(NOTE: This is part 2 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.)
On the 2004 CONTENTIOUS Reader Survey, question 2 was:
How often do you typically read CONTENTIOUS articles?
Here are the results for the 153 respondents who answered this question:
- 51.6%: Weekly
- 21.6%: Monthly
- 20.2%: Daily
- 6.5%: Rarely (less than monthly)
What this means…
I know that many bloggers enjoy an avid daily audience, and thrive on that.
However, I was actually relieved to see that most CONTENTIOUS readers visit here approximately weekly. This is because I cannot post every day – sometimes I’m too busy, sometimes I have nothing important to say, and sometimes I just prefer to enjoy life away from my computer.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m gratified that one-fifth of my readers drop by here to read articles daily. It simply was never part of my plan for this blog to post daily. This is part of my philosophy of no-pressure blogging.
HINT: If you really want a daily fix of CONTENTIOUS, you can check up on my pre-blogging efforts via webfeed. Most days that I’m not away from my computer I’m adding something there.
…Of course, it’s possible that my daily readers are stopping by to peruse past articles, rather than only look for current ones. My archives do receive a surprising amount of traffic. I think this indicates the value of posting blog entries that are not always time-sensitive (such as tips and backgrounders), and also of going to the trouble when writing new entries of taking a moment to create back-links to relevant previous articles. (I’m amazed at how many bloggers don’t often bother to do that.)
The high reported level of weekly readership is probably due to the fact that I publish weekly e-mail digest-style alerts. Although my webfeed has become quite popular, I still have a sizeable e-mail list. I’ll be discussing the data behind reported webfeed vs. e-mail alerts later in this series.
(NEXT: Part 3: My Blog and Your Career…)
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