@mark – Thanks

@Slade – Agreed. When I used to go to a certain gym all the guys would compete for how much weight they could lift etc. When I talked to them they would insist they were there for their own health. I think people work against their own goals with competition in many walks of life.

@Jamin – Yeah and it isn’t just in blogging, people try to score points or compare in all sorts of ways and it just sucks the fun right out of it

@Mark – I ruined my enjoyment of photography by trying to be perfect and also by trying to sell stock photographs. In the end it stopped being fun and just another “job” so I quit. Now I am trying to get back into it just for fun

@Advice Network – Perfect way to look at it. Focus on providing value to readers that helps work towards your goal.

@cerebralmum – It’s funny though when you do focus on creating great content and enjoying it, the other metrics tend to fall into place

@Beth – Focusing on your own readers and creating the best you can do is more fulfilling anyway.

@greg – Of course I like having my rss count and I look at analytics, the key is not to be ruled by them and to not feel bad when other people have better “scores”

@Thomas – Great, see them for what they are, dials on a dashboard, not sticks to be beaten with

@kher Cheng Guan – For the same reason I put subscribe links everywhere they will be seen, to get people to subscribe My goal with this blog is a loyal, engaged and growing readership.

As a new blogger, I try not to focus to heavy on all of these and just focus on writing good posts and improving my writing.

I write a personal blog, and it’s not monetized, so perhaps that is a luxury some others don’t have, but I think it’s nice to be excited by having your subscriber numbers move into double figures and not be bothered when Google changes its algorithms.

Probably the most important metric for me is keeping an eye on the bounce rate, which, rather than feeling like a rejection, encourages me to try and stay on top of the SEO stuff so I’m not wasting people’s time.

It’s funny that I just finished emailing Adam at MonkatWork (whose site I found via your blog, thanks!) about a similar situation that I am in right now.

I found myself putting undo pressure on myself to make money online. Now, I would like to generate some income but i found that it was interfering with my approach.

For me, I think it is much better right now to focus on providing valuable content and enjoy the process and have fun with it.

Thanks Chris,

Mark

Blogging is a concert, not a competition.

Comparing yourself to everyone else’s performance and metrics is misplaced energy — fretting and scheming and comparing and getting hung up on numbers and data… that’s not moving forward along YOUR path.

Consider the recent kerfuffle when Feedburner oopsie-dropped Google Readers from its stats for a day, and then again a few days later… never mind the normal day-to-day fluctuations in subscription numbers according to whether or not all subscribers turned on their computers… Too many variables out there to worry too much about any one specific number.

Upwards and onwards!

In all seriousness: Very good post, and I think you’re right. But it is very difficult not to get caught up in these things and of course, for many of us, these metrics translate into income earned. And that’s a real measure we all have to monitor if we want to pay the bills.