First of all, let's establish that writing for a living is not some sinful activity. Agreed? Okay, so why are so many bloggers seemingly against blogging for a living? True, not everyone can write - but having spent significant parts of my life encouraging new writers with that necessary spark to continue writing, I see that writing is a skill, to be developed like any other. Some bloggers will get better, others will give up. However, blogging requires more than just writing ability, as I've consciously come to realize just this morning (still Xmas over here).

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Stats are really an essential item that all Professional bloggers must have, if you haven't got good stats you are flying blind. Here is the results roundup of our web stats package reviews.

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You may have seen that lately I have been reviewing several blog stats packages. I realised I was assuming you care about stats. Why should you even be bothered?

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Despite not even being officially released yet, MeasureMap from AdaptivePath has been building buzz for a little while. I was lucky enough to get an invitation to check the product out. Here are some initial thoughts ...

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In this web stats service review I'll be looking at Google Analytics. Having the Google name alone will be a significant draw, but knowing Google's bias towards tools for advertising how appropriate is the package for bloggers?

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In this post in our statistics package reviews we will be looking at MyBlogLog. The name might not be familiar but you might well have seen the little "most popular link" tooltips. Let's see if there is more to the software than that.

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For today's stats package review we have a bit of an oddity but one you are sure to have heard of. Mint is a client-side tracking package like the others in these reviews but unlike the others you need to download and install it. Let's take a look at what all the fuss is about ..

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StatCounter is nearly as old as SiteMeter. At first glance it appears pretty similar, if a little nicer looking. Let's see in the second of our stats package reviews if the improvements are more than skin deep.

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In this first post of our blog stats package reviews let's see if the aging SiteMeter still stands up to the new kids on the block.

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One of the things we try to impress upon bloggers is the need to monitor your stats so you know how well your blog is performing and its overall "health". With this in mind, let's take a look at the blog tracking software available.

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So a lot of bloggers, including me, use Feedburner to track feed stats right? For a long time I wouldn't go anywhere near them, as i just couldn't have a url like http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyBlogName associated with my blogs.

What if FeedBurner went bust? What if they suddently required me to show ads in my feeds, or what if they hiked their prices up sky high? Gaining feed subcriptions is gold, every single subscription is valuable, and to put those subscriptions out of your control by hosting them on somebody elses website just seems like asking for trouble.

It doesn't have to be that way though.

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Ok, so Google have made live their long expected free analytics program this morning. The question we want to ask at Performancing is, what does this mean for bloggers?

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As a relative newbie to the blogosphere I thought it would be interesting to see what the more experienced bloggers with high traffic recommend for statistics, quoting Brett Tabke from a Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone: "Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don't use a lame graphic counter - you need the real deal). If your host doesn't support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can't run a modern site without full referrals available 24x7x365 in real time."

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