Posted in Today's File, Writing

Confessions of a Statistics Slut

Posted on by Kana Smith

Hi, my name is Kana, and I’m a stats-aholic.

I admit it.  I look at my blog stats a lot.  It’s the feel-good-fix for which I don’t want to go to Anonymous meetings.  Unlike alcohol (for which I DO go to meetings), my stats addiction doesn’t turn me Stupid.  (At least, I don’t think it does…)

My statistics-addiction isn’t limited to my blog, either; I’ve always been a numbers-and-spreadsheets kind of girl.  I keep spreadsheets on the household bills and income (what there is of the latter to track, anyway). A while back I made a spreadsheet of all the common grocery-items I bought regularly, researched their prices at five different stores, and then programmed an app (back when I had a Palm Pilot) for my grocery-list.  Any item I added to the list got automatically tagged with the store where I should buy that item, so I hit the cheapest three stores once every week, pulled up each store’s shopping list, and bought every item at its cheapest price. (That was back before you could buy apps, so I thought it was a pretty neat trick.)

Suzy-cat adding her commentary (by dictation) to Pedro the Cat's blog... Suzy's only interested in stats if they're shiny and make sudden movements.

I made spreadsheets with pop-up graphs of our daily revenue and expenses when we owned a restaurant. When I built the restaurant’s website, I learned all the analytics tools that could help me track the traffic and see where search-referrals were coming from.  I chatted with our customers, found out how they’d learned about us, and kept notes behind the register so I could gauge the effectiveness of different advertising venues.  (In case you wondered, our super-cheap FaceBook advertising blew everything else out of the water.  Everything, that is, except “word of mouth,” which of course didn’t cost us a dime.)

So really, my obsession with blog stats should come as no surprise.  It’s just my most recent place to get my hands dirty with digits. I like getting numbers under my fingernails.

All my spreadsheet-skills, though, don’t tell me what to think about the numbers I end up cleaning out from under my nails at the end of the day–so here I am pondering my blog stats in amazement.  This is my seventh week of blogging, and I LOVE the online community and incredible array of reading material I’ve found here on WordPress. What an amazing welcome you folks have given me.  I’m looking at an incomprehensible 10,000+ hits and 540+ followers–most of whom stumbled across my blog (I’m pretty sure) after I read theirs…  So here’s a toast (non-alcoholic for me, thanks) to the virtual bread-crumb-trails that help us find each other’s writing, and here’s to the myriad of writers here whose daily writing I so enjoy…

The collage I put together a while back to head up my online Reading Log included this definition:

“Literary Slut. n. Promiscuous reader. Goes to bed with any book.”

Add BLOG to that definition, and I’ll readily ‘fess up. :) Thanks, all, for reading along with me, and for keeping me in such a steady supply of reading material!

Extra Happy-Dancing thanks to all of you who answered my Blogger Call to Action  this week by changing your blog settings for iPad readers.  My morning cup-of-coffee-and-blog-browsing the very next day was so enjoyable I nearly cried.  You guys rock!! :)

Author:

I am... a writer, an explorer, a coffee-drinker, a recovering addict, a barefoot linguist, a book-dragon ("bookworm" doesn't cover it), a raconteur, a sailboat skipper, a research diver, a tattooed scholar, a pirate, a poet, a spiritual adventurer, a photographer, a few kinds-of-crazy, a joyful wife, a mom... a list-maker! :)

46 thoughts on “Confessions of a Statistics Slut”

  1. Kana, you are awesome. I love reading what you write here. I don’t think I’ve ever read one of your posts that didn’t bring a smile to my face. :)

    I’m a stats-aholic too…though admittedly my best day probably pales beside your worst, lol.

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  3. Good heavens, you are certainly smart and industrious–how are you not a millionaire? Maybe I don’t understand exactly how millionaire-dom works, but sounds like you you are doing the work. I guess for now the stats payoff will have to do…

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  4. I’m drawn to the stats too.! I try to look for the patterns of days of the week, whether what time of day I posted affects how many people see it. Hahahah I started this blog just to let loose 42 years of crap I have jammed up from trying to be the square peg in the round hole and it’s my outlet so on a level I am just happy with myself that I am doing it and the other I am curious how many readers I can suck in lol. happy I read about the changing settings as my mobile expereince is much improved as well! Same as previous commentor my best day is probably yor worst divided by pie lol. Love your writing. So glad I found you ..or you found me!
    Peace :-)

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  6. Reminds me of a song that was popular a few years ago. I think it was titled, “Phacts For The Phishermen.” Ooops, that’s not it.. Hummm….. What the heck was it? Ahhhh…now I remember. It was: “Tea For The Tillerman!” Yeah! That’s it. Thanks for reminding me!

    [Nothing generates traffic better than leaving behind a trail of totally irrelevant comments, thus stimulating a “Who the hell is this?” reaction…followed by a Click.] ;-)

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  7. Kana I’ve recently found your blog (must have been those breadcrumbs again) and it’s a great read. I am both in awe of your amazing spreadsheet abilities and also your stats. Yep my stats have me hooked to (only started blogging in April but love it). So I will admit to three green eyed monster stats 1) you clearly have been chucking around more breadcrumbs than me as my stats are WAY below yours by a long shot. 2) Spreadsheets drive me nuts, despite the fact that I have to use them for work they have never grown on me or me on them. 3) You read your blogs on an iPad – for me it was love at first sight in the apple store but sadly I had to step away from the counter. Mind you there’s always the Christmas List.

    I look forward to reading more.

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    1. Yeah–the iPad represents our one financial splurge this year… My husband spent a paycheck on it for my birthday (well, very EARLY birthday–because neither of us is good about sitting on a secret for any amount of time)… I’ve more than “earned back” its price with freelance jobs I’ve written on it–but given that I COULD have written those on the desktop, I’m not sure that’s a proper justification. ;) I’ve completely MOVED IN to this little device, though, absolutely love it. :)

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  8. I think we need to start a group for stat addicts, because I am in the same boat as you! I love seeing that people are reading my blog, but sadly, I will have to keep getting fired and then post about it if I want my stats to be as high as they were when I got fired from my bookstore….

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    1. Hard to beat that as a publicity-stunt! ;) The non-proposal storyline is a good one too, though… at least one of your readers is curious to discover what happened to the note!?

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  9. Oh, thank the gods that I am not the only one! And thank you for posting this — I’ve been blogging for less than three weeks, and I have visited my Stats page easily a couple of hundred times. I need to remind myself that I write because I love to write, and want to write, and it doesn’t matter if I have one follower or 1,000. Thanks for bringing this to the forefront of my mind, so I may keep that valuable lesson handy! Love your blog!

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  14. Whoa, stats, congratulations. I don’t have anything remotely comparable to that (not even in the same stratosphere!), but even after I got into this blogging thing and swore to myself I didn’t care, I still find myself checking. Probably more than I realize. Doesn’t help the addiction when all you have to do is open up the app on your phone when you’re bored…

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  16. Congrats Kana! You are a very good writer and knows what it takes to write a successful blog. Part of the success of any blog is the willingness for the blog writer to read and comment on other peoples blogs. You do that quite well!

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  19. Kana, just found your blog, hmm, wonder how? Love this post, it made me laugh and I really needed a good laugh. Love “Literary Slut. n. Promiscuous reader. Goes to bed with any book.” Sounds like someone I know… I’m sleeping with more than one at a time these nights. I’m not a stats girl, far from it, but I sure could use someone like you around. I spent some time this afternoon in Whole Foods, without a list, trying to round up ingredients for this olive oil banana bread I want to make. A woman in the frozen food section asks me if I’d like to use the rest of her coupon book. Coupon book? huh? I didn’t even know Whole Foods had a coupon book. I’d walked by them for years, not noticing. Funny. Walking around in a fog, but staying sober one day at a time. Thanks. I know I’ll be reading more of your posts!

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  20. Cool post and all the spreadsheet skills you posses!!! Wow :D I love stats too, but I am not that good with numbers :D I just love seeing how many people read my blog, it is addictive :) And yes, I stumbled across your blog :) and I’m glad I did! :D

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  24. Kana-That was a great post. Believe it or not I learned a lot from it about what I have to do to improve the stats on my blog. I was pretty impressed with having a hundred hits in about 4 weeks until I saw that you had 10,000 in seven weeks. I have to be honest, I just don’t know how I’m going to have time to do it all. Sorry to digress. Your posts are entertaining and informative. Keep up the great work.

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  30. I’m real into numbers too. I think it’s why I became a huge baseball fan when I was younger and still like to look at numbers today. Numbers were always great, but nasty elderly math teachers ruined it for me.

    Are you a sports fan at all? Lots of great numbers in there.

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  31. Pingback: Round Trip Journey to My Dark Side | A Letter to my Children

  32. What a fun article to read! Enjoyed it this early Saturday morning. Great skills with the grocery shopping, too! Amazing how many people have been to your blog in such a short time isn’t it? Sometimes it makes you wonder who all those faces are doesn’t it? But then again, it really is okay just knowing people are reading what we write and we are getting our voices heard. Love this modern technology. Love reading all kinds of new things from writers, too. Very enjoyable and happy to have found wordpress recently as well. Take care. Sincerely, Connie Webb

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  33. I LOVE spreadsheets: grocery expenses, living expenses, book lists read, book list of books, book lists of books given away and so on. I especiall love the “literary slut” definition. Where does one find something like THAT?

    Love reading your blog. What the heck do you put in your coffee? Is it chocolate? You always sound so UP. Thanks.

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    1. I put coffee in my coffee! Along with statistics, one of my addictions. ;) Actually UP-ness is nothing more complicated than the difference between Sober-me and drinking-me… I pray daily that no one has to meet that other version again!

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  35. I’m a perpetual checker of online things that can be checked. This is not a healthy use of the stats page, but I’m glad I’m not the only one giving them a look.

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  39. Why do we need validation so much? Just knowing someone’s looking at our stuff changes our mood. I guess we all need love.
    Les
    PS I’m glad WP takes care of the stats cause I’m not as good at it as you.

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  40. So – I hate statistics…it is the one class I could barely pass as a student…but, I do agree…I’m kinda digging the whole blog stats things, too. I had no idea a number could mean so much to me! And, I think I might have a touch of statistical-envy! OVer 10,000 hits in 7 weeks and hundreds of followers! I was a shining when I hit 1000 in 3 weeks…I couldn’t imagine 10,000~ You are as amazing as your blog!!!

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  41. Pingback: Blogging Tech-Tips: Growing a Readership « Kana's Chronicles

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