Stop Publishing Your Stats
By Vic on Dec 11, 2007 in Blogging
Everyday I see a new post on how my blog did this month. This just makes no sense to me what so ever and I will explain why in a few. Bloggers for reasons I just do not get repeat and repeat things with out understanding the why, they just do it because some else started doing it. This reminds me of this story.
There is the Mom with her small daughter preparing a meatloaf. Once the loaf is done the Mom cuts it in have and places it inside the pan that will go in the oven. The daughter ask Mom, why do you not put the whole loaf inside the pan. The Mom answers, well daughter because this is how the family recipe was taught to me by my Mom. Later that afternoon she actually starts thinking why did the recipe call for only half of the loaf when the whole loaf fit the pan, so she decides to call her mother. Hey Mom why does the family meatloaf recipe call for cutting the loaf in half and then placing it in the oven why not make the whole loaf at one time? The Mom says well this is how your Grandmother taught me the recipe so that is how we do it. The daughter thanks her mom and hangs up, but she is still wondering why not place the whole loaf in the oven, it is double trouble cooking two separate loafs. So she picks up the phone and calls the Grandmother who’s recipe is the one she still makes today. Hey Grandmother how come the family recipe calls for cutting the loaf in half and cooking one part of the loaf first and then the second? The Grandmother says. Well Grandchild I have no reason why you do that but I did it because the whole loaf did not fit in my oven.
People John Chow made famous the reporting stats gimmick because this is how he makes money by suckering people to feed in his bullshit. It may have worked for him because he was the first but it will probably shoot you on the foot.
Real life example to prove my point. Let’s say you go buy a car and the salesman tells you that the car he is trying to sell you is not selling well as a matter of fact it is doing horrible. I ask you wont you start thinking why it is not selling well?
Why would I want to tell my readers who might be at my site to read about the next Brad Pitt movie or is looking for a gardening tip, that this month I had less readers then last month and my adsense dropped to $2.75. What the heck do you think your reader will think? Mmmm, Am I the only idiot reading this guy?
If you are a how to make money blogger this is even worst LMAO how can you show people how to make money if you can not make money yourself. BTW If you are not making a minimum of 2k a month on the internet you should not really be trying to teach people how to make money online, but that is another post.
My point, people you do not have to do like the guy before just because he does it. He might be doing it because of need not because it is best way to do it. Ask yourself will this be the right thing for my blog.
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Stop Publishing Your Stats | Blogger Unleashed…
Every day I read post that are about this months stats. This is what you should think before doing that. It may not be the best practice to do. Some times in life we get accustomed to doing things that in the long run there was no reason to do it in th…
I couldn’t have said better myself
Very nicely written and I made sure to send some traffic your way via Stumble.
Alex
Ever heard of social proof? That’s the main reason bloggers display their stats recap every month. Of course if you’re posting a recap and your blog is only a month old, then yes, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Otherwise, displaying your stats is very beneficial…
Have you ever heard of MBA? Have you ever heard of Social Psychology? People’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by actual or imagined external reactions. In other words son if your reader perceives your website to be shit it will be shit.
For example: I went to your site. And you have adsense on the top of your header. Now I am not a noob as such I know that CTR on “How To Make Money” blogs is always below .065% making you get priced by adsense constantly and getting the terrible 3 cent click. This is why those that really know how to make money online do not use adsense on anything that has to do with this type of subject.
So the social proof from that bit of knowledge makes me know that you are another John Chow wannabe that has a site about “How To Make Money Online” and it is so fucking clueless that barely makes enough money to cover his hosting fees.
Son again I am not a noob. So please when you decide to come and comment here do so with actual knowledge not some thing you read somewhere else.
I think some people post their stats along with goals for the next month as a way to make sure they try hard to reach their goals. If their readers see they didn’t reach them then they might leave so theres extra incentive to reaching your goals.
Thats the main reason why I post mine.
Adam, I am sorry but your assessment of this is idiotic. I make my goals and act accordingly. I do not place my goals on other peoples hands to be delivered. Your readers will give back what you give them. If they perceive value in what you provide them they will reward you with coming back and subscribing to your feed.
Instead of talking about your stats, start doing the work to get more readers to your website for example. Build keyword authority. This will get you more readers and reach your goal, not taking about your stats.
Ruchir, Vic’s whole point is social proof. Most people that publish stats prove to everyone that reads their site once a month that their site is worthless.
To get people to believe ’socially’ that you’re site is getting traffic, you may need to keep your mouth shut.
Interesting. The “Recent Comments” sidebar is showing a comment by Adam McKerlie and your response but it isn’t here. I wonder if that plugin is showing unpublished moderated comments?
I’m kind of sitting on the fence on this one. Some stats may have some publicity value, like when you mention your 20K Google hits on bu.bulicio.us. However, others are sort of “who cares”.
As for the goal thing that Adam mentioned in the little snippet I saw, it does help some people reach goals better if they announce them to the public while others prefer to keep them internal. It really depends on what motivates the person.
Frank Adam McKerlie’s comment is 4 up. As for the stats like Bu.bulicio.us if it is part of a discussion is different then just get up in the morning and post how I had 200 users this month. Now let’s say you where having 200 readers and suddenly you jump to 2000 readers a day well shoot it would become publicity and hype but this is not the case over 80% of the my stats post I read are the opposite to give you one perfect example. OneMansGoal dot com LMAO this is the perfect example of stats biting you in the ass this kid decided to sell his site and found a sucker that paid $8,500 for a site that if you look at his stats they where going backwards. So his readers started to drop feedburner and soon enough he took the counter down and then suddenly you also saw no more commenting again if you are telling people how to get traffic and in return you are showing them stats that you do not know how to get traffic how the fuck can this be beneficial???
In general Frank you may think but I can show. There over 20 different studies done on this or have you ever seen a Ford commercial talking about how there cars used to explode but now they are making them better? The fact is in marketing and promotion you focus on the strength and not the weakness this is first year marketing at any decent college.
Sometimes you have to be blunt to expose the irrational thinking of some bloggers. Vic, you have got valid points here about not showing stats and making a fool of oneself. But I supposed most of these stat maniacs are just not savvy enough to think through the situation. Most of them are young and want to reach the pinnacle as soon as possible. People like a few A-listers are not doing these tyros a favor either by “bragging” about their so-called “great” achievements. It only feed on their cravings.
[…] stats and earnings. Vic created a great post about this on BloggerUnleashed - I would read it: Stop Publishing Your Stats. The only niche I would even consider publishing stats in is the ‘make money online - […]
Good list. The thing I have to work on is grammar/spelling. Mine isn’t terrible, but it could definitely be better. Although the beauty of a blackhat blog is that I don’t have to be “professional”. I have to be knowledgeable. Thank god. haha.
Mmm grammar/spelling yeah I am focked on that wan there too
[…] blog with this post I made earlier this month on how things were going, the last of its kind since Vic scolded all of us idiots for those kind of blogs. The end results there from just a few weeks ago is already chump change […]
[…] blog with this post I made earlier this month on how things were going, the last of its kind since Vic scolded all of us idiots for those kind of blogs. The end results there from just a few weeks ago is already chump change […]
Obviously you don’t want to publish your stats if you are making $23.70 a month.
I do see that occasionally and think, “that guy just lost any credibility he might have had with me,” that is, unless he’s not trying to sell me on how much he makes from his blog.
The trick would just be to do it every now & again and not promise your readers that you’ll do it every month.
I agree though that John Chow is the biggest scam on the Internet since Global Prosperity.
I’ve never really understood reporting stats … I know people create referral spam bots to get links from auto-published logs, and already this leaves a bad impression.
[…] blog with this post I made earlier this month on how things were going, the last of its kind since Vic scolded all of us idiots for those kind of blogs. The end results there from just a few weeks ago is already chump change […]
[…] trying to follow Vic’s advice to not post my stats, but I’ll just say that in the 3 days that my tutorials have been up, my […]