On The Only Metrics That Matter
Posted on March 6, 2025 by Loren
I don't run analytics tools on my blog or The Index. […] Page views, time on site, bounce rates—these are vanity metrics that create the illusion of progress. […] what happens when you optimize for these numbers: sooner or later, you start writing for algorithms instead of humans. […] I have two metrics that matter: newsletter subscribers and paid supporters. That’s it. To the exclusion of literally everything else. My metrics measure commitment, not drive-by traffic. When someone subscribes to my newsletter, they're inviting me into their inbox—one of the last sacred spaces in our digital lives.
I side with not having analytics. I don’t need them because I have only one metric that matters and that’s my RSS subscribers. I only have one way to measure activity on this blog and that’s the amount of server bandwidth that gets used each day. It’s fairly consistent so I know that most of that bandwidth usage is my subscribers’ RSS client’s hitting the server and not drive-by traffic. When someone subscribes to my RSS feed, I know that they have invited me into their inbox. I appreciate every one of you!
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