We've written a lot about the Qumana Survey. Yes, a lot. But it was great information, valuable to us and to others, and we wanted to share every last bit of it - plus add what insight we could, of course.

So, to tie it all back up, here is the full survey, and all related posts:

On Bloggers - what do Qumana bloggers look like? How long have they been blogging, for how many blogs, and for what time per week?

The Use of RSS - which RSS reader is most popular and how many feeds do our users follow.

• Tris' take on RSS readers
• Tris' take on how many feeds we should read

Use of Advertising by Bloggers - do bloggers use advertising programs, which ones, and if not, why?

• Tris' take on blog-vertising

Blog Advertising Earnings - how much do bloggers earn, are they happy, and what are their earnings goals?

• Tris' take on making more money

Opinions on Blog Advertising - do bloggers care if blogs have ads and does it affect their reading habits?

Advertising Types - do bloggers want contextual or keyword-based ads for their blogs, and what issues are at hand in blog-vertising?

On Qumana - what do our users have to say about Qumana... what they like, don't like, and where we're going.

Customer Testimonials - some feedback from our users. More to come!

Our look at advertising and opinions therein from the Qumana Survey concludes with a comparison of advertising types. In general, there are two main ways to generate blog advertisements: contextual and keyword-based.

Contextual advertisements are computer-driven. A computer will scan your post and/or your entire blog page to determine what the post is about and which ads would best suit it. In a contextual world, you are completely dependent on how well the computer can determine what you are saying and in providing ads based on that content only.

Keyword-based advertisements are people-driven. Bloggers write their posts then determine which keywords best describe what they have written OR which keywords would be most attractive to their readers. And there you spot the difference: the power of the human brain. Our knowledge and insight are, at least for now, far superior at determining the best ads to place. We can choose to insert ads about blogs when we write about blogging - or we could insert ads about podcasting, as something we think our readers would like.

Without this description or influence, we asked our users which way would be easiest to manage ads. 44% wanted to be a part of a program to insert contextual ads on the blog, and 8% wanted the same for the RSS feed. If we jump from contextual ads to keyword-based ads, 33% showed interest in the ability to manually insert ads of their choice.

According to our survey, 70% of our users (n=71) believe that contextual advertisements are more effective. The vast majority of advertising programs are based on contextual algorithms, but people are not as satisfied as they would like to be. In fact, we know that more than half of you are really not satisfied with current ad programs. So, maybe contextual advertising programs are not as effective as we believe them to be, and don't fit all blogs or all use cases.

n=66

If we look at the patterns of this entire survey, we know that people don't make much money from their blogs... but want to. Some don't use blog advertisements programs... but want to. People find advertising programs complicated, and need help. And bloggers have yet to see the return from RSS advertisements.

Here's what I think. Contextual ads are just not cutting it. If you write a niche topic, you have a better chance of getting some good ads on your blog. Even with that, you're not likely to see great ads in your feed. RSS advertising is stagnant - there is not enough content per post to determine the best ads, and they are too obtrusive and restrictive to earn any return from them.

The best of both worlds would be to use both keyword and contextual ad programs. While 39% of our users would like contextual ads only, a clear 47% would like both contextual and keyword-based ads. Right now, that's possible with some ad programs. It depends on how restrictive the terms of service are - which means more work for bloggers to figure this out.

n=74

Bloggers are cut in by many restrictions with advertising programs. They need to know where their blog templates are, and how to modify them. They need to know HTML. They have to spend hours, if not days, going back to modify the ad blocks. They need to be approved for RSS ads. And they cannot control which ads get displayed from major contextual ad programs.

The ads from major blog advertising programs are either connected with every post (or page) or are turned off - there is no happy medium to decide when and where the ads go. The on/off switch is a concept that just doesn't cut it anymore.

Blog advertising needs a change. And that change is coming.

69% of our users would be interested in using Qumana to insert advertisements. That day is coming. And that day is tomorrow...

Related Survey posts:

On Bloggers
The Use of RSS
Use of Advertising by Bloggers
Blog Advertising Earnings
Opinions on Blog Advertising

Technorati Tags: qumana, advertising, blogs, blogging, money, onlineadvertising, adgenta

We're almost at the end of our analysis of the Qumana Survey. I will be talking about advertising in blogs for 2 more posts today, just so I can break up the topics, and Tris will be sharing some great feedback on Qumana itself.

This post will focus on how our users feel about blog advertising in general - do they like it, do they care, why is it such a hot topic.

n=79

According to our survey, 94% of you read blogs that include advertisements. I would expect that it would be difficult to find blogs that don't have advertisements on them in some form or another, so this makes sense. It also says that there are very few people out there who would take the trouble to find blogs that are ad free, regardless of their opinions of online advertising.

When we look at this from a broader perspective, it shows a general acceptance, or mere tolerance, in some cases, of advertising and its presence in and on blogs. This question does show that advertising is pervading the blogosphere, and that its value to readers and bloggers is increasing. An interesting note here is on value. People tell us, as we'll see later, that ads provide contextual value to content, rather than detracting from it.

n=79

I decided to ask specifically if people were in the least annoyed by advertising in blogs - specifically ads that flow through to RSS, which has been a hot topic out there.

Well, a good 55% of our users think it perfectly fine to insert ads in RSS, 25% don't think it's good, and 20% simply don't care. We know from a previous post that 38% of our users don't like blog advertisements at all, so this is not a bad proportion. Somewhat inconsistent, but showing a more positive figure.

It's not enough just to say "do you think it ok to include ads", so we followed up with an open-ended question asking people to share these opinions.

Although you might think from the above question that people simple didn't like seeing ads in blogs, we have some clear reasons for this opinion. The two biggest complaints are the fact that ads are simply not relevant - even those that are contextual! - and that they create a cluttered look when placed all over the blog and in every single post at the bottom in RSS.

So, based on this question we can come up with an optimal ad program:

• uses text ads, not images or flashy animations
• is unobtrusively placed
• does not pop up anything
• goes into RSS and the blog
• has control for where you place the ads
• lets you place ads in some posts and not others
• is very relevant to the post (most important!)

I think we will find that advertisements have a greater opportunity to provide value online, and especially in blogs, than in any other context. Unlike magazines or television, we do not have to generalize our advertisements, and can be more specific with demographic and psychographic information. Blogs epitomize niche trends far more than we are currently seeing with the segregation of television channels.

Advertisements that are displayed with tact and are right on topic, or provide value with complementary information, will not only be tolerated, but appreciated. So, the task at hand is to provide a way for bloggers to ensure their ads meet the demands of their readers.

All we can say... stay tuned for tomorrow.

Related Survey posts:

On Bloggers
The Use of RSS
Use of Advertising by Bloggers
Blog Advertising Earnings

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogs, blogging, advertising,

The Qumana Survey asked a lot of questions about what people think about Qumana. We'll be talking soon on those very specific questions, in the same way we've been analyzing the generic blogging statistics we've been sharing with you. This information has been far more valuable to us, overall, than any other part of the survey.

Right now, I just want to share with you some of the testimonials our customers have given us. We have pages of these comments that we hope to continue sharing - whether positive or not, it's quality feedback that we live from.

It's a great reminder to us that we are on the right track, and we are listening, and that to keep improving we need you, our customers, to keep telling us what you like, what you don't like, and what you want.

So, thanks from everyone at Qumana for sharing your thoughts...

Shane's World: Qumana puts the 'ing' in blogging. If you have more than one blog, Qumana is the product you should be using.

Zaine Ridling Building Great Software: If you want to make blogging both simple and easy with a sleek interface, you'll love Qumana. A tool like Qumana is great if you make frequent or daily posts to your blog.

Conversation blog: Qumana changed the way I blog, because it is 'on the fly' I post more than before and am seeing results.

Light Within: I think Qumana could bring HUGE numbers of people into blogging. So many people are used to word processing [me being an exception] that using Qumana will seem pretty familiar to them. Where Qumana can really explode is by providing CONCISE - look at the pages in Harry Beckwith's Selling The Invisible - tutorials with simple enough vocabulary to attract newbie bloggers. When you are their first teacher, they are likely to stick with you.

Changemaker: Since I have found Qumana I have added 10 new blogs as it is so easy to transfer information from my main blog. Qumana has been invaluable for the hundreds of sites I've been collecting for 10 years. I am developing another blog, www.weblogsampler.com just to handle all my favorite places to visit and use.

DWS@Large - Qumana is great. It's convenient, has a familiar interface, and is easy to use, even for a newbie. I'll look forward to growing with it as I learn more about blogging. There are features I haven't even tried yet, and there's promise of more to come. The one time I did have a small issue, I posted a test note on it to one of my blogs and forgot about it. I was going to get back to it later. Tris was on it and got back to me in less than 24 hours to let me know a fix was in the works. I didn't even have time to ask for support at the Qumana website. That's service! Keep up the good work Qumana.

Snippets - The Qumana product works great with my Expresion Engine web site! It makes blogging fun! And you dont need to know complicated Xhtml! This app is a dream!
Qumana is Quool!

Look for more later! Thanks everyone!

Today we'll follow up on the post about the Use of Advertising by Bloggers with a post on how much people earn from their blogs and how satisfied they are with these earnings.

n=26

On a per month basis, 69% of our bloggers (those who previously indicated they participate in advertising programs) earn less than $20 per month from all income sources: advertising & sponsorship. It's rather a pity that so many bloggers, of whom we have identified as being experienced, are not seeing any return for their efforts.

You can see from the graph that there is a real hurdle between $50 a month and anything above. From general experience, I know that blogs tend to go through several earnings ranges. You can be stuck on one range for a long time then jump up to the next without really experiencing a gradual incline in that direction.

We can see, for example, that there is a big barrier between earning $50 per month an anything greater than that - it would appear the next gap starts at $200.

n=31

We asked our users if they were frustrated with what they make. In the open-ended comments, most bloggers indicated they wanted to make more; some didn't know how, and some felt they were just beginning.

All of these are valid points that can be made, but they all point to the fact that people just don't know how to make money from their blogs. I don't know how many blogs there are out there trying to teach bloggers all the tricks and modifications you can do to tweak your ads, get the right context, or so on. It's really an overwhelming amount of information. And can leave some feeling they are "just not there yet" - that you need to be very savvy to start making money.

I disagree. I think everyone has the ability to start making money right away, and think it should be simple. The tools we have right now are for techie geeks - even the integration of AdSense in to Blogger is not a solution - it still puts a lot of pressure on people to understand the nuances of ad programs to be able to get something back in return.

n=79

We asked some more questions of the full set of respondents about making money from blogging. When asked if they want to make more, a clear 59% of people say yes. A surprising 20% don't want to make more - these bloggers fall into the category of those who don't have advertising because they don't like it.

If we take the 20% who don't care as some who just don't think they have a chance at making money, we have an even stronger indication that people really do want to make more money. Who doesn't, after all?

n=67

Since we knew going into the survey that most people were going to want to make more money blogging than what they currently make, we put in a question asking them how much they wanted. Of course, these results have just a bit of bias because 'want' and 'reality' are not necessarily the same thing, even when reality is a good chunk of change.
Looking back, if I had answered this question, I would have said $1000+ too - partially because I do want to make a living from blogging and see myself there eventually, but partially because it would be funny to say.

So, it came as no surprise to see that 22% of our users also want to make more than $1000 per month from blogging. It's not a bad goal. Since most of our users are experienced bloggers, and have shown to stick it out by posting on more than one blog and for an extended period of time, we'll likely see a lot of them reach this goal.
I was surprised to see so many answers of below $20 - these bloggers don't earn much now, being new or not knowing how, so would be happy even with a small return for their efforts. Such a return would likely pay for the blog, and very little more.

I'd like to see more of our bloggers reaching for higher earnings goals. Blogging can be a career - Tris and I have proved that. Advertising is a part of how we make our living, and we think that we have a powerful message to spread about making money blogging. But what we can learn here is that it's just too hard to figure out right now. We need to make blog advertising easier.

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Stay tuned for my next post on people's opinions of advertising in blogs and later for keyword vs. contextual advertising.

Related Survey posts:

On Bloggers
The Use of RSS
Use of Advertising by Bloggers

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogging, bloggers, advertising, blog ads, money, professional blogging

The Qumana Survey delved into the topic of advertising in quite some depth. Given the amount, and depth, of information, we'll likely get about 3 good posts out of it, all with some great insight into people's perspectives on advertising and their participation therein.

This first post will look at the presence and use of advertising by bloggers.

(n=89)

Out of a 89 respondents, only 33 people participate in advertising programs of any sort, and of those, only 7 knowingly insert advertisements into their feeds.

Analyzing the data further, those most likely to be participants in advertising programs were more likely to write on 3 or more blogs and to be more active in the blogosphere for greater than 6 months - this isupports the premise that experienced bloggers are more likely to want to earn revenue, at least in part, for their efforts.

(n=33)

By far, participants indicated use of the AdSense program most often to earn revenue from their blogs. There are a number of bloggers, though, who use multiple programs. There is a small proportion of bloggers using two or more advertising programs to maximize their earning potential.

It is clear that AdSense currently offers the most comprehensive advertising program to bloggers. However, as we see from our follow up question, most bloggers are only taking advantage of blog-centric advertising, those ads that appear on the site only. This does limit some earning potential that could be had from RSS-enabled ads, but it could also spell, for some, frustration with RSS-advertisements: either a dislike for RSS ads in general (which we cover later) or for the performance of said advertisements. For example, I have tried the AdSense for Feeds program with very little success, and therefore disabled it.

Whether these programs are successfully generating revenue for bloggers is not a topic of this post- but rather one to be examined in a later post (since we did ask some questions in this area).

Bloggers not participating in Advertising programs

When you examine the flip side of those who choose not to participate in advertising, you see a drastic reduction in number of blogs supported - the vast majority of those indicating this preference had 1 to 2 blogs, although some have 3 to 5. Where we see the greatest variance is in length of time blogging - here, we see a fairly even distribution of bloggers of all experience levels. This tells me that participating in advertising programs is an informed choice.

(n=50)

There are some bloggers, around 20 in our survey, who choose not to participate in blog advertising due to a dislike of advertising. Others not participating in advertising programs had other reasons, the strongest being the belief that their blogs will not make money. These bloggers have either no faith in the advertising programs, or feel their blogs are too small to make money.

I think it's a combination of the two. For example, one serious barrier to trial is the high payout minimum for programs such as Google AdSense. This large figure, usually over $100, prohibits bloggers from testing the waters, so to speak, because any revenue they do accrue will not be paid to them, and this could frustrate bloggers from spending the time to tweak their ads for greater earnings.

34% of bloggers who don't participate in advertising do intend to sign up for an advertising program of some sort, and a high proportion of those have requested assistance - this strongly affirms that a proportion of bloggers just don't know how to place advertising on their blogs. This relates, in part, to the difficulty in setting up blog-centric advertising programs like AdSense, which require you to know how to edit your template to insert the proper code to generate the ads.

This knowledge of editing templates and such is far beyond that which we will see later from experienced bloggers - in future, experienced bloggers will not necessarily be those geeks who know about blogging, but those people who are good at writing and interacting with people. Web 2.0 is characterized by tools that are intended to make publishing simple - such simplifications will take power away from those geeks who once ruled the Internet domain.

----

Our next posts will follow with the earnings rate in blogs and finally with the opinon of advertising in blogs, which can be quite a hot topic.

Related posts:

Blogging Survey - On Bloggers
Blogging Survey - The Use of RSS

Technorati Tags: qumana, blogging, survey, advertising, blogads, adsense, RSS advertising, problogging, blog-centric ads

Arieanna continues with Part 2 of the results of our blogging survey focused on RSS and RSS readers.  In another post I'm going to talk about the relationship between time blogging and feeds read, but this one is on RSS readers.  I've lost count of the number that I've tried and keep trying.  Yes, Lektora is my favourite (it is a real Victor Kiam story), but I know that it isn't perfect.  So I keep trying other readers to see what other's are doing and get inspired.  You can see from the chart at on the right that while Bloglines is the largest single player (and I, frankly, use it myself to search feeds.), there is a huge amount of fragmentation out there  I think people are still trying to figure out how best to present feed information.  We have web-based browser-based, we have browser-based, but offline.  Outlook integrated.  Standalone.  Wow.  What is the best way?  Personally I like browser-integrated, but offline.  I also like being able to skim fast through feeds.

This tells me that there is room for a breakthrough.  A new metaphor for reading news.  A new way to integrate the data you receive with your routine, your thinking, and your work.  Do I have the answer?  Nope.  I'm still looking.  I think I've tried most on the RSS readers on that chart in the past month ... all for like the second or third time.  Just to look at improvements, to understand.  Any one have suggestions?  What makes a great news reader for you?

Technorati Tags : RSS+aggregators, Lektora, Qumana

We will continue our analysis of our blog survey results by looking into the use of RSS, and the preference for aggregators. I particularly like this section for what it says of blogger behaviour, and what it speaks to about the fractured RSS aggregator market - a surprise to me, as it may be to others.

(n=95)

71% of our users read 100 or less blogs. On the high end, we have 19% reading more than 150 blogs - I would be in this high end, given that my RSS reader fluctuates at around 350.

I was surprised to find that 19% of our users read less than 10 blogs, while 15% read less than 30. To me, the act of reading blogs is a necessary step in writing them effectively, so I expected these figures to be higher.

To understand how blog readership was correlated with the act of blogging, I cross referenced these figures with blogging experience (how long they've been blogging) and with number of blogs.

According to the survey, 49% of users who have been blogging for at least one year have at least 100 blogs in their RSS reader. This, of course, makes sense - time increases likelihood of number of blogs read, as well as written on, which we previously noted. 61% of bloggers who write on at least 3 blogs read more than 100 blogs - noting the importance of reading blogs in writing on them.

(n=95)

The use of aggregators was a little bit more variant than any other question in the survey. Although we have a strong indication of the market presence of Bloglines, FeedDemon and NewsGator, we have a very high proportion of users favoring other RSS readers. There are 16 RSS readers used only by one person, with half a dozen more used by only 2 or 3. This says to me that, despite the dominance of a few key players, people are not completely satisfied and are searching for something more specific to their needs.

Our own Lektora was in the top 5, which is satisfying, but shows a great need for growth in the market, and says something about our own attention to this product in our offering - our marketing and our blog posts need to speak more to this market.

37% of Bloglines users have at least 100 feeds populating their aggregator, while the next largest player, FeedDemon, has only 18% of users reading more than 100 feeds. Looking at the figures for all of the players, the number of feeds read does not correlate overly strongly with chosen reader, but perhaps certain readers offer more organizational abilities for larger numbers of feeds than others.

When you look at time blogging versus aggregator, you get a stronger preference for Bloglines. For those blogging 1-2 years, 28% use Bloglines; for those blogging more than 2 years, 61% use Bloglines. These are very interesting correlations.

Well, I think I could play all day mixing up these figures and figuring out some interesting things, but I think I've put forth those that speak most clearly to certain trends in blogging and the RSS market.

Related posts:
Blogging Survey - On Bloggers

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogging, blogosphere, aggregator, RSS, bloggers, blogging survey

This is the first post in a series about the nature of the Blogosphere, based on data from our recent survey of Qumana users. Our survey is based upon the data and opinions of 103 bloggers who have tried or have downloaded Qumana . This survey gave us a lot of insight into bloggers and the Blogosphere, as well as great feedback to help us improve Qumana. The first part of the survey series will look at the blog experience of our users.

Activity of bloggers - how long they've been blogging, for how many blogs, and for how much time per week.

(n=103)

Roughly 50% of bloggers using Qumana have been blogging for at least a year. Given that I'm not even at that mark myself, it's an impressive figure. The data suggests two things: that Qumana is being used by "experienced" bloggers, and that offline editors are tools sought out after a year of blogging. Possibilities for this shift could stem from frustration with posting via browsers or from the need to manage multiple blogs (see below).

Given the acceleration of the blogosphere, I would expect the numbers of new bloggers seeking easier blog management tools to increase, and that we'll see a lot of fluctuation in the percentages for many years to come, as new bloggers become experienced bloggers at a faster rate.

I believe that the tools to help newbie bloggers are becoming more sophisticated, decreasing the learning curve required to use them. That being said, once bloggers reach a certain stage of knowledge, they will begin to want tools to help them increase productivity and to bypass the restriction of blog platform interfaces.

(n=102)

I was mildly surprised to find that most of our bloggers had more than one blog. It makes sense, given that blogging tools such as Qumana make cross-publishing simple, and take away the pain of managing and posting to multiple blogs.

Given our data, 38% of bloggers had 3 to 5 blogs. There was a jump from one blog, 32% to 3-5, with fewer bloggers at 2 blogs (21%). My guess is, if bloggers follow my own pattern, jumping to two is just a stepping stone to more.

Of those bloggers who have 3 to 5 blogs, 70% have been blogging for one year or more. This shows, quite clearly, that the longer you blog, the more likely you are to have more than one blog.

Oddly enough, we have a single lone blogger out there blogging 3 to 5 blogs with less than 2 months experience - I'd say watch out for that one!

(n=103)

38% of bloggers surveyed spend more than 6 hours per week plugging away at their blogs. We have a few bloggers playing around at less than 2 hours per week, which is not really very much time at all. Of those bloggers who have 3 to 5 blogs, 24% spend 3 to 5 hours a week blogging.

One thing to think about here - do we really realize how much time we actually spend blogging each day? I doubt we'd even like to admit that to ourselves.

More data to come: Keep your eye out for future information on time spent reading blogs, blogger demographics, opinions on advertising, and the great feedback we've received about Qumana.

Survey reliability: The survey seems to fairly represent new bloggers, experienced bloggers, and a good cross section of careers, blog topics, and more. However, despite this diversity, the data may not represent the true blogosphere due to the nature of the survey and its restriction to only those bloggers using Qumana.

Technorati Tags: qumana, survey, blogging, blogosphere, bloggers, blogging survey