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There is a big difference between users clicking and users reading. Not everything that causes clickthroughs is a net win.
by apike 16y ago
There is a big difference between users clicking and users reading. Not everything that causes clickthroughs is a net win.
- _delirium 16y agoThere's also different metrics on what constitutes a net-win, that may come out differently for different kinds of traffic sources. For example, is the primary reason you want traffic (a) some sort of influence; or (b) ad revenue; or (c) signups for a service?
- apike 16y agoExactly. The sort of writers who are excited by thirty clicks are probably interested in influence. For them, measuring RSS subscriptions, comments, or inbound links is better.
- sosuke 16y agoI'm not actually sure what I'm looking for, it wasn't necessarily traffic. I wouldn't expect HN to lead to signups on my site and I don't actually monetize my blog at all. However I have gotten something great already; I got a comment to correct my spelling or grammar, I don't know which but I appreciated it.
- jacquesm 16y agoTrue, but every reader must have clicked through at some point. If you're using analytics you can narrow this down quite a bit, and if you get consistent nuisance from a certain source you could even decide to blacklist that source. I've done that with a few sites that would be a great source of trolls and griefers.