Visible Blog

In order to answer this question, you need to answer this question:

Why do you have a blog?

Believe it or not, many people have blogs because other people do. With click-and-publish technology, anyone can have a blog.

The oldest blogger I know of is 81 years old! She’s a real treasure. Hats off to her!

But why are you blogging? So that you can say: “Look, Ma! My own web site!” Or do you have a larger purpose? Figure that one out first. Once you know why you blog, it becomes much easier to explain why you need to know where your traffic comes from.

If you don’t know why, details about your traffic will be nothing more than a vanity factor.

If you know why, it’s gold in your hands, waiting to be converted into opportunity.

This post is an attempt to answer some basic questions posed about traffic to blogs.

How do I know where my traffic comes from?

It’s not rocket science. Every web site or blog, whether on its own domain or not, can have its own web logs. With free hosted solutions like Blogger, WordPress, etc., the blogger usually does not have access to these logs; if access is available, the reporting is very limited in nature. Into the picture come client-side solutions that use javascript to route every click through their servers to give you the next best thing to your own web logs. These are called click-tracking solutions.

If you have a web site, your web host may make free statistical packages like AWStats, Webalizer, Urchin, etc. available. If you have access to your raw logs which you can download to your own computer, I recommend Funnel Web’s Free Analyzer. However, it may not quite do as complete a job for a blog as it might for a web site.

For blogs, I recommend using Performancing. The code is easily added to your template and within a couple of hours you know who visited your web site, whence they came and perhaps, why.

I am not a great fan of SiteMeter. The image that must be placed on the blog bugs me immensely. Off the bat, they have more features and reports than Performancing, but you can get those from Performancing if you are smart enough to use their API or smart enough to get hold of code that uses their API. As a starting point, Performancing is a much cleaner and user-friendly solution.

So go on over, click through to Performancing and get all beady-eyed, the way I do!