As many of you know, I recently conducted a reader survey to find out more about my audience so I can bring you the information you want. One thing I found out is that many of my readers are just like me (not that surprising really) so I thought these results might interest you too. Here they are:
So what does it meeeaaan?
After doing some analysis on the results, this is what I think it means:
- 60% of my audience is just like me. They consider themselves either professional photographers or serious hobbyists. 87% of this group said they are visiting my blog primarily to see the photos and only 40% are here to learn about photography. I didn’t ask this question, but I believe the majority of this audience have their own photo blogs also. I think this because I interact with them here in the comments and also on social media like twitter and Google + so I pretty much know who they are. They are my peers and are probably at a similar skill level as me.
- 38% of my audience considers themselves amateur photographers. 85% of this group said they are here to learn about photography and they would like to see more free tutorials and ebooks. If I want to market anything to this group in the future, it would probably be photography ebooks or mini-courses.
- Only 2% of my audience are not photographers. I was a little surprised here, I thought there might be more people who are only interested in travel aspect of the blog. But given the small number here, I know this segment of my audience is my family and friends.
- Out of the 98% of those of you who are photographers, only 9% didn’t buy any ebooks last year. You guys are ebook consumers! Also roughly 45% of you want to make a big change in your life, want to travel more, and want tips on living a location independent lifestyle.
- What I learned out of all this is:
- I need to grow the amateur segment of my audience so I have more people to market my ebooks to; and
- I should consider writing more about living a location independent lifestyle.
I’m not a statistics expert or anything, so if you have any opinions on what all this means, I would be happy to hear it! I just wanted to share this since 60% of you are similar to me and you might very well have a similar audience base too.
I should have mentioned in the survey that it was anonymous, so there were lots of comments and question, but I don’t know who said what so I cannot respond directly. Instead I will be responding to those comments and questions in Monday’s blog post.
I really appreciate your up-front honesty. This is why I follow you. You are one of us except one difference… your courage to leave the security of a “day job”.
As for your conclusion. It’s just as I had figured. The digital camera era has put cameras in many hands. I used to shoot “some” film but not a lot because it got very expensive with processing. Now, like all the other dSLR users, I can shoot as much as I want to. Digital storage is quite cheap at about $100 for a terabyte.
Therefore, there are many more people wanting to improve on the craft whether to make it a vocation or just to make better images as a creative outlet… the hobbyist. There is a larger market of “students” than before in the film days when the hobby was more expensive than it is today.
Hi Chris, I agree, I think there are tons of hobbyists out there. Well you see them everywhere you go. And, I think a lot of them would notice a dramatic improvement if they got some feedback on their images. Back in the “old days” I used to roll my own black and white film and that was pretty cheap to do, so I guess I’ve always taken as many shots as I wanted. Except when I used slide film – that was expensive and not very forgiving either. Digital really opened up the doors for everyone. Thanks for your visit and comments, much appreciated.
Nice work on this survey Anne, noted the response on more readers want tutorials and ebooks.
Hi Alan, thank you, I’m glad you found the results useful too. That’s why I shared, I figured many of us have a similar audience. While there is a big group of us that comment on each other’s blogs, there is also a big group of amateurs looking for guidance too.