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Success means different things to different people. How do you define success as a blogger? There are apparently a couple different types of bloggers. Some blogs are personal diaries and others are meant for public consumption. Still others blog just for the money and not for recognition. So measuring your blog's success really depends on what your goals are.
Let's assume you like to blog because you want some recognition. You want to inform your readers and help people. Or maybe you just enjoy having your own blog so you can express your opinions and interact with others who have similar interests. I think this is what a "normal" blogger wants. Some other blogs are created with the only purpose of making money. Are You Running a Successful Blog?
Bloggers love to check their stats! It seems we are always logged in to Google Analytics to check out how many visitors we received yesterday and where the traffic is coming from. This is all good but...maybe we should create more content and spend less time checking out the stats.
Instead of constantly checking your blogs stats you can be working on your blogs success. Providing fresh content is the first step in successful blogging. So, do you have a lot of content? How often do you post? In my experience consistency equals traffic. What I mean by that is when you post on a consistent basis it brings in traffic.
On Site Statistics
After you've published lots of content and your blog is on a roll, it's time to check the stats. Google Analytics is a very popular tool for checking statistics. Some of the stats you can check with Google Analytics are:
Most of these terms are self explanatory but some of you might wonder what click patterns are. Click patterns as shown on Google Analytics tell you where your visitors are clicking on your blog. You can find out how many people for example, are clicking on your affiliate banners. Another term that confuses a new blogger is “Bounce Rate”. When someone comes to your blog and leaves almost immediately, they’ve bounced. A high bounce rate means that most people are not reading your blog. They are just hitting the back button. This is something to overcome if you want to be a successful blogger. Black Hat bloggers on the other hand don’t care about bounce rate. In fact, it seems most black hatters love a high bounce rate! Why? Because they don’t want readers! They want people to come to their blog and click out…hopefully on one of the ads they are showing! But for the rest of us “normal” bloggers we want readers to stick around and read. If you are writing good content and your bounce rate is high don’t worry. If you post consistently it will probably decrease as your blog ages. If it doesn’t then maybe try to make your blog more dialog focused and interactive. If your blog is more of a monologue then it doesn’t invite participation and that could effect your bounce rate. Off Site Stats
Rss feed subscribers are important. People who subscribe to your blog are letting you deliver your content to them. That is definitely a measure of success. Feedburner allows you to distribute your content to subscribers as well as keep track of the number of subscribers to your feed.
Not only does the number of subscribers offer you an indication of your blogs success but it’s also an important factor in determining your blogs worth. If you want to write paid reviews on your blog, your advertisers will often use the number of subscribers to measure how popular your blog is, which in turn determines how much you’ll get paid for writing a review.
If you ever decide to sell your blog you can bet that a potential buyer will be interested in knowing how many subscribers you have.
Conversion
Normally conversion refers to conversion rate. A conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of visits you have by the number of sales you make. But that is not what I am talking about here. By conversion I mean visitors that are converted to subscribers. This can be determined by looking both at your Google Analytics stats and your Feedburner stats. If you have tons of visitors but no subscribers then you might want to change your approach. Again I’m going to suggest making your blog a more interactive environment. Some bloggers post videos on their blogs to help the readers get to know them better. This seems to be a growing trend…and it seems to be working! This really helps break the ice with your readers. This is also a great alternative for people who don’t like typing or have a hard time communicating by way of writing.
Earnings
Are you making money with your blog? Do you want to make money with your blog? To some people a successful blog is one that makes money. To others a successful blog is one that has lots of readers.
I think a lot of people enjoy the idea of making money doing what they like, and if that happens to be blogging then more power to you!
This one is easy. If you are making more and more money with your blog then that is an obvious measure of success. People are visiting your blog, traffic is increasing and people are clicking your adsense ads.
Making Waves
When you post on your blog and people refer to it then you are making waves. This doesn’t usually happen unless you’ve had your blog for a while. So while it’s not an early indicator of success, it is to some degree still a measure of your blogs success.
Check your backlinks to see if people are linking to your posts. Some folks will have positive things to say about what you said, others will not be so kind. But either way if you start making waves then you are at least getting some acknowledgment.
One Last Thing
Measuring your blogs success is of course very important. It can help you adjust your approach to meet your goals. However, checking the stats can be VERY addictive! Above all make sure to manage your time efficiently. It’s very easy to squander your time over checking the stats. Keep in mind that instead of measuring your blogs success you could (or maybe should) be working and earning your way to a successful blog. |
