Is your blog a business or a hobby?  If it’s intended to be a business then, aside from the inspiration, discipline and writing skills required for good content….the key driver of any blog…your blog, “under the hood”, will be about numbers. Business is about numbers and every business has a key set of numbers which tells a good manager how the business is doing. You should have a means to track them.

As mentioned before, my website has been on the Net since 1996 and I track my numbers at least once a day. In the beginning there were not so many good ways to do that, aside from looking at your raw weblog.  Now, there are any number of sophisticated and robust analytical tools available.  You should try them and pick one or more which will give you a clear idea of you website or blog business and the direction it is headed. Aside from that mysterious inspiration which allows some people to succeed where others only aspire, there is no more important driver of success that tracking, understanding and responding immediately to the numbers which make up your business: volume of visitors, page views, time on the site, ad or product revenue. A seasoned manager ,who’s been in the same business for a bit, could run that business by looking at those numbers each day. You should let those numbers whisper in your ear each morning and chart your course from there.  Here are some tools to get you started:

20 Analytics Tools For Blogs | Online Marketing Blog by Lee Odden:

“There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness. That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.

• 103bees – Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9
• Enquisite – Free, extremely detailed web stats
• Hittail – Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic
• Crazy Egg – Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats
• RobotReplay – Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back
• Clicky – Web stats plus feed and Feedburner stats
• Google Analytics – Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free
• StatCounter – Free web stats
• Co.mments – Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed
• Blog Tracker – Free from IceRocket but limited functionality
• Performancing Metrics – Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features
• Site Meter – Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up
• Mint – Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site
• MyBlogLog – Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
• Feedburner Stats – StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo
• WordPress Stats – Free basic blog stats plugin for WordPress blogs
• Google Analytics and Feedburner Stats – Free plugin for WordPress blogs
• eXTReMe Tracking – Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month
• Web Stat – Many web stats features for $5/mo
• TraceWatch – Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL

What are your favorite analytics tools for blogs?”

If this was helpful to you or you have other tool to recommend, please write.  We welcome your comments and hope you will share your knowledge.

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