I’m not sure where I’m going with this post. Maybe it’s a personal observation and something I need to work on. I guess I should start out…
“Hi, my name is Hank… and I’m addicted to stats”
I would be embarrassed if I counted how many times I log into CJ or EPN’s control panel to see my numbers. I’m particularly most annoyed with my habit to login to EPN, since that updates (earnings) once a day. I think I find myself checking to see if earnings had posted, but even after they post, I still login often.. I guess to see what my click counts are doing. It’s quite silly. With Amazon, I only check once a day (in the morning) since earnings/clicks only post once. CJ, I check continually (same time as EPN), but at least earnings trickle throughout the day.
What I’m not liking is the time I waste doing this. Add this to my email and IM/Twitter conversations, and various mailing lists alerts, I know I spend a lot of time where I could probably save a lot by doing it once at set time. This is where the addiction is identified. The thought of doing it once a day, seems ‘weird’ to me. It’s like I need to do it all day long?
Am I alone here? Or are there other internet marketers wasting time on earning stats? What’s the cure? Is there a patch of some sort?
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Oh boy, don’t get me onto this. I think it’s one of those “It’s out there, but people aren’t talking much about it”. When I first started making crappy websites and doing affiliate marketing I think I was obsessively checking stats every two minutes. It probably took well over a year before I started to kick the habit and also to realise that earnings stats were mostly updated once a day. So now I just start getting the shakes around 1pm CET (Amazon) and 8pm CET (EPN). I am pretty sure CJ only update once a day too though? I haven’t really started earning from CJ yet, so that one’s less obsessive!
Before I narrowed it down to a few affiliate programs it was REALLY bad – there was Adsense, WidgetBucks, ShoppingAds, Kontera, Linkshare. A constant obsessive need to refresh my stats, awful…
My name is Mark, and I am a statsoholic…
Argh, I am a statsaholic too! I hate to think how much time I waste on it. Sometimes I get into a trance checking stats and I just have to get off my computer and do something about it. Luckily, though, that doesn’t always happen! But even so, I check waaaayy to much and I’m looking forward to a day when I’m earning so much I don’t even need to check
Okay.. phew.. I’m not the only one.
@markowe – CJ does update throughout the day (earnings and clicks), especially if you watch the ‘Quick Stats’ on the home page vs. performance reports.
I also notice when I launch sites, I watch the logs like crazy. Usually that fades away pretty quick.
@Web Career Girl – I too hope for the day where earnings are so high it doesn’t matter to look
I’ve been considering affmeter.com but unfortunately it doesn’t support EPN at the moment. Other than that, it looks pretty awesome.