Someone said "It's not how many seeds are in an apple that counts, but how many apples are in a seed."

Many bloggers look to their hit count as a gauge of success. Many hits, much success. Few hits. . .well, you get the picture.

I check my traffic stats everyday, but don't tie my self-worth to it. Sure, blogging may be somewhat ego-centric, but there's no need to make it a popularity contest.

I look to my stats for two reasons:

1. To see if the readership is growing. Regardless of the number of actual readers, is the hit count growing? If so, that is a good indication that something that's being said is of intrinsic value to someone.

2. To see where the traffic is coming from. (Referrers) I want to know if most people are coming to my site via search engine, through links on other blogs, or some other way. I am finding more and more that traffic tends to come either from Google or directly to my site. That tells me two things: My posts are being ranked in Google, and more people are actually bookmarking or blogrolling my site.

Back to the seeds in the apple analogy. Sure, I want many "seeds" (hits). Who doesn't. But, I'm more interested in who is reading my stuff than how many. My primary target is small business owners who are using blogs as a marketing communications tool. Second to that, I'd like to know that I'm being read by internet marketing professionals. If I can get their attention from time to time, I know I must be doing something right.

Usman Latif, in his article Do hits matter?, suggests that..."blogging is a time consuming activity, and people eventually get tired of investing in an activity which yields no returns." He adds that "bloggers who try to transform hits into returns invariably focus on ad revenue. Blogs which produce monetary returns for their maintainers not only motivate bloggers to keep going, but also let them invest more time and resources in producing content."

The problem with this is that most bloggers won't even be able to pay their hosting fees from ad revenue. Something else he says makes far more sense to me as a reason to blog.

The really smart bloggers use the contents of their blogs to highlight products/services they are able to offer. The products/services on offer can be as simple as the blogger's job skills, so this is something anyone can do.

That's precisely why I blog. While I may garner some revenue through affiliate links and advertising, my real purpose in blogging is to market my services and educate the small business community to the advantages of using blogs as marketing tools. I would suggest that's as good a reason as any.