Today, it's time for a pause on our technological agenda here. Henry Copeland, from Blogads, is starting a new survey to know who read blogs, and also why and how they're looking at them. Last year, more than 17,000 people answered the survey, which should not take you more than five minutes to fill. But the number of respondents has to be bigger in 2005 than in 2004, so I'm inviting you to fill this new survey. And don't forget to mention my blog (www.primidi.com/) as the answer to question #16 -- if you enjoy reading it of course. I'll update you about results when they become available. Read more.
Here is what Copeland wrote in an email yesterday.
Though the survey is unabashadly unscientific, the results will help us better excite advertisers, journalists and the public about the huge and unique audiences blogs serve. I hope some interesting year-over-year trends will emerge, since most of these questions are identical to last year's.
As was the case last year, the aggregate question-by-question results will be released under the Creative Commons "attribution license."
This means that the results from this survey will be available to all of you in a few weeks. Let's look at some key numbers from last year's survey.
More than 60% of blog readers were older than 30 years old, and 75% were earning at least $75K per year. Not the exact teenagers, isn't?
Here is a link to the full results from last year's survey.
And below is a table summarizing why respondents were reading blogs a year ago.
I read blogs for:
Response Percent
Response Total
Faster news
65.9%
10,504
Latest trends
Never read any book that is not a year old.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
35%
5,587
Transparent biases
50.3%
8,023
Better perspective
77.9%
12,421
More personality
47%
7,493
More honesty
61.4%
9,788
News I can't find elsewhere
79.7%
Every New year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
12,713
Other (please specify)
14%
2,241
Total Respondents
15,951
(skipped this question)
1,208
So what has changed since 2004? Fill the survey and you'll know.
Sources: Roland Piquepaille, March 3, 2005; Blogads website
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Blogs
Ecommerce
Personal.