Trying FeedBurner Total Stats Pro on View from the Isle

Yeah, I admit it, I’m a metrics junky. Which is good, since I am the chief blogger for Elytics.com writing on the web metrics blog. Regardless, I’m also a huge fan of FeedBurner. I admit I check my FeedBurner stats throughout the day, especially when one of my articles has been picked up by several other blogs. In spite of being a metrics junky and really wanting to know what content is popular on my blog I resisted trying Total Stats PRO–Burning Questions – The Official FeedBurner Weblog – FeedBurner – FeedBurner Total Stats PRO. Why? I’m cost conscious. I really try to keep my business overhead low. Then it hit me, as a blog consultant/pro blogger/syndicated writer I really should look into this. I already set up all my clients with FeedBurner from day one–learning from my own mistake–and I tell my clients check your FeedBurner and other stats to figure out what content is most popular and use this to help guide your content decisions. It makes logical sense, then, that I should try it myself and see if it’s worth $5/month. So, over the next 15 days I’ll be checking my stats with Total Stats PRO. I’ll probably do an initial assessment later today, then one in a few days, etc.

As professional bloggers our content is both our calling card and our gravy train. It’s how we earn our money. There’s no point in writing tons of articles on topic x if those aren’t as popular as topic y, especially if you’re writing for a client. There will always be a certain number of articles that you write or publish, things like press releases, that aren’t glamorous and don’t get a lot of attention, but are essential regardless. Then there are the articles which both you and your client intend to be interesting to a wider audience, those are the articles that I’m talking about. That’s the important information that I hope FeedBurner can now provide me. If so, $5/month could be a paltry price to pay to be able to effectively target the content published on a blog by blog basis. Here’s hoping!

I will post charts, tables, etc as appropriate to give you a feel for what I’m seeing. Because great data poorly presented, is almost as useless as not having it at all.

Technorati Tags : FeedBurner, blog metrics

Tris Hussey is a professional blogger and blog consultant, the Chief Blogging Officer for Qumana Software, and Managing Director of Qumana Services. He can be reached at tris AT qumana DOT com or tris AT trishussey DOT com.