Using Analytics to Understand Your Readers
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Advertising-based publishing is largely a crap shoot. It may end up being a wild success, but it is much more likely that it will be a very marginal success. If you want to take your site from the marginal category to the wild, then you are going to have to figure out what your readers want. After all, all of your profits in publishing will be based on how many views you get. Without readers, there can be no views.
That brings us back to figuring out who your readers are and what it is that they want. At first glance, that may seem like an impossible task -- or at least, a task that is better suited to the carnival mind reader.
Luckily for you, the carnival tricks will end here. You do not need to be able to read your viewers' minds; you just have to be able to read their actions. Plenty of tools exist that can help you to figure out what your readers are up to.
Today we are going to take a look at some of those tools and how you can use them to get at who your readers are and what it is that they really want from your site. First, we will review each tool, and then we will discuss how that particular tool can help you to make the most of your site.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool that many site and blog owners use. This is not only because it gives you a great starting point, but because, unlike some of the other options, it is available to you at no cost. It also has a low barrier to use. Even an 80-year-old running a knitting site can use these tools easily after quickly copying and pasting the code.
The problem that most people end up having with Google Analytics crops up when they need a more in-depth solution. Instead of being willing to harness the power of multiple tools, they look for an all-in-one. As is usually the case, people who take that track usually end up with one tool that does do everything, butt can not do them all well.
Think of analytics as the big picture. It is more of a topographical map than it is a street map or a turn-by-turn GPS. As long as you understand its function and expect it to do what it should, then your relationship with analytics will be just fine.
Next: The Tools >>
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