prefer it when that curve is going upwards! xD ), as much as I look at the popular content over the past few days, and where visitors are coming from (In particular, keywords from the search engines). It can all be very useful.
(But as you said, not useful enough to need checked too often!)
Sep 26th, 2007
skellie
@ John: Once a week is still an aspirational goal for me, but I have managed to stretch it out to once every few days
Once a day is fine, I think — then it can be a bit of a guilty pleasure. But it’s when you check multiple times a day that it becomes a problem, so you’re doing well!
@ Ankesh: Good points. What factors do you think are most important to track? I ask because I’m still not sure I’m getting the most out of my stats.
@ Glblguy: Another good thing about once a day is that it’s something to look forward to. You can even use it as a reward for completing an important task
@ Valeria: Exactly. It can be particularly bad for bloggers, as so much of what we do depends on how others receive our work.
@ Hans: Thanks! I’ve been told by a few people that this blog takes a more philosophical view of web stuff, so I tried to make that connection literal here!
@ Pearl: I can’t help it, now that my subs are displayed on the site
But you’re doing a great job with the stats.
@ Lyndon: Too true
@ Michael: I’m the same — I chase up every inbound link obsessively ;). That’s what gets me.
Sep 26th, 2007
Ankesh Kothari
Skellie - thanks for asking.
What should you track actually depends on what goals you have. For eg: a person selling high end consulting services and who requires just 10 clients shouldn’t worry about traffic as much as he should worry about conversion. Where as a blog earning money from ads alone should worry about ad placement and what posts increase traffic.
I’ll see if I can systemize the metrics in a pattern and write a post on it. In the mean time, here are a few basic ones:
Visitor Metrics:
1. Site referrals. Where are the visitors coming from?
2. Entrance pages. Which pages (and topics) are hot?
3. Per page: time spent and bounce rate. Shows you which pages have the leaks. So you can make them better.
4. Heatmap of the page. Shows you where visitors click on.
Revenue Metrics:
1. Total revenue you earn because of your blog. Break it by source.
2. Visitor to click-on-ads ratio.
3. Visitors to subscribers ratio.
4. Visitors to buyers ratio.
Action Log Book
1. Compare your growth curve with your blog posts. If you see a spike, go back 1-2-3 days and evaluate why that spike happened.
2. Have a log book where you note down every promotional tactic you use. Compare the log book with your growth curve.
Sep 26th, 2007
Bunk
I like to “batch” my statistic watchfulness. I check my email twice a day, and check my stats twice a day…..once at noon…once at night. Its more productive and as you say, leaves me more room to concentrate on other aspects of my blog.
Very quality post.
Sep 27th, 2007
WarriorBlog
Wow very inspiring and beauful post
I am guilty of checking my stats daily and when I see a rise (which happen most of the time) I get so excited and start to do more of the things that produced it.
When I see it falling, I do get a little sad and wonder what I did wrong. IT is a bad idea to check stat daily.
Thanks for the article, I really found it touching and useful.
Oct 7th, 2007
Roberto
I stumbled across your blog and I am really enjoying it!!!
Oct 10th, 2007
Mitch
This not only applies to bloggers but our whole culture of consumerism!
Nov 13th, 2007
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