I am 3% of your traffic, that’s really… um, interesting.  Now everyone thinks I stalk your site, which I don’t.  I do comment on every single post, but that’s because you took the time to write it so I take the time to respond.

I just don’t pay attention to stats, period.

I won’t bother to be all love-dorky and tell you “you’re the Alpha Blogger to me, Dawg *SWOOOOOON*” even though I would mean it, but it’s a fact: You’re the first blog I read.  It’s been a rare occasion since I first knew you existed that I didn’t need to come find out what you had to say next.  Your writing is totally relatable and that’s my favorite part.  Even when you talk about concepts or subjects I really never thought I cared anything about you draw me in.

blah blah blah you’re awesome. 

That average time on site is a bit of a misnomer, from what I’ve read.  Apparently it can’t be recorded until someone clicks to a 2nd page on your site.
From SiteMeter.com: That means the visitors are only staying to view a single page and then leaving. The only way that Site Meter knows how long someone is on a site is by the times of each page view. If they only look at a single page and then leave, we don’t know how long they looked at the page. If they looked at two pages and left we would know they at least were on the site during the time of the first page view and the second page view. The difference between those two times would be the length of the visit.
Sorry for the long comment!

Oops - that was an answer on the SiteMeter.com site to this question: Why do some of my visitors have visit lengths of 0:00?

Sounds like a fair enough reason to me to be a blogger.  I think I will strive to be an Omega Blogger as well.  Although I am a procrastinator....

I used to look at my stats all the time. I was almost obsessed with it. I got mint, that told me all this special stuff and without all the spammer type traffic like the porn and the drugs and all the rest of the stuff.

And you know it only told me how many hits I wasn’t getting, and how many people weren’t seeing my site. it’s depressing.

Then I had to realize why did I even start blogging in the first place? was it to get popular? or was it just to put down my inane thoughts and stuff on the web, and hopefully someone will read it? Does it matter at that point if anyone reads it? Well, before I make a post out of this comment, I’ll just stop here.

You totally affect me and what you post affects my life, because you write some good shit. Seriously. You make me think. So yeah, sometimes I don’t click through from google, but I still read your stuff in my reader. Totally.

Wow this is so long, and my attention span so short, I forgot what my point was going to be.

A-List is the new money.

“Baby, you’re A-List and you don’t even know it!”

Feed readers complicate stats to the point of making them almost redundant.  Unless they comment, regular readers can often be completely invisible.

Thanks for sharing your stats though.  It feels like you’re breaking a taboo.  Like telling your neighbors how much you earn

I probably spend less than a minute here most days.  Because I read you in the feed reader and then come comment.

No.  Wait.  That’s a lie.  I have to read you hear because your feed doesn’t break up into paragraphs in my reader.

A lot of what you said in this post was really… touching.  I know that sounds weird.  But that’s what I mean.

And CLEARLY you were in a better mood when you wrote yours than I was when I wrote mine. Heh.

I love the photo with the Omega in the background.

It’s also interesting how different stats programs show different results.  My sitemeter, Google Analytics and Wordpress Stats all show different visits and pageviews, which makes it hard to figure out if I’m getting 900 visits a day or 1500.  I just give up and don’t care.

Everyone knows it’s all about Alexa rankings anyway!  :D

Well said, sir. And the only reason I listed the “Alpha Bloggers” I did was because I was going by the popularity definition and I got those bloggers off of the Technorati Top 100. I don’t read any of them myself.

I rarely look at my stats because they’re really not indicative of anything I need to know. I love the Woopra, of course, but I hardly ever look at Sitemeter. I’ll never be obsessed with stats. I consider myself a success because I’ve met great people like you and Poppy and I strive to meet others all the time.

That’s what makes a good blogger to me. Connections.

I don’t understand most numbers and statistics, but aren’t there 31 days in May?

Since you explained all that crap to me, I have a better idea of the hits/visits thing but still, it confuses me.

I know that I get 15 readers per day according to sitemeter.  I think that is probably very accurate.  Since I get virtually no hits from google, I can proudly say that 15 people like my blog and read it everyday.

To me that is way better than 900000 drive-by skimmers who will never ever come back.

I used to have a pretty popular blog back in the day and I disliked it...a lot.  This might sound weird, but I see drive-bys and incidental clicks as bandwidth hogging bastards.  Back then, bandwidth was a much bigger deal.

I would so rather have 10 people who really read my blog.  To me, that’s better than being “popular” and way more to brag about.  Seriously.

Oh, I forgot, I made someone lose their mind and stalk me for 8 solid months (I am so not kidding) because I posted about how I thought being “a large mammal” was the height of fucking stupidity.

Someone took offense because I was obviously talking about them...obviously...and not, you know, my general opinion. 

That was quite the little brouhaha...almost as good as the chick that lost her mind and built a webpage dedicated to me to let everyone know what an asshole I am because I said 800x600 screen resolution sucks ass.

My opinion counts for everying.  Just ask anyone.

Is that why you asked me when TequilaCon was?  I should have just left it as “I think it was in April” because clearly it just confused things to give you the real date.  Oops.

I have something profound to say about how at the end of the day your blog is the formulation into complete sentences of the thoughts floating around in your head, but I don’t quite know how to write that down. 

"I have something profound to say about how at the end of the day your blog
is the formulation into complete sentences of the thoughts floating around
in your head, but I don’t quite know how to write that down. [img]http://www.apileofdogbones.com/images/smileys/tongue_wink.gif
width="19" height="19" alt="tongue wink” style="border:0;"[/img]"

Exactly.  That’s why my blog has been so useful for me.  It forces me to actually complete those thoughts.

I don’t pay attention to stats at all - I choose who I read based on their content. It just so happens that many of them are popular (for a reason) and therefore, are shoved into a category like A-List Bloggers.
I love your point of view.

YES!!!! Great post and really awesome work on the pic.

And Poppy’s comment""at the end of the day your blog
is the formulation into complete sentences of the thoughts floating around
in your head"” is EXACTLY what I find so cathartic in blogging.

It’s herding cats!

ummm… I think this calls for an “ omega icon”!

I wonder if there was ever a more fitting circumstance for this quote.

I can’t math my way out of a paper bag, so I can’t make heads or tails of these complicated stats anyway, but I’m just like Miss Ann Thrope in that I believe having a few people who like you or your blog enough to come back and keep up with you with some consistency is better than any number of “drive-by skimmers” (I couldn’t have put that better if I’d tried for years on end, thanks, Miss A. T.).  Of course what’s really cool is when one of them ends up feeling taken with your blog, and becomes a regular reader and a pal.  That’s the shiznit, of course.

I would vote against you “using [stats, etc.] as proof of failure” any more than as proof of success or popularity.  There is a highly dynamic and multi-faceted grey scale between success and failure when it comes to everything blogs.  Those words/labels are handy reference points, but ultimately little meaningful else (at least when it comes to personal blogs).

Your blog is a fun, intelligent, engaging, well written piece o’ work that smart, good people like to come read.  I’d call it a rousing success.

What matters is how you have been able to affect someone’s life when they walk away from the computer.

Now, that IS why I read you. I doubt that’s why anyone would read me, except maybe, yeah, I like to try to make people laugh, so I guess it applies.

I would rather have a few comments by people who always come back, than a shitload of random comments from blog trafficking.

That’s about it. As for the rest of it, I don’t really give a shit. I read who I like and can relate to. 
Many people are equating blogging with some sort of popularity contest. And of course, the “money” aspect figures into that.
I just look at blogging as communicating and connecting with similar people.

So I’ve been thinking about this post today which means I finally got the point of it.  I like the idea of walking away from your (or anyone’s) blog with a heightened sense of the topic at hand.
So yeah - I think I’d like to strive to be an Omega Blogger.  It seriously is a good thing. 
Great post Dawg.

Perhaps you can answer this as I’ve been wondering—I read most blogs through “Newsfire” a mac feed-reader.  Does that get captured anywhere in your stats counter or is it lost b/c it is too obscure?

Proud Omega here. Usually.

I know it wasn’t the point of this post, but this was the clearest explanation of how to decipher those Google Analytics that I have read.  Who needs all those numbers?  I’ve never been able to understand them.  I think I’m going to now learn the same thing you did as I log onto my stats—that most of my “readers” are passing by as they look for porn.

Am I supposed to worry about stats?  Woopra confuses me.  Google what?  I don’t get any of it and it doesn’t matter to me. 

I stand along with you.  If I affect someone in some way then that’s better then any stat in the world.  If someone relates to what I say then who cares how many are actually reading or commenting.  I’d rather connect with one than have 1000 stalk.

I just like to read my own stuff. Heh.

Hope this isn’t a ditto ... I locked up. Anyway, you are one of my top favorite 5 minute reads almost every day. I don’t comment on anyone’s blog very often. Why? I dunno, maybe I am shy (as DH laughs “riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight” from the other room) but that doesn’t mean I don’t like what I am reading. I enjoy reading you or I wouldn’t come by almost every day to read and Cereal Wednesday (both sites I’ve linked in the past because I like them) is a staple here. Cheers to you and yours!

I just did an extensive comparison of my own blog with your statistics, and it is surprising how similar it is (except for the frequent arrival of Poppy).  My top five referrals come from google, google images, bloglines, twitter, and stumbleupon—and most people don’t stay very long.  The best is with Bloglines, because they apparently come to actually read the post.  But let’s keep this between us, so it still looks like we have a whole lot more loyal readers.

You are being featured on Five Star Friday:
http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2008/07/five-star-friday-lucky-edition-14.html

i wish i had a clue how to look at stats.  jester designed my site and instructed me on how to write a post and a page.  anything else scares me into thinking i will blow my gorgeous site up if i fuck with it.  and i kind of don’t care how many hits i get.  i’m all about the comments.  total comment whore.  wonder why that is?  perhaps simply because i don’t watch my site meter rise?

ANYhow, back to you.  LOVEN the fanfuckingtastic photo.  well done, dawg!

becky

also wish i knew why my photo doesn’t show up on your site.  what’s a girl gotta do around here to get a little recognition?

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