How do you judge the success of your blog - number of pageviews or subscribers?

[jandanaligazan]

And also, what is the difference between a follower and a subscriber?

I'm using blogspot, and at the moment I have got the gadget that allows people to sign up to get my posts by email (subscribers), but I didn't do the follower thing as without any followers it might look a bit pathetic.

As you can probably guess I'm new to all of this. I have just started blogging and find that I am getting quite a few pageviews a day, sometimes over 100, but I have only 5 people so far signed up to get my posts by email (and one of them is me, three of them are family members, which leaves just one unrelated person who was interested on their own!).

Maybe pageviews are enough, but somehow I feel that subscribers/followers are really what I should be after?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

I guess that what you are looking for is regular readers, but if you are getting over 100 page views, that is pretty good for a beginner blogger.

My aim is to have a constant number of page views, but I only set up the RSS feed recently so have just got 7 subscribers. You might not see them though, if they are using google reader to read your blog.

I don't get worried about how many subscribers I have, as I follow some great blogs who have just a handful. It is not a real expression of how good your blog is.

I tend not to subscribe via email as I read a lot of blogs so would get too many emails. I use an RSS reader that collects all the posts for me.

Oh dear, I was that one random person who you don't know who subscribed to your blog!
Now I'm the other way round to MmeLindor, I love to subscribe and get the posts e mailed to me, otherwise I might forget that blog existed and miss something good, I don't mind the e mails, and if I read one that I want to comment on I leave it in my mailbox to remind me to do that.
When I started mine I had only 3 followers on the google connect thingy, even now I only have about 19 but I get lots more page views and I know lots of people in my personal life read mine but don't subscribe in any way.

@strawberry17 not oh dear, that's great that you've subscribed. Thanks for your interest! Just out of interest how do you know which my blog is? I clearly haven't got the hang of the blog and mumsnet thing yet! Can you link forum members to their blogs?

Thanks

I read you talking about it on another thread, looked at it, found it interesting and just happened to remember your forum user name and which blog you were, some I remember straight away, some I don't, so there's a compliment . I don't think you can link user names to blogs particularly? someone might correct me. My blog is in my profile if you click on my username.

I'm with MmeLindor on this, I don't think subscribers alone is a measure of how good your blog is, I think it's more important to have regular consistent page views, I follow lots of blogs without subscribing to them, I either have them on my RSS feed or just have them saved in my favourites, and regularly look at them, I don't want emails about them though.

Well done on having 100 views a day, I think that is really good, that's what I average and I think my blog is quite successful

I also think regular commentors indicates that people like your blog, it means people are coming back again and again and interacting with you, via the comments, which I love and always try to do on the blogs I really like!

Yes, agree OMDB. Regular readers who comment, and with whom you build up a "relationship" is much more important than having a big list of subscribers who don't interact with you.

For me returning and new viewers are equally as important but so is providing all the tools/gadgets for them to subscribe as people like to be reminded in different ways.

I currently have available the following: RSS subscription (for reading in Google Reader, for example), subscribe by email, Google Friends Connect (similar to RSS but you can be reminded on your Blogger dashboard too) and Networked blogs (linked to Facebook wall feeds). It may seem a bit OTT but the gadgets are small and (I hope) quite discreet in the blog sidebar.

Number of comments.

(just adding in extra to the mix)

I don't think I know what RSS feeds is, will have to find out.

Hmmm, so some comments would be great I agree. But so far I have none. I wonder if there is anything I can do to encourage them, or just have to wait and see.

So, why do you guys blog at all? Just wondered what it is that drives you?

I only have a couple of subscribers but I know I have quite a few regular readers in the village where I live and some of them have suddenly started treating me like a close friend as they've read a lot of what I've written. A bit disconcerting when I hardly know them at all - but quite nice too! I'm not that bothered about whether people subscribe or not. I subscribe to a few blogs but often don't have time to read the emailed posts, just marking them as read to get rid of them - but then return to those blogs when I do have time to enjoy them at leisure.

Well mine started off as a paper diary to track my progress, then I discovered blogger in 2008, I kept it really private though and didn't get involved in the blogging world at all, my husband kept telling me that I ought to do a lot more with it and get it "out there" as there was a message that could help other people, so this summer when I had time I sexed it up a lot and got it on a few networks, joined Twitter etc and as a result have met some really interesting people, others in the same boat as me, activists on the issue I'm blogging about and a minor celeb in LA. but most importantly for me it's brought me a lot closer to my parents and other family members who hadn't quite realised what I had gone through, so on a personal level it's been very positive.