Monday, December 10, 2007 Why I love statistics By Oliver Robillo
LATELY, I've noticed quite a few people who've started to grow aware of this whole business of making money online. And they read and subscribe to various blogs that discuss such topics. These bloggers talk about AdSense, Bidvertiser, ReviewMe, PayPerPost, Text Link Ads.
There are plenty more ways to earn $$$ via the Internet that these Web warriors write about. That's all well and good: these bloggers who talk about blog monetizing are doing the public a service, and, of course, they're making money while doing it!
What I tend to discuss on my blog, on the other hand, seems to be something that many bloggers don't consider very "bloggable". It's about what's behind moneymaking activities on the Internet. What's the foundation, the support system?
(To me, the most important is having good content. But that's not what I want to talk about just now.)
What only very few appreciate is how an understanding of website statistics can greatly improve blogging, and therefore, boost moneymaking potential. Most bloggers are thrilled by statistics... but that's about it. There should be more to that. Stats should be more analyzable. What I'd recommend to fellow bloggers is Google Analytics.
I could spend hours in front of my Analytics account dashboards. Why? It provides me with intensely granular and wide-ranging data regarding my various blogs. Daily visits are tracked, yes, but attached to that piece of information are myriad bits of useful data, from which I can make sound decisions affecting my blogs.
For example, I used to not care about how one of my blogs might appear on Internet Explorer (I use Firefox). See, I noticed that the sidebars of my AngDabawenyo.com's front page were messed up when viewed using Explorer. When I couldn't fix it, I just let it go, since I wasn't going to look at it except with Firefox anyway.
But when I checked my Analytics account, however, it reported that 58.65 percent of my visitors use Explorer! Firefox users represent only 37.22 percent.
Another example: Analytics has a feature that lets you see a world map indicating where your site's visitors come from. I also write about health & fitness. When I discovered that more than 70 percent of that blog's readers come from the US, I decided to not localize the content anymore. Since most of my readers are possibly non-Filipino, it was wise to make the content more appealing to Westerners.
I could go on and on about Google Analytics, but I don't want to make this too long. Get your own account at google.com/analytics, if you don't have one yet, and you'll see what I'm raving about. Oh and it's completely free.
Go and make money online! But don't neglect the housekeeping.
