My gambling addiction

As I sit gazing at Google Analytics five, 10, 50 times a day, it’s occurred to me that I have an addiction. It’s not to poker machines or roulette wheels (though I was rather partial to the toy one I got for Christmas as a kid … ah, the things they thought were appropriate in the good old days …) or Lotto … I like gambling with zeitgeist*.

What Google Analytics tells you is how many people are visiting your website. It even has a “real-time” function that goes up and down before your very eyes as people enter and exit the site.

It’s mesmerising.

My addiction actually took hold many, many years ago when I worked at Cosmopolitan magazine. Within months of starting there, way back in 2002, the magazine hit an all-time circulation high of over 400,000. Our co-owners, Hearst Corporation, took the whole staff to Hayman Island for the long weekend to celebrate, all expenses paid.

I’ve been a little fixated ever since.

Once you become an editor you live and die by your figures. At Cosmopolitan, we only had to worry about our monthly tally. Once I became editor of Woman’s Day it was a weekly freak-out. Or, to be precise, a Tuesday morning around 10am freak-out. That’s when your first-day numbers come in. Those first day numbers are a fairly accurate prediction of whether you’ve succeeded or failed for the week.

If they were high, so was I. If they were low … well, my predecessor, Nene King, used to sob in the bathroom.

When I started blogging, daily numbers became pretty passe. I could check my figures every minute if I liked. Sometimes hours would stretch by with no-one on the site. That was pretty awful. Other times, for example when Mia Freedman tweeted for her followers to check me out, the numbers would race up every minute.

And when I wrote a gossip item about Princess Kate’s boobs being flashed on a French magazine cover, well, it just got a bit silly – hundreds of clicks every hour.

Seriously addictive viewing.

There’s been lots of talk about whether Woman’s Day should or shouldn’t have bought and run various photo sets over the past few weeks – Chrissie Swan smoking, Princess Kate holidaying …

The reason Woman’s Day runs those photos is that their editor is addicted too. She wants the magazine to score. She’s gambling on photo sets being irresistible to readers (even if they won’t admit it and slag the idea off publicly).

The stakes are pretty high too – rumour has it the magazine paid $150,000 for those Princess Kate pics – but sometimes you get so desperate you’ll do anything for your next fix of respectable circulation figures.

Those bidding wars over photos are brutal too. You’re forced to make split second decisions about whether to throw a few more thousand at photos that already cost more than the year’s salary of the picture editor doing the bidding for you. That’s a pretty uncomfortable feeling.

Like any addiction, it starts to take its toll in the end. You develop a grey pallor from always being hidden away staring at computer screens, you stop being interested in the real world and – in the case of the celebrity obsessed, start caring more about what’s happening in Hollywood than your own home, and you start being defensive about your actions and making excuses for them.

Like when readers like Desley take to your Facebook page and say: “I cannot believe that Woman’s Day has stooped to the level of the British tabloids!! I won’t be buying your magazine to see photos of the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge nor will I EVER buy your magazine again!!! How dare you Ms Fiona Connelly assume that Australians are “laid back” about the issue of whether the Royal Family deserves privacy. We all remember what happened to Princess Diana and we know it was down to money hungry people like you who keep perpetuating the horror that these people have to deal with. Give it up!! We don’t want to see it!! We all know what a pregnant woman looks like!!!!!”

You convince yourself Desley is merely the vocal minority. It’s always the squeaky wheels who take the time to complain. You cross your fingers a little tighter and hope – again – that you did the right thing. You pray 350,000 people don’t feel the same way as Desley.

OK, I’m giving myself sympathy heart palpitations, must stop …

Sooooo, I can’t quite believe I’m getting hooked on numbers again. But my new job at ivillage.com.au is such a brave new world – the challenge  of understanding what women want to read on the internet.

Why does a post about Green Mile star Michael Clarke Duncan dying – in September last year – start getting hundreds of hits five months later? What is it about a post about Rihanna taking a bath in her latest video score so many more views than my meticulously researched 21 celebrities who shared the love on Valentine’s Day?

And don’t get me started on all the parenting/emotional/self-help blogs that do/don’t score big numbers.

It’s fascinating and terrifying and incredibly moreish, which is why I won’t be joining Gambling Anonymous just yet. I’m having too much fun.

PS Any thoughts on what women want to read on the internet (and what they DON’T), please drop me a line at alana@ivillage.com.au

* Google itself defines “Zeitgeist” as: “the spirit of the times,” and this spirit can be seen through the aggregation of billions of search queries Google receives every day. The annual Zeitgeist report reveals what captured the world’s attention in the past year—our passions, interests and defining moments as seen through search.