So I Guess Less Really Is More

Blogging, humor, Teaching and Education 1 Minute

Practical Minimalism: When Less is More - Simply Placed

I’ll admit it.

I’ve got a problem.

And it’s gotten worse over the years.

It only took three days since my return to blogging for the problem to rear its ugly head.

At least when I first started blogging 10 years ago, I was able to hold off for 37 days.

Some of you may know what I’m referring to – my obsession with blog stats.

And some of you may not be surprised to know that even though I haven’t been an active member of the blogging community for quite some time now, I have continued to check my stats multiple times per day.

So today I happened to check my annual stats for 2024 (and in a strange coincidence, so did my blogging friend, Clive).

And I discovered an amazing stat.

My total views for the year were a little over 71,000, down from a high of 209,000 in 2021.

The shocking part?

I only wrote three posts last year, so that works out to an average of nearly 24,000 views per post written. To put that in perspective, in 2021, when I published 365 posts, my average was just a bit over 570 views per post written.

24,000 views per post!

Those are Musk-like numbers!

Well, maybe not Musk-like. Perhaps more Kardashian-like.

Ok, who am I kidding. Perhaps it’s more in line with the local roofer who thinks he’s a social media influencer.

But still, the message is clear.

The less blogging I do, the better my stats.

I know I must be missing something here. But the numbers don’t lie.

Maybe I need to retake that Khan Academy course on Intro to Statistics.

P.S. This is already my third post of 2025 – maybe I should stop while I’m ahead…

*image from Simply Placed

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Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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54 thoughts on “So I Guess Less Really Is More”

  1. Many years ago I took a break from my blog for about 10 months, and I found that the same thing happened. My views went up and I gained followers. Strange. Maybe the road to success at blogging is to quit. Quit while you’re behind, and then you’ll move ahead.

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  2. As a math nerd, I’ve always been into stats. Of course, most of that knowledge is useless. I’m still waiting for the day that knowing Tony Gwynn’s career batting average was .338 and that the last 19 years of his 20 year career, he batted over .300 will at least win a bar bet.

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  3. When you were gone, I checked your site every day just to see if there was any news because you did not definitively quit. So did my friend Bot. You do not need to post anything to get our 365 views. You perfected the perpetual motion machine of generating stats where nobody has to spend time actually reading or writing anything! You have to be a legend like the local roofer to do that. It didn’t work for me!

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    1. my thanks to you and Bot for keeping my stats going.

      and now I need to invent a perpetual motion machine that gives me all of the benefits of exercise while I’m just laying in bed watching TV…

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  4. Many of us, myself included, would kill for numbers like those! I’m not even in your roofer’s league! Thanks for the mention – maybe some of your stardust will work its magic for me? 🤞

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      3. It seems good to me!

        Music for me peaked from 1962, when The Beatles started, until it began to tail off in pop chart terms around the mid-70s, when disco and punk spoiled it. Still plenty of great music since then, though 👍

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      4. I’m jealous that you’ve at least stayed current with music. I think I might know one song by Taylor Swift.

        And I thought you liked some punk. Would you consider The Pogues to be a punk band?

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      5. There is a huge amount of recent music about which I know nothing, mostly the stuff which makes the charts. Taylor excepted, of course!

        The only punk band I really liked was The Clash – local loyalty as I went to school with their drummer. Some classify The Pogues as punk, but I might go as far as saying they are folk-punk. Much more tuneful than most punk bands, and they could play their instruments too!

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      1. I know it will cause an uproar to some, and I know for sure it will in your case, but as long as I’m alive, posting and some are reading and having conversations, I’m happy

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  7. Are you sure that the views were on the new posts?

    I stopped posting on my “A Simple Village Undertaker” blog seven years ago and still get about two dozen views a day from search terms

    Regardless, glad you are getting back in the game.

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    1. well, if you’re being picky, the new posts only generated a few dozen views. but nobody has to know that..

      that’s the fun side of stats, you can interpret them any way you want, even if it’s misleading 🙂

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      1. Yup, that is true and I regret blowing your cover. I recall a few statistics classes in college (graduated 1982) where I learned that most data can be manipulated to say whatever the person paying for it wants it to say. Thus, I am somewhat skeptical of almost all research findings.

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  8. Happy New Year, Jim..and congrats on the stats…I can concur that stats and views carry on regardless of whether or not you post I have reduced my postings but the stats still carry on and for older posts years older..strange but true…

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  9. Numbers and math have never been ‘my thing’, but it would be interesting to see where my annual stats are…if I can even find that on my blog. 😀 Perhaps your own research confirms math’s complexities.

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  13. Like you, I posted very little in the past year and my stats are pretty good, although slightly lower than previous years. I have a few posts that are getting a steady stream of hits though Google andI suspect that without those popular hits my stats would have been very low. Resting on my laurels as they say.

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