"How to add stats to your blog"

Having set up your blog and started to write content to share with your readers you will want to know where those readers come from and what content you share they like, the only way to do this is to add some form of statistic set up.

Knowing where the readers come from is going to help you with growing your readership.

For simple and effective stats I recommend you use statcounter which I have personally used for most of the time I have been blogging, a few years and I am happy with it.

Setting this up on your blogger blog is very simple, as long as you follow the instructions carefully within statcounter.

A tip would be to open your blogger "layout page" in one browser tab/window and the statcounter page in another.

Once you have set up an account (it's free), choose "add new project" then on the next page add your blog name and also your blog url (the blog address ie: http://howtousebloggertips.blogspot.com ) then choose the category and leave the rest of that as is, on the "next" page choose invisible counter if you don't wish to show the statcounter icon or counter on your blog.

Follow the instructions for adding the code statcounter gives you onto your blog via the layout page, choose to add  a widget to the BOTTOM of the layout page.

Simply copy paste it and save. Done.

But another important factor you should do, that is create a blocking cookie to stop YOUR own visits to the blog from being counted.

Do this by simply clicking the "blocking cookie" link on the top of the stats main page, this will create the cookie, if you add any projects you should recreate a cookie to block all your visits to all of your blog stats.

Once you have this set up and running you will need to get readers and then you have stats to check out.

You will learn plenty as you along with the stats, click your named blog in the stats page then check the main links on the left sidebar...the ones to use for the start are "Recent came from" and "visit length" to determine where your visits come from and the time spent on the blog.

These stats once you start getting them will encourage you to improve the factors, knowing where the visits come from will give you the data to know where to promote your blog, time spent stats will give you an indication of how "sticky" your content is, whether people are reading it all or not reading it.

Now you have an easy to use and follow stat package to utilise.