It's not too hard to tell which sites are fake and which are real, because many of the fake sites will just hit you with like 2 or 300 views simultaneously in less than a second. Also, it's pretty safe to assume that if you don't recognize the site, it may not be legitimate. But it's frustrating because usually I only expect like 12-20 people to read, and it clutters my stats hardcore. There's no way to exclude the sites from your stats. If your blog is too small or has too small of a viewership then your voice doesn't have much weight on the Google forums, but if your blog is huge and has huge viewership then a few hundred extra views doesn't matter that much.
Yeah, that all sucks and stuff, but the point of this blog is to say, I was really humbled by an exchange I had on the forums with one of Google's "top-contributors". The guy, http://blogging.nitecruzr.net , has been operating on blogger since 2005. He's also pretty well informed about the way blogger works in general. I've got to hand it to him, he's doing a great job helping people.
I've been on blogger since spring 2010, when I was assigned to make a blog by my freshman English professor. She was pretty cool. Before blogger, I was on Xanga since... maybe 2003? 2004? It was freshman year highschool, when I started blogging in order to keep better touch with one of my friends. Blogging has become one of my primary means of stress management.
I don't blog for anyone else's reading pleasure, but I don't keep my thoughts to myself.... I guess.... I blog for the following reasons:
a) It forces me to organize my thoughts in a manner understandable by humans, including myself.
b) It encourages me to measure my ideas against my perception of public opinion -- so the whole world is holding me accountable.
c) Knowing that my thoughts are available to anyone who looks hard enough to find them liberates me from a certain kind of insecurity. I have no room to wonder, "will I still be accepted if someone knows me very well?" It's like taking a leap of faith. In order to make the leap, you have to come to terms with the fact that there's nothing you can do to change the outcome of the leap once you've taken it. Now that I am on the internet, the consequences of people knowing my thoughts are out of my control.
But I've had my blog for so long that b and c are almost not applicable to the continuance of my blog. If I want to make a difference, I may have to reshuffle my whole blog: get a better layout; decide on a theme that has appeal; write about things other than my own situation. I'm almost afraid that choosing a theme will stifle my motivation for blogging. I'll consider this for a while. I need to answer the following questions:
1. Do I want to add an external agenda to my blog?
2. What is my goal? What is the difference that I want to make?
3. Can I make that goal interesting and worth reading for outsiders? How?
4. Is the goal something I want to make apparent immediately? or do I sell-out for viewership and then let my goal drift-in when I've established myself?
5. Again, is this something I want to spend my time on? Is it something I can commit to?
If there's no legitimate difference for me to attempt to make, then there's no point for me to blog with any external appeal.
Oh well, it's getting pretty late. I need to sleep.
"Work on your blog, and get real traffic."
