But anything smaller than that and analytics are mostly vanity metrics. A lot of the traffic is going to be bots anyway.
Write for pleasure. If you must, look for qualitative signals like discussions of the article on HN or Twitter.
I removed any analytics from my blog because I'm already obsessed enough with silly star counts. It manages to completely suck away all the joy; ignorance is bliss here. I found that the rare email or comment from some random person saying that they found something useful is much more fulfilling and at the same time less invasive of my brain activity.
What those metrics mean to oneself is different for everybody. Also, being a vanity metric and being useful are not mutually exclusive either.
Not saying ignoring all that is bad, just my reasons for wanting analytics and not just ego stroking and vanity metrics.
Maybe others create in a void, but I'll play my piano poorly rather than write about software documentation if I'm doing something for pleasure.
With everything else, I agree. I write as a means of documenting my findings and sharing it with others and surely the discussion section here on HN is where it becomes useful to me where I can engage in constructive conversation and learn new things.
Thanks for reading the article, cheers.