Monitoring Your Blog Traffic

Monitoring your blog traffic can be both a blessing and a curse.  Before you begin, it is important to decide how you will handle this aspect of blogging.  It is completely OK to skip this part if you feel that it may hinder your ministry.

Blessings

• Provides useful information about your readers
  • General Location (city, state, country)
  • How they found you (referrals from other blogs/websites)
  • How long they spent on your blog
  • How many times they have visited

Curses

• Statistics can become:
  • Addicting
  • Discouraging
• Statistics can cause:
  • Pride and incorrect motives for blogging

Recommendations

• Set up an account with StatCounter.com
• Set up weekly email delivery of basic statistics
• Visit the site only once a month to look at detailed information
• Delete your StatCounter.com account immediately if you become prideful about your success, get addicted to checking the results or get discouraged and consider deleting your blog.

Conclusion

Statistics can be a useful tool in helping you evaluate your blogging but you should constantly evalute your actions and motives to ensure your blogging outreach is focused on bringing glory to God.