Last week, Parajunkee’s View polled over 200 Book Bloggers and asked them some serious questions. Questions that might be personal to each blog, or sometimes self-evident. The answers that were received were surprising. You might be interested to see what your other Book Bloggers feel about touchy subjects, or their blogs in general. Today’s Book Blogging 101 will be all the results.
Blog Size, Pageviews & Advertising Myths
Do you consider yourself a serious blogger?
Some blogs take themselves too seriously, others could care less, they are just doing it for fun. I’m actually surprised at the amount of bloggers that are “in it to win it” as far as taking what they are doing seriously. I would have thought more approached this as a spare-time hobby. But, with these results only about 20% approach Book Blogging as a hobby.
Blogging only Books?
The answer was about 50/50 – the 50 that don’t blog only books could do anything from Movies, to Blogging Tips, to products.
Size of their Book Blog
Now, this questions was very abstract. This is what they consider themselves. And as we know, some people view themselves a little differently then other’s view them. For example, I would consider myself a Medium to Large blog, based on pageviews and followers. Mega blogs are in the category of Perez Hilton, ProBlogger — blogs like that, they are getting 20k hits a day. The one person that answered Mega on this question, marked they get about 1K of pageviews daily. A good haul, but IMHO I wouldn’t consider that Mega. Also, a few medium bloggers reported that they get less than 100 pageviews, reverse that with categorized small blogs reporting they get anywhere from 10K+ pageviews to 2K-3K. Now, I can assume that they didn’t understand what a pageview was – or they have categorized themselves wrong.
Pageviews
The only thing that surprised me as far as this question was the amount of people that reported above 1K hits daily. I thought there would be more in the 1K – 2K range and a lot less above that. With the amount of Newbie and Small blogs out there, though, I did believe that the biggest reports would be in that under 300 pageviews daily. So, all of you that ask that question, what should a good page view goal be? –> 301 daily – you’ve reached a milestone with that number.
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Type of Book Blog
Common perception is that YA Bloggers are the majority – or could it be that they are just more “in your face?” Nope — it’s true, YA Bloggers take the cake as far as numbers, with Anything Goes in close second.
Other -
Dark Stuff. No Fluff., Religious
Book Blogs that Accept Advertising
Now accepting advertising and actually getting advertising is another story all together — but again, only about 20% of book blogs accept adverting. With the standard going rate of 30K monthly for worthwhile advertising (marketing advice given to advertisers by companies like BlogAds) – that means about 10% of blogs accepting advertisers are doing so a little too early in their blogging career. Statistically speaking, again this is a personal choice that bloggers should make on their own.
What do you think about Book Bloggers that accept advertising?
This can be a hot topic, some readers report that they can’t trust blogs with advertisers, some say they could care less. This was an answer I was very interested in seeing the results of and the answers did surprise me. Personally, the fact that there was only 1 person that marked they couldn’t trust a person with advertising on their blog was an eye opener.
Affiliate Links?
I had assumed that most book bloggers use affiliate links, even if they don’t make any money. The fact that almost half said they didn’t use affiliate links (100 Book Bloggers reported they DID NOT use Affiliate links) was actually surprising. I started just for the simple fact – if it bought me 1 .99¢ book on Amazon.com I would be happy. Now, whether bloggers don’t use the affiliate links because they don’t want to be bothered, don’t like the morality of pimping their blog, or just don’t know how — well I guess that is a poll for another blog.
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Interesting stats! Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m a “nobody” in the blogging world and just kind of bummed about my blog in general; but this really puts it into perspective and my stats seem to be far more the norm than I was thinking!
-Jac @ For Love and Books
This is very interesting. Thanks for posting this, it actually is pretty eye opening about the advertising. Great post! I consider my blog small, but others don’t see me as a small blog. I think its all in the way we see ourselves.
Cool! Thanks for sharing the results. I was super curious to find out the answers when I filled out your poll. You asked some great questions!
Interesting, thanks for sharing this. I participated and was curious about the results. Thanks so much!
I really need to start paying attention to my stats -.-
In the book blogging community I see you as a large blogger. In the blogging world as a whole maybe you’d be considered small. Sites like Perez or NY Times or Forbes get thousands of hits per post per day. But in the book blogging community your numbers I’m fairly sure categorize you as large.
When I thrill to the fact that on the rare occasion I get over 750 uniques on a day my blog reading Dude is like “that’s all? that’s not much.” Yeah, I deflate quickly. But I still say my blog is small even without his less than encouraging commentary.
I’m guessing by the stats people provided they were looking at monthly pageviews if they considered themselves small with 2-3k? Maybe they missed the daily part of the question?
For the DNF, the question I’m most interested in finding out more detail is not whether people will review it, but whether people rate it. A review for a DNF as to why it was a DNF can be helpful but I’m curious to see how people feel about giving a book that was unfinished a rating.
I am surprised about the stats for the reviews versus giveaways and memes ratio. While reviewing more of those popular titles will get more hits, I’ve tested out a hop on one of my external blogs and I got more direct hits from that in one day then I’ve done for a review post in its lifetime. So I guess the question becomes what is the definition of “successful” for those answering your question. Is it that they got the best feedback? The most comments? The most attention from the author and readers they care about? Or do their reviews get more traffic than hops or giveaways?
As far as affiliate links, at least with Amazon, I didn’t even know what it was when Amazon brought it to my attention when I wanted that cute carousel on my blog. I didn’t trust it so I didn’t give them my info for it. Once I got a better understanding about it I’d heard that you couldn’t be an affiliate if you’re from my state. But I also didn’t want it. I felt like people would doubt any book I added in that carousel as being one I was truly interested in versus one that someone thought I could make money off of because it was popular and people would more likely click.
I just don’t want people to feel I have an agenda with anything i do other than pimping authors and books that I love or hope to love. Even if I honestly only pushed books I love, knowing that I’m making pennies on the dollar for doing so makes me feel guilty. So balancing all that out it just wasn’t financially feasible to me to do it. Funny thing is for the blogs I know and trust who have affiliate links I have no doubt that they’re honest in what books they promo with the links and I’m happy to throw a few pennies their way by clicking. Blogs I don’t know, however, I wouldn’t click just because I don’t know their agenda.
Wow that’s incredible that people “follow” so many blogs! I can barely keep up with my own. Having to parse through all those blogs just to read the ones I was interested in would be a nightmare. I still haven’t gotten a handle on Google Reader… I keep forgetting I have it. I really am the worst blog follower ever! I am a rabid twitter link clicker though, so I typically find more than enough to read through that. It’s how I was reminded of this post since I hadn’t gotten the email newsletter yet!
Thanks for posting the results! I was wondering what they were. =)
Wow! Thanks Parajunkee! I was totally glued to this post! As someone whose blog is still in its infancy, this is good stuff to know!
Do not use Affiliate Links because for whatever reasons (taxes I believe) Arkansas is not a state that was on B&N or Amazon’s list of states to use them.
I figured I try them to see if I could get enough to help fund giveaways but I can’t.
Boo Arkansas…
Brilliant! I love poles and your charts were awesome! Thanks for taking the time to put all of this together.
Hmm… I wonder who get 10,000 views a day? Do we know them personally?? LOL When I hit 10,000 views a day- I will consider it: Job well done dude! New Goal!!!!
Excellent report…this was interesting. Did you specify what a “serious blogger” is? I consider myself serious about blogging, but not a “serious blogger.” Does that make sense? LOL.
I answered ‘yes’ to the seriousness question, even though clearly my blog is a hobby, because it’s a hobby I take seriously. When I say I’ll do something, I do it. I have deadlines and commitments and stuff that involves other people. So I thought you might like to know that I, at least, didn’t interpret “serious” to mean, e.g. that it’s a job. Just that I take it seriously
As to Amazon affiliates, I signed up, made about 9c, and decided it wasn’t worth the time investment of adding those links! I try to think in terms of hourly rate when it comes to money.
Interesting stats!
I would say that it is fun to look at what answers people gave and how we are spanning out over the blogging sphere. I am not surprised that YA is the biggest market. I just switched to mystery/thrillers and think it is probably one of the smallest which both genres consistently place on the best sellers list.
I am a hobbyist (aka I can switch my theme, don’t look at pageviews unless someone asks, and don’t use affliate links because I am to lazy to track down the link everytime ) but I love the community and variety of seriousness that is brought to the table!
Thanks for sharing the results!
I seriously agree with the serious blogger comments… I’m “serious” about blogging ’cause everyone better get out of my way if I haven’t posted lately, but I’m not, like, a serious blogger ’cause this is my (obsessive) hobby. Different Serious. In case you want to ask more questions along with More about Affiliate Links. GREAT POLL!!! And you got right back to us the very next week!!! Aren’t you awesome?!
I think I’ve only had ONE DAY where I’ve gotten over 301 views … mostly it’s anywhere from 100 to 215 views. I wish I could get more, but I’m happy where I am now.
I don’t mind bloggers who accept advertising, but I don’t think I ever would. I think it can clutter up the sidebars a little too much. And since I consider myself somewhere on the line between blogging for fun and being a serious blogger, I just don’t think it’s necessary.
As for affiliate links, I’m an affiliate for Amazon.ca, but I find that the sign-ups for other book sellers — like Indigo.ca or Kobo.com (two I use regularly) — are just too confusing. I usually start to sign up to become an affiliate, but then leave the site out of confusion.
That’s interesting to see that not even half of the bloggers polled are YA bloggers! I would assume it’d be a higher number. I am definitely one of those people who are “anything goes” with blogging — so long as I have bookish content and blog about the books i love, I’m good.
Awww, sci-fi & fantasy are such a small slice
LOL!
It’s interesting that paranormal is split out from the fantasy category; technically paranormal and urban fantasy are part of the fantasy genre, but I see A LOT A LOT A LOT of blogs that are JUST paranormal and/or urban fantasy romance; it’s almost like this has become another genre unto itself. Based on how many blogs I see in this category I totally would have thought the pie slice for this would have been bigger. Really interesting results – thank you for this!
Another great post! I think I’m in the small-medium blog size category, and it’s definitely a hobby! I try not to look at my stats as it’s depressing…my most viewed posts are usually the funny cat posts from over a year ago. As for advertising, I don’t think it’s anything that I would do, but I don’t mind them on other blogs (so long as they don’t keep popping up on the page…I hate that!).
I agree with everything Rachel said… I think it’s best to look at size of blogs in term of the community and not compare ourselves to sites like Perez or ProBlogger. You are a full on LARGE blog in my estimation. I think a better comparison would be Heroes & Heartbreakers or Dear Author, no? And I’m really curious how there CAN be so many blogs over 1k hits a day. I’m psyched when I get over a hundred! How many people sit around all day surfing book blogs?? I wonder if they’re reading their Google Analytics correctly – I know I can’t figure it out half the time
But I’m a hobbyist (crap, did I answer that question correctly?!?!)
Awesome posts (as usual!) and thanks for doing this – it was a fun survey to fill out and made me look at why I do what I do…
Very interesting results. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this and sharing the results.
Ashley @ Dr. Pepper Diva
Fab series Rachel – I love numbers and stats and pie charts!
The first one is pretty interesting – I know that I answered I consider myself a ‘serious’ blogger – not because I have any grand illusions about it, but because I try and be a professional in my blogging – in that way I treat it seriously.
Advertising is also interesting – it’s not something I do myself, but it doesn’t make me ‘trust’ people who do have advertising any less.
I gave up on checking my page views a long time ago – focusing on that was taking away from my fun. 2 people or 2000, as long as whoever reads my posts likes them, I’m doing fine
I don’t get not using the affiliate links. Yes it can be a bit of a pain, but if someone really likes your review and they want to buy that book NOW, why not give them that option? Plus, like you said, if it gives me enough to buy a book a month, I’m happy. Thankfully, my affiliate links cover my hosting costs and that’s probably the biggest reason I have them. *grin*
I have no concept on the size of any blog. There are some I think of as big (like Parajunkee, ATUF, WLP, etc), but I couldn’t tell you what mine is. I see myself as a small site, but it’s all about perception I think.
I love hearing about what are considered ‘good’ stats. I’d like to know more about how to get affiliate links to look pretty, I don’t like the standards offered by Amazon but don’t really know the best way to do them