I've recently decided to pep up my blog and try to turn a profit with it. I've written in it for years, but never considered actually monetizing it in any way. The first thing I needed to do was start figuring out the traffic for my blog. So I spent a couple of days researching statistics and discovered Google Analytics. I really like the service, and I figured out which stats were actually important to me.

At first that seemed like enough, but then I started doing a little research, and tracking my links that went through my twitter account and discovered that my google analytics weren't completely accurate. I quickly did a little more research and discovered my hosting company offers some behind the statistics as well. They seemed to paint a more accurate picture of the people visiting my blog and helped me to kind of understand the whole traffic thing better.

Am I saying not to use Google Analytics? Oh, heck no… it's great for tracking blog growth and has a super cool heat map overlay! I just want you to think twice when you are judging your blog's traffic and use more than one type of tracking program.

Jamie Harrington is an intern for Moms Talk Network at Profitable Mommy Blogging, and an aspiring author that spends her days frantically writing about super heroes and band geeks. You can also find her mindlessly chatting away all day on twitter.