As a blogger spare time can be pretty hard to come by. Your focus, as it should be, is about creating great content and engaging with your community — leaving little capacity for the ‘other’ things that need to be done. Add the fact that a lot of us prefer to leave the numbers and bean counting to the accountants and statisticians, it’s no surprise that a lot of the bloggers I speak with have little or no idea about the statistical health of their blog.
Personally, I’ve always been a bit of a numbers guy. As the son of a maths teacher its been built into how I think. But I even as a bit of a number nerd, I don’t immerse myself in statistically breaking down all the facts and figures of a blog unless I have to. I instead identify key metrics that I measure and track over time allowing me to have indicators that tell me if I need to dig any deeper or not.
If they’re all pointing in the right direction, it allows me to focus on the fun things knowing everything is in good health.
You might have slightly different indicators on your own blog buy here’s my go to 4 measures I use for all the blogs I’m involved with:
1. Traffic
I’m looking here simply at unique visitors, visitors and page views. You can track and easily access the stats using Google Analytics. If all three are pointing in the right direction (increasing) then things are good. If traffic is dropping or even flat then it’s something I need to focus on.
2. Costs
The barriers to entry for blogging are extremely low, a couple of bucks and you’re up and going. However as your blog grows, costs can blow out pretty quickly. Keeping track of what you’re spending on your blog (hosting, premium services, stock images) will ensure that you can keep it under control. One cost I always measure that most don’t is my own time. I keep track of my hours and allocate a real hourly rate, as though I was a paid employee. Your investment in yourself can be pretty scary when you start tracking it.
3. Revenue
Even with small revenue it’s important to make sure it’s pointing in the right direction — increasing. I like to split revenue down into each stream of income. Affiliate, product sales, advertising and ensure that success in one area is not overshadowing poor performance in another.
4. Subscribers
Subscribers are a collection of your email subscribers, your social media following, your RSS subscribers or anyone that has connected to you in some way. Like revenue, I like to track each of these subscriber channels independently.
How I’m tracking.
Some of the metrics, in particular revenue, I’ll track daily. Most I’ll update and review once a month. It’s all done in a very simple spreadsheet, but most important of all it’s tracked over time allowing for comparison of the result. It takes less than an hour in total per month to do.
What I’m looking for.
When I’m looking through these 4 key metrics, I’m using them as traffic light indicators. If traffic is up, green light & onwards we go, if it’s flat, amber light & something to worry about if the trend continues, if it’s down, red light — time to dig a little deeper so as to understand why.
If everything is green, well you’re just awesome and I’m envious, but for the rest of us using key indicators, you can be confident that the little extra time you have, is spent where it’s most needed.
For those that do – I’d love to hear how you’re measuring the health of your own blog.
