Ask Dosh Dosh: How Can You Measure the Success of Your Blog?
This article should have been published yesterday but I was incredibly busy throughout the week and so didn’t have the time to write. Let’s jump right in to this week’s advice column.
Dosh Dosh reader Akemi Gaines wrote in last week and asked one simple question: “How do you measure the success of a blog?”
Here’s one way to define success: It is something that is achieved when you meet or exceed the goals you have set for your blog. Sometimes this definition of success is socially influenced. How much does your vision of success rely on comparative value and the views of others?
Perhaps respect from your peers and others in the same niche gives you a sense of achievement. Maybe you feel that your blog is successful because it gave you what you wanted. For instance, it may have helped you to get more clients or connect with others that have similar interests.
Avinash Kaushik has six excellent recommendations on how to measure your blog’s success and Darren Rowse has a collection of 18 markers you can use to track progress. Both of the articles contain useful tips on how to quantify success into numbers you can record, monitor and improve.
Don’t forget that the main question you need to answer is always this: What do I want to get out of maintaining this blog? Seek to answer that question everyday and you’ll find that success is something that is easy to attain over time.
In case you’re wondering, my favorite blog success metric is income. Feed subscribers, comments, link citations and page views make me very happy but the direct and indirect income derived from a blog is most important to me because I create websites mostly for revenue, in order to pursue other interests.
Income by itself denotes ability. You wouldn’t make lots of money from a blog unless you are skilled in getting traffic and converting it into income through monetization schemes. You’re making money because you are ranking well for the right keywords and partly because you know how to build a community around your site.
Income doesn’t lie. Pageviews can be inflated through social media traffic. Saying something controversial can get you links. Newsletter subscribers can be increased easily if you purchase enough targeted advertising. In a way, the income you get from a site is a excellent way to measure its overall success value.
Some of you might be just blogging for fun and so revenue might not be a suitable yardstick. Pick one that suits your purpose. Instead of quantifying success, you can also pick a hero or heroine that you admire and aim to work towards that level of competence/popularity. This is a more vague and flexible perspective on success.
Now for your views. How do you measure success for your blog?
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I blog for fun. The income just sometimes comes along for the ride. I think your RSS readership, comments, technorati rank, and your overall rep within your niche measure success. I’ve always seen monetization as success, but more like a “skill”.
I would say conversion is the ultimate measure of success. If conversion means you’re selling something, then that ties into income.
And sometimes money is really only a short-term gain that may be better off traded for a longer-term investment in permission, attention, and trust of your readers. Once you have that, you can leverage longer-term income in a manner that is a little more indirect from your blog.
Blog ROI for a business blog is particularly difficult, because it’s so easy to get caught up in all the “bloggy” stuff that you forget your blog is supporting a business. A blog that is successful in all ways except that it doesn’t support the objectives of the business is really no success at all.
For me, success is the amount of time you can hang in there and the persistence you show.. If your blog is in a brutally competitive niche, you can have a hard time getting your self established. Making money comes a long way afterwards.
First you have to establish yourself in your niche by hanging in there, no matter what disaster happens. Only after a period of difficult times will you be starting to earn a steady income and steady traffic.
If you can’t SUCCEED in becoming established, the question of income and traffic becomes completely impossible.
Just my pithy words!
I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately, the information and links you’ve provided are right on time for me. Thank you!
My blog brings me the majority of my business orders. The challenge is balancing time spent on my blog and time designing new products.
I used to measure my ’success’ by comments, links and subscribers. Now I look at product sales and more arms length metrics such as industry contacts and opportunities that are finding me.
Defining exactly what it is I’m trying to achieve with my blog is itself a bit elusive, a moving target as the blog/business combination evolves.
As far as I am concerned, I entered into this blogging world only to gain ever increasing technical knowledge. I will rate by blog as successful one only if I able to get regular comments, respect among peers and JUST ENOUGH income to pay my hosting charges. That’s it.
I judge success based on goals. If income is your goal then yes income should be the metric measured, but bloggers blog for so many more reasons that just money. In fact the people I enjoy reading the most are those people whose main motivation is money. Take John Chow for example there was a time when I read John’s blog all the time, but lately he has turned to only focused on how to squeeze the most revenue from each post and as a result his quality has suffered.
Also, a follow up to my earlier comment. As I’ve said in my response-to-this post, income isn’t a good success metric for blogs in the beginning of their life. In the start, one can call him/herself a successful blogger if they’ve managed to get more traffic and readers, etc. Only after they become established comes the question of making money, if there is one, that is
Total numbers of new and returning visitors along with the time spent on the site are what makes me think we’re being successful. I don’t think we’re in the best niche to monetize, but considering the point was to get some information out there (as well as fine tune how the blogging-for-money process might work for when I do decide to seriously monetize something), knowing that we’re putting out quality information that people taking time to read (and hopefully put to use) let’s us know we’re doing something right.
Success is a term that’s relative to the blog owner. I have income and growing readership – but that’s not what makes my blog successful. What does is a comment here and there thanking me for the assistance. One ‘thanks’ is a success in my books!
@ Michael
Permission, attention and trust are all good but unless you’re a non-profit, they’ll eventually be channeled into a income-generating scheme. Which is pretty much why I emphasized on income (direct and indirect) as an overall success indicator for my blogs from the start.
Good point on business blogs, they are a little different from the usual i-want-to-make-money-off-this-blog model.
@ Muhammed
I agree with your point on the importance of building up a readership and persistence. Regarding money being an indicator only at a later stage of life for a blog, I guess it really depends on the blogger’s goals and the type of blog. Some sites can and should be monetized from the start.
For me personally, income is important, particularly because I feel it somehow reflects how well the other factors involved are performing. I’ve played around with blogs for a while and I can tell you honestly that if you’re making some serious money from it, you’re doing some right.
Not everything, perhaps… something is going well if you’re making real money from your site. Most of the blogs I own which make money have an active community, subscribers and of course consistent traffic.
@Kathy
You’re welcome! I think using your blog to get new business orders is a good strategy. I think subscribers and comments are ‘feel-good’ factors. They are adequate indicators of success if your end goal is only to have people listen to you. But if you are selling a product, it might be good to look at some other metrics….
@ Bruce
You’re right. Focusing too much on the dollar can affect content quality. I’ve seen some bloggers focus first on providing value and building a readership between launching a product or membership site. That’s a smarter and more sustainable way of doing things.
@ Mike
Your site is in an interesting niche. I would try to get a more unique template for it and perhaps your own domain. But if you’re not monetizing right now, traffic is pretty good indicator of how well you are doing.
@ Douglas Karr
Notes of gratitude and appreciation from the readers are success factors to me as well. Even better if you are changing the minds and lives of others for the better. Its no wonder how self-help bloggers get such a large and loyal audience so fast.
@ Everyone else
Thanks for the comments!
As my blog is less than 2 weeks old, I consider it a success if I have comments and occasional link back. I’m working HARD on improving all aspects…..
When I enjoy writing for my blog I succeeded. When I get feedback, positive feedback so that I know I could make a difference, that’s also success. I got clients by blogging as a side effect. That also might be viewed as a success…
I just started blogging, so just getting subscribers and feeds is a success for me. I assume once I get bigger and these goals are achieved I will set myself higher standards, and eventually maybe income will be my goal as well
I have some niche web sights say that there goal is to get 3 dollars a day from each sight. That would be a measure of success for them.
I wonder if you were measuring sales what would be a good measurement for a blog. I know all people would be different…but if you were to start a blog what would be a good target for income.
For me, being noticed and respected by those in my niche (SEO) is always fulfilling. I’d like this to improve over time, but I’m still reasonably new to the scene and know that through interacting more with social media and pumping-out interesting articles will eventually get me there… that is assuming my articles are enjoyed by others, which I haven’t really done much research into yet…
Nice article, Maki.
The act of measuring the metrics Avinash outlined is pretty instructive – especially when you follow them over time. I carried out the exercise once in November, and then a month later in December. The results are here:
http://MoneyPowerWisdom.com/my-blog-influence-is-growing-isnt-it/
You’re right, of course, in that the biggest part of measuring ’success’ is to set the right goals – for you.
When you are progressing towards those goals, you’re a success, no matter what else happens.
All success
Dr.Mani
Money is a very important indicator of success. That’s why it’s said, “Money Makes the Mare Go!”
Hi! i like your blog, i learned a lot just reading in this blogs.
Great article. Really helps me sit down and think about what I want people to get form my blog and also what I expect from keeping this blog up to date.
Setting small goals along with long term goals will help you gage how successful your blog is. You will also need a plan to reach each one of those goals. Writing this out and looking at it often is a good reminder of where you have been and where you are going.
Give yourself a reward or celebration when you reach each small goal. It will inspire you to start reaching for the next one.
Great article , Really made me start thinking about what does mean success for me and I guess it would be when my stats on everything start going higher and higher. Checks start coming in the mail.
Thank you for this article which is great. One day I will maybe consider blogging another way. At the moment I just do it for fun
What about the simple fact that ppl keep enjoying spending time/work on a certain blog?
Revenue shows success! No one is going to get paid for a useless, unsuccessful blog. I agree with you.
I would say my blog is a success. I started it just wanting to post some geeky videos and pictures every once in a while. I never expected any sort of traffic, but steadily and steadily a fan base grew. I guess coming from google, then suddenly, everything I was posting was getting massive stumble upons and social bookmarking submissions. Today, the site is ranking 28K in alexa, and making me nearly $700 a month. I don’t care much about the money though, I started the site for fun, and I enjoy posting the stuff I find while surfing the net.