Chris Dillow currently has this piece on Adam Smith's wisdom:

Guido and Iain are boasting about their site stats. I prefer - and I'm not just making a virtue of necessity here - to remember Adam Smith's words:

To a real wise man the judicious and well-weighed approbation of a single wise man, gives more heartfelt satisfaction than all the noisy applauses of ten thousand ignorant though enthusiastic admirers.

In Chris' case, this is far too self-effacing.

In my situation - well - any new blogger is soon faced with an identity crisis, once the initial rush of that which he wished to say has passed.

He can also get sucked into the ‘ratings game’, as I did, fretting over the sudden drop from 300 to 20 views overnight; and he can be tempted to run lurid, prurient pieces or make controversial statements in the hope of keeping ratings up.

On the other hand, if absolutely no one is reading his more serious pieces, which often take days to cobble together from all the sources, the shoulders can slump and he wonders why he bothers. This also is ultimately a false position.

The answer lies somewhere in the middle. If you look at your stats, certain people keep coming back and if you recognize one or two and go to their sites, odds are that these people have their own followings and their pieces are usually thoughtful and well received.

Surely these are the people you want coming back. Better a readership of 30 thinkers than 300 thrill seekers any day.

I was discussing this with a military friend of mine who helps keep my feet on the ground. The first time I spoke of ‘hits’, he spoke of returning visitors. He asked why I’d run a piece on the Israel/Lebanon horror and immediately afterwards - Mr. Badger’s thought for the day.

He further asked what the blog was about. Why bother devoting the three or four hours upkeeping and posting, when there was a day job to do and a life to live and no seeming aim to keeping it afloat. In the end, the answer is that some people, maybe only 20 or 30, do appreciate what you’re presenting and even for these, it’s all worthwhile.

My main interests are, unfortunately, not other people’s – world trade, oil and gas, globally diminishing water and the Finance. That’s why I run other pieces on love, film and various quirky items which come up from time to time. The challenge, it seems to me, is to make oil, for example, both understandable for the layman and interesting to read about. Maybe that’s a good first plank in the manifesto.

Two people have been instrumental in keeping me sane through these last weeks – Chris Dillow, the economist, cricketer and Leicester boy and the enigmatic Quinlan, stationed in Japan and writing on matters oriental and global.

Tim Worstall, Oliver Kamm, Melanie Phillips, Clive Davis, Norm Geras and Stephen Pollard [the first writer/blogger I ever read] have also shown their true colours. One who gets little mention, partly due to his combative style, is Stuart A, of Indecent Left and I owe him a debt.