The State of Food Blogging
In February 2010, the state of food blogging survey was conducted by Foodista and Zephyr Adventures. In the process, over 690 food bloggers completed a 30 question online survey. Primarily, the respondents were citizen bloggers forming 79% with some other smaller bloggers that were promoting their companies forming 17% and the remaining bloggers forming 4% were related to corporations. From the entire process, it could be observed that most of the bloggers were blogging for their own accounts.
Blogger History and Activity
Question: How long have you been blogging?
10% of the respondents have been blogging for less than 3 months, 7% for between 3 to 6 months, while 15% blogged for between 6 months to a year. 28% have been blogging for between 1 to 2 years, while 22% blogged for 2 to 4 years, and 9% have been blogging for 5 to 6 years, leaving only 8 percent to account for more than 6 years.
Question: How many blogs do you write about?
From the survey, it was discovered that 21% of the respondents write for two blogs, 7% write for three blogs, 3% write for over 4 blogs, while 69% write for just one blog.
Question: What topics do you write about?
It was observed that 89% of respondents write on recipes, 49% write on restaurant reviews, 40% write on healthy living, 34% wrote on drinks, while 22% write on specialized diets.
Question: Do you use Twitter or Facebook?
It was discovered that 89% use twitter and 60% use Facebook.
Question: The motivation to blog?
Most respondents mentioned food is their passion for blogging, but there were also some other respondents. 88% admitted to food being their passion, 49% want to make a name for themselves in the world of food, while 48% wanted to have a voice and say what they wanted to say. 44% did it out of passion for writing, and 41% did it with the hopes of turning blogging into their jobs.
Measure of Success
From the survey, it was discovered that when a blogger is happy, then we have a successful food blog. The success of a food blogger is tracked through some of these factors.
It was discovered that 83% of bloggers had personal satisfaction
Unique visitors – 59%
Twitter followers – 42%
Revenue accounts – 11%
Links to blogs – 27%
The smile of a blogger is determined be
Unique visitors – 44%
Facebook fans/likes – 35%
Social Media sharing – 47%
RSS subscribers – 20%
Monetization and Methods
It was discovered that over 75% of food bloggers admitted to not making money from their blogs. Only 25% said they have made money. It was discovered that the most successful method was to join an advert network or getting paid to write for a magazine or other website. 20% make less than $200 a month, 4% make between $200 to $2,000 per months while 1% make more than $2,000 a month.
Methods of Monetization
30 respondents who tied direct advert sales and they were not to successful. 31 tried brand promos and they were not successful. About 45 tried social media consulting and they were not successful. Approximately 70% tried paid writing and they achieved a reasonable level of success. 90 tried affiliate programs and they were somewhat successful while about 92 tried advert networks and they were more successful.
Although millions of people visit Brandon's blog each month, his path to success was not easy. Go here to read his incredible story, "From Disabled and $500k in Debt to a Pro Blogger with 5 Million Monthly Visitors." If you want to send Brandon a quick message, then visit his contact page here.