Overcoming My Obsession With Stats

When I first started blogging about nine months ago, I was consumed, obsessed, addicted to my stat tracker.  How many people looked at my blog?  Where did they come from?  Did they subscribe?  Did they comment?  Do they have a blog?  I couldn’t get enough of it.  The sad part was, no one was really looking at my blog(s).  Yet I still checked the stats page like there was something to report on.  It was depressing.  It’s like I was just punishing myself.  I was obsessed with the Freshly Pressed sites.  How were they chosen?  Was it how often they posted?  How many subscribers they had before?  How could I get Freshly Pressed?

I would check my email when I got up in the morning to see if anyone had subscribed or commented.  I would check my blogs first thing when I got work to see who had looked at them.  Then I downloaded the WordPress mobile app – not so I could blog on my phone…oh, no.  I downloaded it because I could check my stats.  Then I was able to check them right after I checked my email.  If I had lots of hits or comments, I would feel ecstatic!  If I had none, I would be sad.  What a horrible way to start the day, right?

I have slowly been able to wean myself from my stats obsession.  Don’t get me wrong – I still check them every day.  But there are times when I will go most of the day without even thinking about them.  I rarely check them on my phone (unless I am away from a computer for an extended period of time).  So, what changed?  I still want people looking at my blog.  I still want people subscribing.  How did I get over that unhealthy obsession?

I started focusing on what the blogs were really about – the blogs!  If I focused on my content, readers would come (yes, I’ve been thinking about Field of Dreams a lot lately…”If you build it, they will come.”).  I can’t expect people to find or subscribe to my blog if I’m not concentrating on the one thing that would draw them in the first place.  Once I started The Daily Post challenge and I was posting to two blogs a day, I didn’t have as much time to worry about the stats.  I had to worry about writing posts.  And what do you think happened?  That’s right…I had more readers and subscribers.

There are still some days when I think I’ve put together a really smart post and I only get a few reads.  I still feel a bit of disappointment, but rather than dwelling on it, I immediately push it aside and focus on the next post.  I’m blogging for myself, to practice writing, to find ideas, to push myself.  That’s what I try to remember every day, regardless of the stat tracker.  However, that’s not to say I wouldn’t be thrilled to wake up one morning to find one of my blogs Freshly Pressed on the front page of WordPress.com!