Some people get too caught up in their website statistics, and end up doing things that are actually worse for their website popularity.

I find people who want to “make money” from their website/blog will often give up on sites like entrecard, stumbleupon, etc.

The reasons they give seem reasonable:

• They get an increase in visitors, but also a huge decrease in the number of pages per visit.
• Visitors increase, but the adsense CTR (Click through rate for adverts) decreases.

The implication is that extra traffic doesn’t generate any extra income, thus the extra traffic is bad traffic.

Recently, I also noticed the entrecard and stumble effect directly:

• approx 20% increase in visitors (over many weeks) from entrecard.
• a sudden spike (tripling) of visitors from stumbleupon (over just 1 day)

And sure enough: the extra visits did not result in any extra clicks on my ads.

Yet I still think Entrecard and stumbleupon are worthwhile.

I look upon these services in a similar way as traditional classified newspaper advertising… or even yellow pages directory advertising.

My experience with classified ads has been that despite paying for a weekly advert, I get between 0 and 5 calls per week from the classified. Often it can be a few weeks of nothing: no calls via the classifieds.

When the newspaper has a circulation of 80 000 , then the clickthrough callthrough rate is incredibly low. Why would anyone bother. Yet many do. Why?

The answer is: it works in the long term.

You might find the vast majority of website visits from stumbleupon/entrecard are just 5 second visits. But you do get the occasional visitor that actually likes your site, and who becomes a regular visitor (who would not have done so otherwise).

For Computer Aid, I’m also aware that I am also building better brand recognition (without spending anything).

I think I’m doing well, when I think that many companies spend obscene amounts of money to build better brand recognition for their companies.

So… I’d say don’t worry much about stats like CTR, as long as your ad clicks/sales remain the same, then the extra eyeballs on you site will have good long-term effects.