Why I Don’t Care About My Blog’s Traffic

Someone’s bound to yell at me for this. But I simply don’t care about my blog’s traffic. Why? That’s just a number.

Here’s what I do care about.

I care that when you come here, you find something that’s valuable. To you. Either you enjoyed reading it, or it gave you an idea, or you showed it to your boss, or it just reassured you that you’re not the only crazy one thinking these things.

I care that my blog encourages you to connect with me other places. Not just Facebook or Twitter, but on the phone. Email. Over coffee. And hopefully, when we meet in person, we feel like we know each other a little bit.

I care that you feel welcome here. That you feel like I’m glad to have you, and more importantly, like the other folks in my community are welcoming and interested in participating in great conversation with you also. And if you’re the lurking type, I hope you feel like there’s a comfy sofa in the corner for you, always.

I care that I have a place to collect all the thoughts that pile up in my head, every day. To work out my business ideas in an organized fashion. (I do the personal stuff too, over here.) Otherwise, my head would asplode, and that would be messy.

I care that some people have been inspired to start blogs of their own, presumably because they know if a mouthy-pants like me can do it, so can they.

I care that I’ve given people practical ideas to use in their work. How do I know? Because they’ve told me.

I care that my blog has helped introduce me to people that have become friends, trusted colleagues, and even hired me to do real work (thanks, David).

You can argue all you want that my traffic is an indication of how interesting I am, or how compelling my posts are, or how “influential” I am, and I say hogwash. My traffic is an indication that I piqued someone’s interest today. But just today. (Look, I get that this is probably a much different thing for a business, or someone trying to make money from their blog by selling eyeballs or proving their audience, but hey. I’ve gotten a pile of business from my blog, even when it was a tiny thing. So there. I’m probably doing it wrong.)

Subscribers are slightly more nifty, because they tell me someone liked what they saw and wanted more. And I’m grateful for every one of you.

But when all is said and done, if I’m delivering something great to 15 of you or 200 of you or 50,000 of you in a given day, what matters isn’t how many of you showed up. It’s how many doors this has opened from me to you, on a dozen and a half channels, so that we can connect, do work together, visit, laugh, have a beer, and share war stories someday. It’s how many of you want to hang out. Learn. Share. Because hell if I don’t learn something from each of you, daily.

My currency here isn’t my traffic, it’s you. Each of you humans (some of you aliens, maybe). It’s the privilege I have to write stuff I care about, and hear from other people who care about that stuff too. That’s reassuring, and comforting, and thought provoking, and downright fun.

So I’m sorry if I didn’t count you as you came in the door today. Whether there’s five of you or five hundred thousand, I’m going to care about the same damn things.

And if I haven’t said it often enough or loudly enough, I’m just thrilled to pieces that you take time out of your day to spend it here. So thanks.

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