It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for… here are the results from the What is the worth of a Blogger? survey. This has been taking me a ridiculously long time to put together, as it’s just tons of math. Figuring out exactly how to layout the info so it makes sense has been more difficult then I originally expected. Rather then leave you all hanging, I am going to publish this as part one of the Survey Results, with part two soon to follow.
I had 53 responses over all.
The respondents reported that they had been blogging…
less then 6 months. 10 responses 19%
for longer then 6 months but less then a year. 12 responses 22%
for over a year. 10 responses 19%
for over two years. 10 responses 19%
for three or more years. 11 responses 20%
People who were blogging for less then 6 months had anywhere from 0 to 1200 Google Friend Connect followers (average 306), up to 1900 Twitter followers (average 900), up to 2900 Facebook followers (average 513), from 300 to 3100 unique monthly visitors (with one reporting in at 33,000 monthlies!!) (average 3044) , and a Google Page rank of between 1 and 4 (average 2).
(as an aside — To the person who said they had been blogging less then six months and already had a Google Page rank of 4… email me because I would so love to know what you are doing right!!)
People who were blogging for from 6 months to a year reported having from 0 to 2400 Google Friend Connect followers (average 500). They reported having from 500 to 3200 Twitter followers (average 1531), from 200 to 2600 Facebook fans (average 544), from 100 to 22,000 unique monthly visitors (average 3819), and a Google Page Rank of 2 or 3 (average 2).
People who were blogging for over a year had between 400 and 5100 Google Friend Connect followers (average 1377), from 300 to 20200 Twitter followers (average 2784), from 200 to 9500 Facebook fans (average 1000), between 400 and 20,000 unique monthlies (average 4275), and a Google Page Rank of between 0 and 3 (average 2).
People who were blogging for over 2 years reported having from 120 to 2600 Google Friend Connect followers (average 1128). They reported having from 200 to 4200 Twitter followers (average 1783), from 200 to 1300 Facebook fans (average 567), from 4 (oh my, I hope that was a typo) to 5700 unique monthly visitors (average 2885), and a Google Page Rank of from 0 to 3 (average 2).
People who were blogging for 3 or more years had anywhere from 100 to 11,000 Google Friend Connect followers (average 715), from 500 to 25,000 Twitter followers (average 2882), between 200 and 20,000 Facebook followers (average 879), from 300 to 50,000 unique monthly visitors (average 4149), and a Google Page rank of between 2 and 4 (average 3).
No surprise here really, to find that overall the stats for followers, monthly uniques etc, tend to go up gradually with length of time blogging. The group who responded that they had been blogging over 2 years all had lowish figures compared to the other groups, otherwise the trend seems to be mostly upwards. I can only assume that for whatever reason the 10 respondents that I had in the “more then 2 years” group just aren’t doing that well overall.
I think all of this is important to establish before I get into dollar figures. I understand that there is a level of subjectivity, something beyond how many days a blog has been in action. I am assuming that “something” is somewhat accounted for in stats like unique monthly visitors, Twitter followers, etc. Let’s assume that all of the respondents have fabulous blogs and are producing great content on a regular basis. a great layout, not too many adverts, spelling and grammar all up to par, all that good stuff, at that point I can use length of time blogging as a general data point, to compare to how much folks are charging.
Of the 23 people who responded that they had been blogging from 0 to 12 months, only 3 of them had a set rate card. 100% of those who had blogs under 6 months old did not have a set rate card.
I already touched on this in my She’s Connected Rates panel recap post, but I think that having a media kit (aka rate card), with set rates in it, which you can use when replying to pitches is absolutely vital. Now the question is, what should you set those rates at? What are other folk charging? What is the going rate? The answers are up next, in part two of the survey results.
A bit about how I played with the numbers…
I found that within each group the survey answers tend to have a middle range, and then one or two really high answers, and one or two really low answers. So to arrive at an average I tossed out the lowest and highest answer in each category and then averaged out the rest.
raw data:
Number of Google Friend Connect followers:
206, 432, 600, 127, 2300, 1378, 2600, 1800, 109, 40, 395, 2000, 11000+, 492, 600, 210, 1200, n/a, 2, 385, 0, 504, 610, 148, 92, 158, 120, 74, 527, 1966, 793, 354, 130, 135, 1330, 3018, ???, N/A, 632, 906, 68, 0, don’t offer it, 1234, 2100, 2440, 945, 5110, 878
Number of Twitter followers:
1581, 1065, 3000, 569, 3150, 5510, 2200, 1900, 1200, 435, 1303, 3100, 25000, 2071, 4323, 1407, 3000, 500, 360, 800, 1720, 765, 900, 4020, 1007, 0, 572, 186, 1500, 1038, 2900, 1800, 1674, 554, 2530, 2530, 1200, 9237, 1300, 357, 1931, 890, 3200, 518, 283, 1893, 4200, 3166, 1412, 20200, 2543
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