Are You Making Mistakes While Measuring Your Blog’s Success?

Either you’re a new blogger or blogging for years, you want to measure your blog’s success.

You may track blog metrics to know that.

But can metrics really measure your blog’s success?

There is a reason I asked this question.

The reason is, blog metrics can demotivate you. Many new bloggers often quit blogging when they don’t see any increases in metrics.

I’m not saying that you don’t need to track blog metrics.

In fact, you should do that at least once a month to measure your blog’s success – to know that you’re on the right track or not.

But which metric is important to you?

Which metric should you focus on?

Which metric will actually give you an idea of your blog’s success – that you are going right or wrong direction?

It depends on the purpose of your blogging.

Why did you start the blog? What does the success of that blog mean to you?

Your blog’s success totally depends on the correct answer to these questions.

Let me tell you…

THE HISTORY OF MY FIRST BLOG

I started my first blog on the free Blogger platform – maybe in 2010.

I heard that I can have an online space where I can write anything as I want. The best thing is, it’s free to use. Then I thought, it’s a nice idea to keep my professional things in online space rather than keeping them in a notebook.

THE PURPOSE OF STARTING THAT BLOG

I’m a civil engineer and work on the building construction sector. The purpose of starting the blog was simply to keep all my engineering notes online. So that I can access them whenever I want.

You can ask me “there were many note-keeping apps available at that time. Why I didn’t use one of them.”

Oh, dear.

Don’t be so rude, lol.

Yes, I was using a note-keeping app named Evernote. But I don’t know why I liked the blogger platform. Maybe It was a feeling like “I’m doing something different”.

So, the purpose of starting my first blog was just to keep engineering notes that I was learning in my day to day construction activities.

But…

IT DIDN’T SERVE MY PURPOSE

After some period of time, I spent a lot of my time just tweaking the theme, adding widgets to the sidebar, and changing colors of different elements, etc.

I was actually wasting my time. My note-keeping mission was in vain.

But, they say…

NO KNOWLEDGE IS USELESS, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF HERALDRY

Once I started to tweak my blog design, I started to read blogs to learn how to change themes, upload blog header, HTML coding, color code, adding widgets, etc.

Later I used that knowledge in my day to day blogging. I’m still using them.

The best thing I did at that time is, I started to read many blogs. I came to know about blog posts.

Then I thought, I would keep my professional things as a form of posts.

After that, I sometimes publish my professional things as a form of blog posts.

For publishing posts, I needed to learn how to format blog posts, how to write posts, how to publish posts, etc.

I somehow published 20-30 blog posts with a lot of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

During learning about publishing blog posts I came to know that I can have my own domain instead of the Blogspot subdomain. I only need $10 to buy a domain for one year and I can use the domain on the blogger platform. I was super excited.

Somehow I bought a domain from Godaddy. And included that in my blog on the Blogger platform.

I was happy that I could keep my professional notes as a form of blog posts. More than that, I can use an email address with my custom domain. The address is Liton@aCivilEngineer(Dot)com.

Wow. People just say wow when I’d give them this email address.

Here one thing I need to say you that I was giving people my email address. But I didn’t want them to visit my blog.

I sometimes kept my professional things on the blog, but not on a regular basis.

However, I’d published 50-60 blog posts.

Somehow, it served my purpose as I started this to keep my professional things.

But, you know…

PEOPLE LOSE INTENSIONS DUE TO MANY CHAOSES OF LIFE

I had been busy with my projects and forgot about the blog. I wasn’t updating that.

In the year 2015 (maybe), I got an email from Google that they send some $100+ to my bank account.

Five days after getting that email I got an SMS from my bank account that somebody deposited some money.

Within two months, I got another email from Google that they sent Adsense money again.

That time, I thought, It’ll be nice to take that blog seriously.

Later, at the end of 2017, I started to publish posts regularly on that blog. I took that blog seriously as a business.

My readers even started to want my blog posts as an ebook. So, I wrote an ebook and publish that on amazon (that wasn’t easy for me and I spend a lot of time on that).

Some copies are sold of that book on amazon.

But readers started to send me messages that they’re having trouble getting that book from amazon. Some readers even want to get that as a pdf version.

But I don’t know how to sell an ebook in that format and I found myself frustrated.

And thus, I realized, I know nothing about blogging business.

And,

I STARTED TO LEARN BLOGGING AS A BUSINESS

In 2017, I started this blog (SB) to learn to blog as a business. I share what I learn.

I don’t earn a single penny with this blog.

But I hope it’ll be started soon.

Once I start to take blogging seriously I found there are many learning curves and I became overwhelmed.

So my main purpose with this blog is to eliminate blogging overwhelm and that’s what the tagline of this blog.

And I’m getting success on that.

That’s how I measure my blogging success.

So,

HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS AS A NEW BLOGGER?

There are many metrics to measure a blog’s success. But I won’t talk about them.

Because they are for pro bloggers who are on blogging for years.

As a new blogger, if you look at metrics you’ll find yourself frustrated.

So, don’t overthink on metrics.

Instead, use the followings for measuring your blog’s success:

KNOW YOURSELF

Can you define – who you are, why are you in blogging?

If you are a hobby blogger then I don’t have anything to say. You can blog as you want.

But if you consider your blog as a business, then you have to know yourself first.

Do you have enough knowledge of your blog topic?

Do you have the ability to write consistently on that topic?

You may not have enough knowledge of your blog topic. That’s normal. There is nothing wrong with that.

But are you spending enough time to gather knowledge? Do you read books, journals, and articles on your topic to grow yourself?

If you’re growing yourself, that a success.

If you dedicate time to learn on your topic, that’s a success.

So, first, know your ability, your weakness, and work on yourself.

If you’re doing so, you’re on the right track. Your blog is a success. And it’s just a matter of time, your blog will be a successful business.

KNOW YOUR READERS

This is one of the most important things for a blog’s success.

Who are you write for? Do you know them well?

If you don’t know them, it’ll be difficult to write for them. And you’ll have a hard time getting readers.

So, first, get to know your readers. It’ll be easy for you to build a blogging business once you know your readers.

I’ve talked on this before in the post How To Identify Your Target Audience. Read that to know your readers on a deeper level.

When you know your reader inside-out and outside in, both ways, that’s your success as a new blogger.

REFINE YOUR MESSAGE

Are your readers getting your message? Is your message clear to them?

Most of all, what’s your message? What do you want to say to your readers?

Is that clear to you?

Do you know clearly what you want to say to your readers?

Once the message is clear to you and you find your way to say that clearly to your readers, you’re one step ahead.

If not, first, refine your message.

DEFINE THE PURPOSE OF YOUR BLOGGING

If you’re considering your blog as a business, then I know the ultimate purpose of your blogging – that is, making money. You don’t need to say that to me, lol.

You don’t have to be shy.

Everyone wants to make money.

In fact, blogging is full of opportunities to make money. There is a huge potentiality.

Besides this, you should have a different purpose for blogging. Otherwise, you can’t make money.

Simply saying, if people don’t see any benefits to them, they won’t buy from you. Even they won’t believe you.

So, define your purpose first.

Do you want to make your readers happy? Then help them to be happy.

Do you want to make them laugh? Then do that consistently without wanting anything in return.

Do you want to solve your readers’ problems? Then do that. Even for one reader.

So make your blogging purpose strong and consistently work on that.

If you’re already doing so, then your blog is a success.

Conclusion

Traffic counts – it isn’t a blog’s success.

Social followers – not a blog’s success.

As a new blogger, no metrics should be a measuring tool for your blog’s success.

Instead, use these four tools I outlined in this post – knowing yourself, knowing your readers, refining your message, and knowing the purpose of your blog – to measure your blog’s success.

Otherwise, metrics will lead you to blogging quit.