Lewis Empire

I read a great post on bluejar.com called Top 7 Signs You Are an Obsessed Web Stats Whore.

Since I am affected by three of the seven problem areas, I thought I would try to justify my behavior and mend my evil ways.

1. You check your stats at least once each hour. Even worse, you reload your stats just after viewing them to see if any new visitors show up.

Having a full time job makes this very difficult; however, I do manage to sneak in a look in the morning, during lunch and a few times in the evening.

Am I addicted? Absolutely.

I justify this because I want to know:

• What time of day attracts the most readers
• When Alexa and Google update their analytics
• Who has been visiting (MyBlogLog)
• What the daily AdSense income is at
• Did Kontera do anything yet?

As I mentioned in a previous post, A 4-Hour Dose Of Realization, I have been known to be trapped in an analysis-paralysis mode. I think stat checking falls directly into this category.

I’m going to fix this by making a commitment:
For the next week, I will only check my stats once per day AND only for up to 15 minutes in total.

Next one:

4. You have multiple stats checkers for the exact same stats.

I am guilty of this one too. I will admit that I sometimes use the total impressions in my AdSense account to get a good idea of the number of visitors that have been to my site. Lame, lame, lame.

It’s easy to justify this one. I am Actually checking my AdSense income but get the Added Benefit of seeing my traffic numbers. Also, since I use Google Accounts, I can simply click the ‘Open in New Window’ button and Analytics magically appears.

Solution:
See my commitment from part 1 and I’ll think about writing Google to change their entire AdSense setup.

Finally:

7. You see other websites stats and you secretly try to compete with them for better stats.

OK, who doesn’t do this one? Of course your going to check other stats That’s Why Alexa Has The Compare Button!

I justify this because I want to see all my fellow bloggers succeed (that’s what we all say out loud isn’t it?)

Solution:
No solution other than world domination.

Based on these results, I’d say I’m addicted. As I commented, it seems that I left my Blackberry addiction for a blogging one. I guess that beats coffee!

PS. I thought about contacting Google but it’s getting pretty late and I’m tired from soccer. Maybe I’ll email them tomorrow.

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