(NOTE: This is part 1 of a series exploring the results of the 2004 CONTENTIOUS Reader Survey, which was completed by 157 respondents as of Aug. 18, 2004. See the complete index for more survey results. Additional results will be published in future entries.)
Here are the results for survey question 1:
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN READING CONTENTIOUS?
- 38.2%: 1-6 months
- 34.4%: Since before it was relaunched as a weblog (pre-2003)
- 13.4%: 7-10 months
- 10.2%: Less than 1 month
- 3.8%: This is my first time
What this means…
CONTENTIOUS existed as a Web-based magazine from 1998 through 2002. Then it went on hiatus. In October 2003 I relaunched the publication as a weblog with an expanded topical focus.
The original version of CONTENTIOUS enjoyed a large and loyal audience, and the survey shows that these longtime readers still comprise the second-largest segment of my audience today (34.4%). As a writer, publisher, and as an individual, that loyalty is extremely gratifying. I don’t take it lightly.
Most CONTENTIOUS readers (a total of 65.6%) have discovered CONTENTIOUS only since I relaunched it in weblog form. I consider this quite significant. It seems to me that weblogs have an enormous potential to quickly attract an audience, more so than web sites, because of the inherent networking potential of weblogs. Bloggers tend to read and discuss each other, and I believe the growth of my audience is mostly due to the attention and support of my fellow bloggers. I appreciate this, and hope I am returning the favor adequately.
Here’s another way to look at the growth in my audience: site statistics. By January 2004 this blog had been up and running for a few months, past the initial slow-traffic startup grind. For the month of January, this blog had an average of 765 unique user sessions per day. By the month of July, this metric had leaped to 1793 daily sessions – that’s 234% growth! So far for August that figure is 1981 average daily sessions. People talk, and word spreads.
…Bear in mind, of course, that one “user session” does not equal “one person.” The user session number is definitely far larger than the average daily number of readers because so many people take advantage of my blog’s webfeed. Feed readers typically check a site’s feed a few times daily (the interval varies widely). Therefore, it’s possible that a single feed reader set to check CONTENTIOUS every two hours could account for 12 of those daily user sessions.
It’s precisely because it’s so difficult currently to count the number of people who subscribe to a site’s webfeed that this reader survey – and particularly this question – are so useful to me as a publisher. To be honest, my e-mail alert list has been steadily shrinking slowly. That’s par for the course, most online publishers are finding it difficult to maintain e-mail subscribers in this time of spam and fast-changing addresses. Therefore, it’s reassuring to see that my readership has actually expanded significantly during the time when my largest measurable subscriber segment (e-mail subscribers) has been shrinking.
I guess a lot of people really are subscribing to my webfeed – not just a handful of jokers who’ve configured their feed readers to hit my feed hundreds of times daily. (I didn’t think that was the case, but still it’s nice to get some confirmation. Well, actually I already knew that wasn’t the case because I know that currently 270 Bloglines users subscribe to the CONTENTIOUS webfeed.)
The fast growth of my audience since the relaunch also may be partly due to the way I have expanded the focus of CONTENTIOUS. Previously, the scope of this publication was largely confined to the style and business of content for online media. Now I’ve expanded into areas such as content and knowledge management, media and journalism, new media channels such as webfeeds, and more. This change has not only renewed my personal motivation to keep CONTENTIOUS going, but it has also attracted a whole new audience – which later articles in this series will demonstrate.
Of course, it’s possible that longtime readers comprise an even larger segment of the CONTENTIOUS audience – but I only have the survey numbers to go by. If you feel under-represented by these or any survey results, you can still take the survey. (I’ve captured a snapshot of the data as of today, so don’t worry that you’ll mess up my statistics.)
(NEXT: How often do people read CONTENTIOUS?…)
