I haven't been a stats whore for a long time. When I first start writing a blog, it definitely drove how often I wrote. I wanted to be an A-List blogger ASAP. No surprise, it didn't happen. As I became happy with just writing, I stopped paying attention to stats. Over the last week, that's changed.

I hooked my blog into an early version of Measure Map, an upcoming blog stats tool, and starting seeing my visitors in a much clearer light. The tool is in its early stages, but it already does a good job of tracking visitors, links, comments and posts. I've been using it daily and I'm excited to see where they go with it. It's a great replacement for Refer, which had no guard against referrer spam.

As they get closer to launch, things should get interesting. I'm guessing they'll smooth out the rough patches in the software and add some good new features (XML feed analytics, better toos for comparison) before then, but I'm more curious about their business model. It seems clear that they'll have to charge for the service as there is no other clear source of revenue, but how much will it cost? Since blogging is just a hobby, I didn't feel like spending $30 on Mint, but I probably would have spent $10. But since this is a hosted solution, a one-time fee isn't likely.

What will the price-point be? I'm not counting them out but I fear it may be too high. If they're planning to hold onto all my traffic logs forever then it's gonna have to be at least a few bucks a month, which is already more than Mint. I guess it all depends on who they want to court. If they want me and other even more casual bloggers, they're going to need a free or cheap option. I could justify spending $15 or maybe $20 on this a year, but not much more.*

*I realize this may be more than Mint in the long run, but this software has higher value for me.