4 out of 5 blog readers who chew gum...
Came across a detailed demographic survey of the blog reading constituency, undertaken by a company who wants us writers to make money (and pay commission) by selling ad space.

You might be interested to know that, as a statistically average blog reader, you're a thirtysomething computer geek, making decent money as a techie or an educator. You're an opinionated liberal Californian (so how do you explain Schwarzenegger?) who apparently thinks New Yorker cartoons are hilarious, but otherwise doesn't put a lot of stock in traditional media (I guess the "liberal media" doesn't appeal to its peers these days?). You spend far too much time at your keyboard, between the amount of time you spend reading blogs and buying stuff online. And you're overwhelmingly likely to have a penis... 79.1% of you will quickly find one if you look. Please don't look now, if you don't mind.

Some conclusions I make from this data: (1) more women need to waste time responding to surveys; (2) if you're willing to tell people about your prodigious online buying habits, you shouldn't then complain about all the advertising on the web, because that's your fault; and (3) this is yet another survey that conflates conclusions by limiting its representative sample to people already "hooked." It's the people not already habitually reading blogs that writers (and... shiver... advertisers) should want to know more about.

Once marketers figure out how to convert weblogs into revenue streams (and this is a good indication that they sure are trying), I think it's inevitable it will pull blogging into the realm of shill-shrill, mainstream media. I'm not so sure I want that to happen. I know the popular bloggers have big operating costs, and I suppose they should profit from their investment of time and money if they choose to. I know I tip a little into the donation cups, or buy the books of the online writers I like best. I do that exactly because I want to keep those guys from having to "go corporate." Once Lileks starts trying to sell me Ping G2 irons, I'm not going to like him quite so much.

Meanwhile, I have a target audience advertisers should envy, and my hit counts have steady growth across the "must have" demos. So if you want a piece of this, if you want your vital consumer message to be seen, please call my national sales rep! As soon as I can afford to hire her. 11:16:14 AM    comment []trackback []