15 Demographic and Income Statistics of Bloggers

The Blog Economy – Who are the bloggers in 2010

Bloggers are distributed around the globe. Here is a list of the concentration of bloggers world-wide.

• The United States – 33%
• The European Union – 19%
• Asia Pacific – 8%
• South America – 2%
• The United States of America – 38%

Bloggers can be categorized as such; hobbyists, self-employed, part-timers and corporate.

The Hobbyists: These are people who blog for the fun of it. They are not interested in any form of revenue from blogging as their personal satisfaction is their measure of success. They were about 72% in 2009 and 65% in 2010.

Self Employed: They are professionals and owners of companies who blog full time or part time. 57% of them own companies and developed blogs related to their products while 19% refer to their blogs as their companies. In 2009, they were 9% and this increased to 21% in 2010.

Part-Timers: These are professionals, this group blog to create additional source of income and measure their success by the amount of traffic they can generate on their site. In 2009, they were 15% and in 2010, they became 13%.

Corporate: These are professionals who blog full time for companies, sharing their expertise. They must have worked in traditional media. They formed 4% in 2009 and 1% in 2010.

For professionals, they blog a minimum of 10 hours a week and they have a minimum of 3 blogs. Of the sampled population, 33% of them have a house hold income of over $75,000 while 25% have a house hold income of over $100,000. It was also discovered that males made up 66% of all bloggers while females made up 65% with age bracket 18-44 years.

81% of bloggers have been blogging over the past 2 years, 79% of them have a college degree while 43% have a graduate degree.

Blogging and Social Media

With respect to the use of Facebook and twitter, professionals are more sophisticated. This is reflected in the fact that 87% of all bloggers make use of Facebook, 81% use it to promote their blogs, 64% use it to engage their audience
while 45% see it as more effective for driving traffic as compared to 12 months ago.

Who Makes Use of Facebook?

Hobbyist bloggers forms 15% of those who use it, part timer’s forms 46% while the self-employed forms 67%. Most bloggers link their twitter accounts to their blogs as 34% say it is more effective in the driving of traffic as compared to a year ago. For blogs, 28% of them get traffic form Facebook, 26% from Twitter, 25% neither uses Facebook or Twitter and 8% makes use of other sources. LinkedIn is used by 4% of bloggers. Stumble Upon is used by 3%, YouTube and Flickr is used by 2% while Tumble and Digg is used by 1% respectively.

Blogging As A Source of Revenue

Here is a list of different revenue generators for bloggers:

• Display Adverts – 40%
• Search Adverts 39%
• Affiliate Marketing Links – 36%
• Paid to give speeches on blog topics – 15%
• Being a spokes blogger – 12%
• Being paid to attend events – 9%
• Rich Media adverts – 8%
• Paid Posting – 8%
• Others forms – 2%

Bloggers that do not generate any revenue forms 19%. Based on the sampled population, just 17% say blogging is their main source of income. 51% receive salary for blogging. $42,548 is the annual revenue received from advertising by all bloggers. For part-time bloggers, the value stands at $14,477 while for the self-employed, it is $122,222.

Part-Time Bloggers
48% of part time bloggers earn revenue from display adverts, 46% revenue from search adverts and 41% revenue from affiliate links on their sites. 16% revenue is from being paid to be a spokes blogger and 8% revenue comes from being paid to attend an event. Rich media adverts, Paid posting and other sources forms 9%, 10% and 23% respectively. 12% of part time bloggers do not generate revenue.

Self-employed bloggers
For this category, 27% generates revenue from display adverts, 28% makes use of search adverts while 29% generates revenue from advert links on sites. 16% are paid to talk on blogged topics, 5% are paid to be a spokes blogger. 11% are paid to attend events while 7% gets revenue from rich media adverts. Those who generate revenue from rich media adverts and paid posting forms 7% and 4% respectively. 31% do not generate revenue whatsoever.