Showing your blog stats

[ses5909]

A post on another forum was discussing showing feedburner stats and it got me thinking. A lot of people will make a post out of various stats, for example,

How many posts you have, how many comments, how traffic has increased, etc. It shows the growth of the blog and I suppose some of the audience might fight that interesting. But my thoughts are that most of the people really don't care; yet this is common practice to do.

What do you think?

[stymiee]

Unless your blog was fairly large I would think that this would not be a good idea. People like to make assumptions and if they see a blog doesn't have a lot of subscribers it may negatively affect their opinion of your blog. It also may let the competition know how they stack up against you whch may por not be helpful to them in their efforts to catch you/keep you behind them.

[Jeremy]

I have no problem displaying my stats publicly. Of course I didn't throw up links to my sitemeter or feedburner from day one, I did build a few dozen subscribers before I did that. I'm not really "competing" (ok, yes I do want to be the best) against anyone so it doesn't bother me if people are sizing me up.

I do think the transparency helps in regards to advertising though. I almost never have a potential advertiser contact me and then ask for site stats, etc. This makes the transition much smoother because most have already checked out my site and all available stats so when they come to me with an inquiry to place an ad the negotiation is non-existent and the order is placed.

I can see how this could potentially hurt a smaller blog trying to get ads, but most advertisers aren't stupid and can get a good idea of what a site's traffic is, and any serious offers will likely ask for stats before forking over money anyway.

[BPartch]

I do not really keep up with my stats much. I check them every now and then but in the end I really do not care as I blog for my own entertainment. Though it is nice to know a few people are reading my ramblings.

I was going to put the feedburner subscriber deal on my site, but when it said 4 I decided against it. :p

[HAWK]

I check my stats purely for egotistical reasons. I don't post them and never will. I want people to enjoy my blogging for what it is, not because it's popular. Well, that's how I'd feel if it was. :p

I guess I may have a different opinion if I blogged for commercial reasons.

[Dan Schulz]

I for one don't care, think they're just there to let the owners stroke their egos and are a general waste of real estate. But if you're trying to attract advertisers, then it suddenly becomes a whole new ballgame.

[Jelena]

I used to care in the beginning how my stats are going, but now, I only check stats once in a while, like once a week.

However, if I would run very popular site, I guess I would check them more often :P

[Golgotha]

Good question Sara, I've never posted our Feedburner subscribers or our Technorati stats because I didn't think anybody would care, but more importantly, I didn't want to add chiclets to the site that had to make additional server calls and take up load time... I'm weired that way I guess... I'm still pissed that Google Analystics takes that much time....

[LiquidReflex]

I think it's more an ego boost than anything really. I don't see how it would benefit anything more than saying "look at me, I am even more popular now". To me it's like the hit counters of old ... they look a little tacky for my taste.

(and it's not that I'm bitter that I only have 900 visits a month to my blog). ;)

[dojo]

In my case the stats would scare people away .. they'd think my blog has got the Plague :D

No, I don't like seeing too many stats on blogs. I'd like to see mine increasing, but that's another story

[goldfries]

my stats are important. :) they tell me how good are my content and how far have i reached.