If you're a hugely successful blog you know a LOT of people read you based on the number of comments you receive. Me? I used to get a few comments per month, usually from the same 6 people who would email me instead of posting them in my blog comments. Sometimes they would tell me when they saw me that they liked a post. So because I don't receive a lot of comments I had no idea how many people were reading my blog.

Then in January of 2008, the 12th to be exact, I installed Statcounter and promptly forgot I did. In February I was checking out the Google Analytics on The Flirty Guide when I noticed that TFG had over 100 visitors who came to the site by clicking over from the blog! Huh? 100 visitors = at least 100 readers right??? 100 PEOPLE HAD READ MY BLOG??? I was floored. Then I remembered the statcounter. I logged on and I swear you could have knocked me over with a feather. It showed that in the first 30 days 907 people had visited my blog. Seriously?

According to the stats 50 were return visitors and 857 were new to the blog.

*Gasp gasp thud*

Are you serious? Here I thought like 12 people were reading my blog on a day to day basis. And my mom is not one of them. She never knows what's going on in my life. I always ask her "Did you read my blog?" She just giggles and says "Oooooo no but I should shouldn't I?" LOL.

Sure some of those hits are probably me maintaining my blog, and at least one is a friend who told me she's read the iphone post more then once because it makes her laugh. But seriously I'm blown away that so many people even know my blog exists!

Here's a update. These were my stats for the month of January 2010. Just 2 years later my monthly visitors have increased from 907 to 11,900. Sometimes I almost feel like pinching myself because I can't believe it. All I can tell you is to post consistently and with compassion, humor and with the desire to share information with your readers and your stats will continue to grow.