After blogging for more than three years, I did something today for the first time: paid for a statistics package.
Yup, I plunked down $3.95 to use Performancing Metrics for the next month. Not the biggest investment dollar-wise but a radical move given you can satisfy your stats-obsession with free packages such as Wordpress’ Stats, AwStats and Google Analytics.
So why pay $3.95 if you can pay nothing? Good question. What I like about Performancing Metrics is the user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to see how your blogs are performing. In many ways, it reminds me of BlogBeat, which I really liked until it disappeared after being acquired by FeedBurner. I also like that you can track several blogs under a single package – provided you don’t exceed the page view limit for each package.
The only thing that I found disconcerting about PM was whether it was different from Clicky. After doing some digging, I discovered PM is just a white label version of Clicky. I’m still confused why you would used PM as opposed to Clicky.
Here’s a quick run-down of some other stats services I checked out:
- W3Counter: more than expensive than PM and didn’t seem to offer any more/different features.
- Mint: The price – $30/site – scared me away. Having never used Mint, I’m not sure whether the features are worth the price.
- Wordpress.com Stats: The price is definitely right – free – and you get a basic, user-friendly stats service that will meet the needs of most bloggers. The only downside is it’s a plug-in just for Wordpress blogs.
- Google Analytics: While it’s free, it’s far from my favorite stats service – mostly because the page view counts also seem significantly lower than other services. As well, Google Analytics is geared towards Webmasters and AdSense junkies as opposed to bloggers who want to know their numbers.
- StatsCounter: solid and free until you surpass a certain number of page views.
- FeedBurner Stats Pro: despite the BlogBeat acquisition, I’ve never viewed FeedBurner as a stats service provider. If you’re into traffic analytics, however, it’s probably worth checking out.
- Quantcast: Solid but not a lot of bells and whistles. It seems geared more towards advertisers looking for high-level information about Web sites.
To be honest, I’m still not convinced Performancing Metrics is the stats service, which is why I only signed up for one month rather than pay $23.95 for one year. I’ll continue to search for alternatives, and report back. If you’ve got any suggestions, leave them in the comments.
(Note: I current use Wordpress Stats, Google Analytics, Quantcast and now PM)
5 Comments
W3Counter is free, too, ya know, and has many more reports than PM.
You’re dismissing Google Analytics because they report lower page view counts? That’s not particularly scientific–lower isn’t the same as ‘less accurate’.
In fact, it’s precisely why I rely on Google Analytics (both for myself and client work), because if we get good results from them, the results will look great on other stats packages.
Darren:
Fair point, although I have yet to really get a grasp on why Google Analytics is the most “conservative” of the stat services out there.
Dan,
W3Counter is free but there’s no invisible counter.
Mark
I use mint myself. Sure its $30, but there are tons of plugins (called “peppers”), its uptodate all the time, and its real pretty.
If money is the option, you can try Slimstat (or, Wp-slimstat), which Mint is actually based on.
Not so pretty, and you might have to do a little light hacking to get it to work just right, but its totally free.
Cheers
t