You will most likely do what I did and get into a routine of checking these
stats on an almost hourly basis. Here is where things start to go wrong! The
stats are not moving, your traffic is low and your bounce rate is through the
roof. Panic sets in and you start to wonder why you bothered and before long
you will start to hate your blog and blogging. Yet you keep checking those
stats daily, willing them to move in right direction and they don't! Sound
familiar?
This is basically the trap that I got myself into during early
days of this blog and frankly it it throws your blogging/writing way off
track. I spent so long pouring over stats, getting down and despondent because
they were not moving in the direction I wanted that I lost the will to write.
Net effect? I was at best posting once a fortnight and that kills your blog
stone dead. Now I am not suggesting that traffic is not important but you can
get into an obsessive state over traffic to the point where you lose all focus
and your writing suffers and you end up in this vicious circle of no content,
no traffic. One of the many things that I have learned is that blogging is a
patience game. It takes time, effort and energy to get content and then
traffic to a site. In my case some 8 months to even start to get a sniff of
visitors (And its not huge volume) and in reality only since I have
stopped looking at my blog stats every day have I managed to get traffic to my
site.
I personally have found that if you take a step back from your stats, and
lets face it nobody is that keen on looking at the graph that does not move,
and put the energy into promoting your blog and writing compelling content you
will get far better results. More importantly you will get yourself into a
blogging routine that will ensure that you continue to post regularly which
will help keep the visitors you do get engaged and informed.
Yes, stats are important however in the early days you need to keep the
content flowing which will provide longer term benefits for you and your blog
