For some time now I’ve watched my blog’s statistics. I’ve used Webalizer and AW Stats. I’ve followed the visitor list closely (mostly to deal with defacer diaper kiddies). And a little over a week ago, giving serious consideration to adding custom banner ads, I decided to try StatCounter to get a better handle on my blog’s traffic. This is what I’ve learned:
Now what’s nice about StatCounter is that afaik it reads only real page views; search bots might visit, but they don’t count. What’s not nice about StatCounter is that (again) afaik, it doesn’t count feeds. Considering that I see lots of feeds in my stats – more than regular page visits – I’m guessing that AW Stats is probably a better gauge of how many people read the content I’m generating.
Add to this my recent findings regarding sites like Technorati. For no reason I can explain, my blog went unnoticed for the better part of a year. And I’m not the only one who has noticed this happening to their blogs. In addition, I stumbled upon something interesting regarding Technorati. If you are discussing a book for example, but don’t mention the title in the headline or in the first paragraph (or some set number of words perhaps), even if your entry has been registered/pinged, a search for that book may not yield the entry. Go back and update the post by moving the title to the first paragraph, and it will miraculously appear. Huh?
What a mess. Not just from the standpoint of someone attempting to gauge interest in the content they generate, but also from the standpoint of someone expecting to have good information supplied to them via a feed. Well, don’t count on it.
Why bring this up? Because I’ve just read something on Wired, “Island Wisdom, Coded in Java” (Link), that gets to the heart of why I don’t use a feed. It’s related to why I don’t think shopping centers and brick-and-mortar stores will vanish in the sea of e-commerce: there is both joy and learning in discovery. Sometimes I find an interesting article where I’d never think to look. Sometimes I happen to read something I’d considered unrelated to my interests and discover previously hidden relationships. Having information fed intravenously is no replacement for searching and discovery.
For this reason I’m considering cutting the feed from this blog. I write this mostly for my own enjoyment; certainly not because of the abundance of conversation here (which is admittedly stifled by the deluge of blogspam on any entry older than a few days) and obviously not from ad revenue. Plus, if I were to add banners pitching the niche products of microbrands, most of the target market – first adopters – would never see it.
So if you draw a feed from this blog, give me a compelling reason not to cut the chord.
I don’t think this is a compelling reason, but I personally don’t usually have time to check up on sites without a feed. I hope you keep yours.
Feeds are starting to look like electricity, a kind of underpinning. A convenience generated by you for us, your readers. I like that.
But I’m not sure of a loss of adventure, I find new links through feeds/sites I trust and now I read you as a result. Maybe I’m an adverturous guy, but I don’t think that I’m that different to anyone else who blogs. I think we’re all adventurers and explorers, otherwise we’d just be reading the MSM and watching the telly.
BTW, I use the basic WordPress stats package, combined with Technorati and now the Performancing beta to get a handle on traffic, but I take it all with a grain of salt.
I have a small blog. Folks read my stuff, traffic is steady to rising slowly each month and the RSS feeds bring me regular readers. I’m happy.
i think you state it the best… “there is both joy and learning in discovery. Sometimes I find an interesting article where I’d never think to look.”
I can scroll through literally thousands of feeds in the same amount of time I can click through hundreds of sites.
way more ground covered through feeds = way more interesting articles to discover…
and this coming from somebody who just recently got an RSS feeder @ work, and still doesn’t use one @ home….
I have the same answer as Tony–I don’t have time to read individual blogs anymore. I can see if there’s something new in one of the hundreds of blogs I subscribe to in bloglines and read it that day, or I could track a dozen or two sites by manually clicking on their site, trying to remember when I last visited so I can catch up or if there’s anything new…
If there’s no RSS, and no RSS autodiscovery, I don’t read it. Without the feed, I can’t see you in the world, and don’t know to come visit.
If people who pull a feed don’t ever comment, why should I care if they visit or not?
And for anyone subscribing to hundreds of blogs, I’d submit that your information gathering isn’t all that efficient and may, in fact, be less efficient. The Wired article discusses that issue and if you’ve not read the piece, I suggest you do.
If you post an entry, but nobody reads it, why bother posting the entry? Obviously, you write for the audience. Comments are, to my mind, an unusual activity; they’re useful as feedback to a site-specific question like this, but for anything more general, it’s better for everyone if you write your feedback on your own blog and only post or email a pointer. This is why I don’t even have comments on either my first life or second life blogs, I just edit in emailed comments or discovered trackbacks from my logs when they happen.
I did read the Wired article, and did some more googling on the system described. It talks about serendipitously discovering information in your environment, rather than planning out a specific series of tasks. That sounds to me like subscribing to a feed reader, and looking at a list of hundreds of blogs to see what’s happened lately. I don’t much like the implementation he has, as it doesn’t seem to let you customize it to your tastes. I’m also not at all convinced by his argument, largely because his only justification for it is “a bunch of low-tech savages who never invented the wheel think it’s a good idea”. Native wisdom isn’t.
As for my blog-reading process, I’d say it’s extremely efficient at entertaining me and introducing me to random new sources of information recommended by people I’m interested in, because the people I subscribe to tend to link out a lot. I don’t read blogs for real research, I read them for fun (and in the software blogs, new developments), and since I don’t watch TV anymore, I have more free time to read.
“why bother posting the entry? Obviously, you write for the audience.”
I consider this blog a kind of scratchpad and sometimes – often actually – post things primarily because I intend to revisit it. So I’m actually not writing for an audience even if the style suggests I am.
I started writing for myself because I enjoy the activity. It’s a way of thinking in the same way I enjoy sketching. Then I started thinking maybe there could/should be a “conversation” since I had read somewhere that this was the real purpose for blogging. Only that hasn’t happened.
Recently I started considering leveraging what I write since it’s “content” – and more people visit than I ever expected when I started. I’d earlier hoped to spotlight some industrial designers who weren’t designing cars (which seem to get all the press). Only the IDers didn’t really care and actually attacked me for not posting anything and everything they submitted (that’s part of the “entitlement” attitude, I guess). So I posted all of two entries here – the only two I received – and didn’t pursue it further.
Lately I’d considered something else: low-bandwidth, custom banner ads advertising niche products. The IDers may not have responded professionally, but small businesses might. But so much of what I post just gets siphoned through a feed, so that wouldn’t work really. And that fact had me re-examining why I blog.
“That sounds to me like subscribing to a feed reader, and looking at a list of hundreds of blogs to see what’s happened lately.”
Not to me. You’ve selected your feeds. You’re controlling your information environment in an artificial way. Sometimes the best discoveries come outside of our control (including some of the most important scientific discoveries). Allowing information to flow organically at least some of the time makes much more sense to me.
“it’s extremely efficient at entertaining me”
Only I’m not blogging to provide entertainment. Hence why I asked for compelling reasons why I should continue. Right now it’s a one-way street. I provide content for the entertainment of others. Why bother?
You know, I could just as easily be an indie label band making music that gets downloaded without getting anything in return. At some point, they’re going to play for themselves and not bother recording anything at all. Which is probably how they started.
If it’s really a big problem for you, cut the feed. I will probably visit less often because I get most of my news through my feed reader, but I’ve got you bookmarked. I run through the bookmarks WAY less often than the feeds. But whatever. You’re not obligated to entertain anyone, as you said.
Not to me. You’ve selected your feeds. You’re controlling your information environment in an artificial way. Sometimes the best discoveries come outside of our control (including some of the most important scientific discoveries). Allowing information to flow organically at least some of the time makes much more sense to me.
I find a lot of interesting, semi-related, and comletely unrelated news through saved searches on all bloglines feeds. Now that I think of it, I can probably still get your posts in bloglines without your feed by creating a saved search. I’m going to try it.
No dice.
There is a practical problem now actually: fixing the feed to Technorati is generating faster comment/trackback spam.
I read your website every few days, I don’t use any feeds. Having said that, if your goal is to have more people viewing the website so that you can display ads, I will most likely totally ignore those (or in worst case, if the ads are very obnoxious, block them in my browser)
The goal of this blog was not to generate more traffic in pursuit of ad revenue. The traffic I already get simply presented an opportunity to generate interest, first in unknown designers, and then in small, niche products. Anyone who follows this blog knows I’m very much pro-small business.
I can’t stand landing on blogger sites that automatically regurgitate ads based on keywords that have nothing to do with the site’s subject matter; hence the “custom” banners I was considering. Keyword and banner network systems may be simple and efficient, but that doesn’t necessarily make them good.
It was while considering ads that I realized that feeds and even the blogroll I have (which will be changed shortly) contribute to the “power curve” in the blog media. I posted a link to an article some time back on that issue. And while this blog has certainly benefitted from that power curve, I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea that we’re voluntarily giving our attention to a select few and not actively looking for new voices. Which leads me back to why I blog.
I blog for me. If people enjoy this site (or not), that’s great. But I’m not a journalist, nor am I here to contribute in any way to a different kind of Information Establishment.
So I fully expect traffic to drop – across the spectrum. And that’s fine. I don’t need ads. I do need to keep my focus.