I admit – I am obsessed.
I am obsessed with numbers and it drives me crazy sometimes. PageViews, Visitors, Subscribers, Email Subscribers. Followers…
Good thing? I know about my obsession and I try my best to handle it. Even though I sometimes look a few times a day at my WP app on my iPhone to track my stats!
I would love to start this post by saying that I just love blogging and all I care is to post. But. Quite frankly, that is not entirely true. I blog because I love it, but I also blog for others. If no one would read my posts, why I would I do this? Right, makes no sense. So in a way if I want to grow as a blogger I also want my blog to grow and growing means numbers.
and… there are tons of numbers to compare and I take of course the ones that suit and where I see the most increase.
In addition, I realized now that number is not equal number, that statistic is not equal to another statistic. Actually, it’s kind of complicated and mind knotting.
Which statistics and numbers do we have?
This is the most popular and most known “number”. I remember throwing parties when we reached 500 (YEAH) then 1000 (super YEAH) and so on. Of course when I moved to WordPress and lost all my GFC Follower I was devastated Now I know I shouldn’t have cared… When I was still on Blogger, GFC Followers were all I looked at, and which I used as a comparison to other blogs!
Also an easy to compare statistic. But .. this is a highly fluid number and can change a lot from day-to-day. But after moving to WP , this became initially the number I cared about most!
I think this is basically the most important rating. But how to track them? When I was on Blogger, I used the stats in the Dashboard and … I was most of the times happy. I liked my Pageviews and thought I would be in a good place. However, whenever I compared them to Google Analytics they were so different and GA was always much lower.
Now, that I’m on WordPress I only look at GA and I hope those numbers are fairly accurate.
Oh yes!!! How I LOVE comments!!!! And of course the more the better. However, I realized that those numbers are highly(!!) dependent on how many blogs I can visit and leave a comment myself. So, the last 2 weeks I was so insanely busy that I had no time to visit lots of other blogs, the number of comments went down a bit. That means, even though you might have a small blog (in GFC standards) you might get tons of comments because you are an active member on the community!
Alexa rates a website based on the daily pageviews and the backlinks a site has. So it takes a combined approached and then rates website. The higher the values of your blog, the smaller the Rating. It gives a Global Rating and an US based Rating. I know that Publishers like Alexa to value blogs.
How do all those numbers add to combined site analysis?
Here comes the big deal, something I only now realized. I thought all those numbers should at least relate and be in the same range. So, 4000 GFC Followers should have 4 times more Pageviews than a Blog with 100 Followers or RSS Feed Subscribers, right?
Oh no, and that’s where I was so wrong! Those numbers do not relate at all!
And I’m now taking The Bookworms as an example, you can look up all those numbers for any blog you want to compare yourself to!
We only have 1200 RSS FeedSubscribers and quite frankly? This number makes me sad, so I do not look at it anymore. I try to only look at numbers that make me happy! Because when I look at my daily Pageviews I see that we actually do really good! Much better than I thought we would do with “only” 1200 RSS Subscribers. If I compare the Bookworms with Blogs that have much more RSS Feed Subscribers, we totally have similar Pageviews. Basically, you cannot relate from RSS Subscribers to actual Pageviews.
Even more, when I look at our Alexa Rating we rate 240.00 Globally and 110.00 0 US and those are really good rankings for a niche Blog!! As a comparison Smart, Bitches, Trashy Books (who are the Queen of Book Blogger) have an Alexa Rating of 160.00 globally and 34.000 US.
Is your mind swirling now?
Mine is… Talking about statistics and numbers always makes me anxious. I want to do good and I want to create and build a successful blog. Of course feedback from Readers has a real big impact on this, but hard numbers is what tells me if we move forward or backwards.
So, while I’d love to say I just blog for the sake of blogging – I would lie. I blog because I want to build an audience, I want us to be read. And even though those numbers are the real value to see about our progress and our rating I try to be a little more relaxed about this.
And , I truly try!
Like, I do not stress over those RSS numbers anymore! Yeah Me! Also, I am thankfully over the loss of the 1900 GFC Followers we had before moving to WP! Yeah Me! I focus on those numbers that make me happy, because I won’t be able to stay away from statistics. But, I also grew. I know there are times where Page Views are lower and I won’t stress out over it anymore, because I know it’s a highly fluent and changeable statistic..
So, now that I admitted being horribly obsessed with numbers and statistic.
What about you? Do you care? What do you look at, GFC, Pageviews, ..? What do you use to look at your statistics, did you also realized these discrepancies in statistics when looking at them with different tools?
Talk to me!!! I’d love to hear if there are some people like me out there, but I’d also love to hear about bloggers that are mor relayed and do not stress like me about these things!
Happy Saturday!
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I don’t obsessed, but I do go through periods here and there where I do. Kind of. I still have GFC and its so THERE, I see it constantly and when the number stops rising for awhile I tend try to give it more of a push. The thing is, I KNOW that number really doesn’t things accurately, still, its there. And I just reached 3,000 followers! Yeah, see still exciting…
I can’t compare my blogger stats and my analytic stats cause I know analytics are way more accurate but blogger is WAY higher. I really only look every few months. Its about time to do a check and update my stats page.
I don’t understand Alexa rating at all. I need to take the time to study up on it though.
The thing is, I want my readership to grow but I don’t want to stress so I just try to chill about it and not pay it a lot of attention.
Candace recently posted..Saturday Situation: Link Up Your Reviews & Giveaways!
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Honestly, I barely ever check my stats. Usually if I do it’s just to see what people are searching for on the blog to see if I can gage what reviews people would like to see etc. I haven’t checked my email subscriber list in months! You are so right about comments though – a while back when I could dedicate more time to visiting other blogs I used to get a ton of comments, but when I don’t have time to comment then the comments stop coming on my blog too. Wish it didn’t happen that way! Oh well. 🙂
Leanna recently posted..Book Review: Ten by Gretchen McNeil.
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I LOVE LOVE LOVE this post!! Thanks Danny!
As for #3, this site might be helpful: http://www.creativepatience.com/blog/coding/the-answer-to-why-are-all-my-stat-numbers-different/ Basically all stat counters track stats *slightly* differently. For rexample, Google Analytics only tracks visitors who have JavaScript enabled. Also, if a visitor returns to your site within 30 minutes of their last activity, GA counts it as a new *page view* — not a new *visit*. And GA doesn’t track visits from bots and spiders that crawl your site! (this is probably the biggest difference — many counters *do* track bots)
I kind of obsess over stats too.. Okay, that’s an understatement. I obsess at least as much as you do! 😀 I try not to obsess. I try to tell myself it doesn’t really matter. But at the end of the day, I’m obsessing inside.
My stats are still really low, but my blog is quite new. I definitely notice a huge difference in my stats when I’m more available vs when I’m not. For example, my stats were really good (by my standards) over the summer. But for the last month I’ve been busy with my boyfriend and barely visited any other blogs! My stats really suffered because of it.
Ashley recently posted..Ten by Gretchen McNeil
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Really interesting post! In all honesty, the only time I care about stats is when publishers care about my stats. It’s come to the point where I want to have a decent pageview count or follow count so if when asked my a publisher, I can feel confident my stats are solid – something they would be happy to use to their advantage. For myself, personally, stats matter very little. Just knowing that people are reading my blog and responding to my posts is all I need to keep me going, regardless of how big that number is. 🙂
Sam @ Realm of Fiction recently posted..Talking Cliffhangers & Unspoken with Sarah Rees Brennan
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I get obsessed too. I try not to and I don’t really stress about how I’m doing compared to other bloggers…but I get frustrated with myself. 😉
Another big one I stalk is Technorati. I keep a spreadsheet of mine and check it every so often.
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I try not to get obsessed with stats either, but I look every day. My pageviews took a nose dive and I can’t figure out why. 🙁 I have to tell myself that all blogs start out small and keep doing what I’m doing and not compare myself to other blogs. I like that you pointed out focusing on the numbers that make you happy. I’m really happy with the comments I get and how many followers I have on twitter. Loved this post!
Jessica @ Books: A true story recently posted..Book Review: Urban Hunters Collection Books 1-3 by Gary Taaffe
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i’m kind of lazy looking at my actual stats but i totally know what you mean about commenting. i don’t feel like i get as much comments as before because i don’t have as much time to go around & comment back to everyone. i do still try to do it even if it’s a bit belated. great post, danny! <3
elena recently posted..spooky books and spooky albums
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I’m 100% honest when I say that the only thing that matters to me are comments. Those make me so happy and they always make me smile. I don’t really care that much about how many followers I have (eventhough I still do a little dance when I see some new followers! It’s always a great feeling when someone subscribes to your blog) as longs as I have followers who leave comments. I rather have 10 close followers than 1000 silent ones 🙂
Me@thedailyprophecy recently posted..Review 59. Ruth Frances Long – The treachery of beautiful things.
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Great post Danny.
I don’t have a book review blog, it’s more … what movies, tv shows, books, music etc I’m loving + I’m writing a diary of a fictional girl every day for a year, along with my photos.
I’m on Squarespace, so no GFC for me. I only have a handful of people following on RSS and Bloglovin’, but I don’t worry too much about that because there are so many different ways to follow blogs these days.
I didn’t realise that commenting on other blogs brought so many visitors. I don’t comment much – only if I feel I really have something to add to the conversation – and I don’t have many blogs on my read list. Time?!?!? 😉
However my Google Analytics today say I have around 200 unique visitors each week for a while now. But I have NO comments. I don’t really know how to take that? But I keep going. At least I’ve had no bad comments, haha.
mel.x
Melissa Jaine recently posted..Rachael Day28
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I sometimes still obsess over my stats but I try not to because they’re so low especially during the months I’m busy and can’t post much so I try to ignore them. However when they do spike up from time to time it makes me happy. It only sucks when I try to request something from a publisher I really really want to read but my stats are too low to matter :\
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