Interesting how WordPress.com delivers stats about one’s blog.

To many, numbers mean a lot. I’m more after the intangible benefits of writing for small groups, so I was able to glean some useful data beyond the highlights. For instance it tells you what parts of the world traffic originates, search terms etc. This is not exactly new, since the dashboard does collect this data.

However, on an annual basis, the Report would be good to compare going forward.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

As a writer, I constantly look at the ingredients of the story, often by way of feedback from readers. Some remember the exact headlines of a piece written 10 years ago. A few have amazed me by recalling key argument made in a column. Combine this with WordPress stats (an older posts from 2009 seems to get consistently high visits, and now I know why), given the fact that many of my magazine columns begin as blog posts, and it’s valuable data.

Thanks, WordPress!