Crippled by Google and Wealthy Affiliate Analytics

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I seem to have a serious struggle these days with getting hung up on Google Analytics. When I get done looking at Google Analytics I usually straight away jump over and check my Wealthy Affiliate traffic to see what sort of traction I'm gaining here through my blogs, questions, and profile.

What I didn't realize in the early stages of website building and affiliate marketing is that it is so easy to get caught up in these analytics and you actually end up not writing any content at all. This leads to negative results.

All the time spent staring at the screen waiting for "grass to grow" so to speak is wasted time that you could have been writing a new, quality, content rich article.


Unfortunately, I know I'm not the only one at Wealthy Affiliate who struggles with this issue.

Fortunately, I have discovered a solution that has helped me out tremendously and may help you folks out as well!


Background

When I was in college I was terrible at sitting down and studying my engineering coursework for any long period of time. This was especially true if it came to reading monotonous material.

As I grew as an engineering student and coursework became harder I quickly understood that I could not keep browsing social media, researching sports, and Google Searching interesting facts if I wanted to succeed in my coursework.

Imagine you want a new job, but instead of applying for jobs all you do is research salaries for days on end. You likely won't ever actually find a new job, but you'll know exactly what every single person on the planet brings home.

At some point you have to move forward, and in todays world of attention grabbing mechanisms this has become harder than ever.


At this point you are probably wondering what I have done to eliminate distraction. Well, I can't tell you how to eliminate all distractions, but I can explain what I have done to eliminate particular sites.

In college, Facebook seemed to be the popular go to for me distraction periods. However, one day a friend of mine offered me a solution that would keep me off of Facebook, but didn't require deleting it all together.

That solution? Self Control.

No, no I'm not saying "hey you squirrel...have a little Self Control".

Self Control is a real app. It's free and open source. I personally use it on Mac OS X and am not quite sure if it is available on PC, but a simple Google Search for Self Control should display that result.

Self Control simply blocks access to blacklisted sites for a designated period of time. When you type in these blacklisted sites in your browser, it blocks you and displays a Self Control Result screen and timer rather than the site itself.

Understand, I'm not saying you can't stay off of analytics without using Self Control. I'm simply saying that... as a creature of habit... I often time find myself typing in analytics.goo.... before I can catch myself I hit enter and I'm there.

With Self Control turned on for my designated writing period it is much harder to wander into the depths that is Google Analytics.

Wealthy Affiliate analytics are a little bit of a different story as you cannot really block that site specifically. What you can do is block the specific "My Stats" page but there are other interesting things in My Stats that you may want to check out from time to time while writing.

So How Do You Use It?


Download Self Control and read the Quick Start Guide as shown below:

Hit Continue and you'll see the Edit Blacklist option. Click on the Edit Blacklist button and type in the sites you wish to Blacklist:


Now hit Import and return to the previous screen with the slider.

Slide over the amount of time you want to focus on writing. Hit start...

Self Control does the rest and you won't be crippled by analytics just like me!

I hope you all find some use for the app. If you have any strategies of your own to avoid paralysis by analytics please feel free to share in the comments section below. If you think I'm a total crazy person for needing to use an app to prevent me from chasing my tail all over the internet let me know in the comments since that sparks some fun conversation too.

Have a great day!

Dalton

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Recent Comments

27

I check my stats and analytics way too much, and it's usually when I'm putting off writing an article or a lesson that I find difficult. I may have to give this app a try!

It can't hurt to give it a test run! Maybe even just 15 minutes or so :)

Good luck to you!

Great article but its not my problem YET! I dont have a reason to be that analytical until my website starts makin' me money; )

I wish you progress-n-success~

That's the right mentality to have!

Wish you the same.

Dalton

It can definitely be difficult not to stare at the grass grow:-) Interesting suggestion about the app as a little reminder to ourselves.

Thanks,
Mikael

glad you also enjoy staring at grass Mikael!

Thanks for commenting. Hopefully the app works for you as well if need be.

-Dalton

Dalton,


I think we all walk through this learning and growing experience in different ways.

BUT, I am with you..

I have no self-control... I delete most of what I want to say.

I am happy to have you on network!

Gloria

I think we have the same characteristics. I usually do what you are doing, opening Google Analytics and Adsense everytime to see if I gained something for that day. The thing is that it is frustrating to see traffic not growing.

Almost all the more reason to ignore analytics until maybe a year in! Even then I don't think it's all that important unless you are starting to see consistent revenue and think that you might be able to use the analytics trends to generate more.

If none of the above are true then really Analytics just becomes a toy for your entertainment... or one that makes you angry I guess.

Keep up the good work!
Dalton

Analytics monitors traffic so it will give us reminder that our site is suffering or growing.

Self control is definitely something we all have to work at! In my experience, I just keep focusing on the picture at large---financial success. I keep it first and foremost in my mind.

Five days after launching my new site, I decided to check out what GA had to say. Mind you, I kind of gave up on it, as there wasn't a huge amount of traffic with other sites I'd done.

But, I had worked long hours on this one and it was "my baby!" So, when I checked, I almost dropped to the floor in disbelief--377 visitors in the first 5 days with a 5% bounce rate (I blogged about it). That number climbed to over 600 in 12 days and continues to rise.

Even with that said, I still only check it once a day--and only after I've added to my site--content, keyword(s), comments, photos, etc.

It's all about self control!! Great post, Dalton, my new friend!

Those are amazing statistics! I'd be interested in checking out your site. You have to have found a niche that you're really passionate about and be crushing the Google rankings.

Is your site displayed at the bottom of your profile page? I'd love to give it a look. If you have any key tips that led to that feel free to divulge, I love learning new ways to create success online.

For years I have been chasing my tail. I tried to put in a video of a cattle dog so bored he spends a lot of his day chasing his tail but videos do not load here. I am getting giddy.

Hahah giddy or delirious who knows... I think we all walk that line... After all my 8-5 isn't the end of my day as I end up sitting here from 5-12... I guess I should eat food and sleep at some point considering those are key elements needed for human survival XD

Thanks for the comment. I'll search the video!

I use Self Control every day of the week but it is not helping me all that much.

Self Control is a great tool and when used correctly will lead to results.

However, I have now gone back to my original:

See Food and Eat It!

Bugger the self control!

Hahaha, good effort for Self Control Steve. When it comes to food I'm definitely on the see food diet as well.

Can't stop, won't stop devouring good food. Maybe that's what my niche should have been... all the wonderful restaurants I discover on business travel! You may have just given me another idea...

Brb I have got to go find food now :)

Cheers Dalton Nice!

Wayne

Thanks for the comment Wayne.

Keep up the good work my friend!

Everyone has a weakness that might distract them from work. Great that you worked out what yours was, and learnt to manage it!

The way you described your fascination with Facebook and analytics sounded very similar though. Each tiny feedback you got was another nice dopamine hit, and a reenforcement for your appetite for more feedback, whether it’s a ‘like’ or a tiny uptick in your site stats.

I know there are some people for whom the dopamine hit is the almighty guiding light of what they do online. They want a million followers, whether or not this is a profitable or healthy activity. But you’re here to build a business, and you’re smart enough to know to cut away whatever won’t serve that effort.

In the early stages of looking at analytics it’s all very new and interesting and easy to be distracted by. Small changes can supply us with the validation that things are working (until you learn how many visitors are bots, lol). But the big problem with the data in the early stages is that there is just not enough of it to identify meaningful trends. That comes only in the long term.

By the by, I know people with similar fixations on their share portfolios. Oh, up it goes! And down again! And omg, up! I’ll bet Warren Buffet doesn’t care about that sort of tiny change over time. :)

Thanks for the thoughts Ivy!

Haha, yeah the bot thing wasn't really a shocker for me as I deal with them all the time on Instagram. I finally realized that a lot of my analytics (especially on absurdly large days) were bots from (not set) keywords or (not provided) which really made no sense.

The little bit of dopamine can go a long way if you feed on that but once it started consuming too much of my time I realized I had to step back. Good to know I'm not the only one that has experienced this sort of feeling though. I think it just takes a bit of experience and realizing patience is key!

Funny thing is... I was very similar about the swings in my portfolio until I started contributing to a little more stable securities. Now I check once or twice a year and see some positive and call it good!

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