In case you missed it, Technorati released their State of the Blogosphere report last week. It’s always a highly anticipated report that truly carries a lot of weight in our industry. Technorati’s statistics are the most frequently cited in reference to the blogosphere. Marketers, agencies, business owners and the mainstream media rely on these statistics to plan campaigns, sell clients, and determine our online marketing plans.
I have to say, though, that I was immediately struck by how many women Technorati tells us are blogging. Their numbers state that only 28%-38% of blogs are authored by women (see chart below). I’m not sure I buy it – I’ve heard that there are actually more women than men blogging, which leads me to question whether blogs on sites like LiveJournal have been included or accounted for in thier study.
Segment Snapshot of Bloggers
| Demographics | Personal (N=1015) |
Corporate (N=156) |
Professional (N=590) |
With Advertising (N=695) |
No Advertising (N=595) |
| Male | 64% | 70% | 72% | 66% | 66% |
But even if their numbers are spot on, I was floored to see this:
Global Bloggers by Gender
| Demographics | Female (N=438) |
Male (N=852) |
| Personal Blog | 83% | 76% |
| Professional Blog | 38% | 50% |
| Age | ||
| 18-24 years old | 9% | 15% |
| 25+ | 91% | 85% |
| Single | 29% | 36% |
| Employed full-time | 44% | 56% |
| Median Annual Investment | $30 | $60 |
| Median Annual Revenue | $100 | $200 |
| % Blogs with advertising | 53% | 54% |
| Sell Through a Blog ad Network* | 16% | 7% |
| Have Affiliate ads* | 41% | 32% |
| Have Contextual ads* | 61% | 73% |
* Among those with advertising on their blogs
There it is in plain sight – women’s blogs are earning on average half the amount as men’s blogs – and they are also putting half the amount of investment into their blogs’ development. The fact that women and men are evenly split on the percentage of blogs with advertising tells me that fairly equal amounts of women want to make money with their blogs, but because they are putting less money in, they are taking less money out.
I honestly don’t have an explanation for this – I wanted to open this up as a conversation, not as a “you should be doing X” for your blog.
What do you think is going on?
I want to know – how much are you investing into your blogs? And do you think that women are limiting themselves by putting less dollars into develop their revenue? Or perhaps there are other factors in effect here? Do share your thoughts!
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Easton Ellsworth is owner of 
i blog regularly (on multiply.com). but my main goal in blogging is to connect with friends and family. i post hundreds of pictures a month, videos, and recipes.
i also post my thoughts on social networking sites, politics, etc. that might be considered more “blog”-like material.
i’m not in it for the money. i do it because i love intense discussions. i love the variety of people who join in on those discussions online. and i love being able to share my life with friends and family (whether they’re near or far).
barefootmegs last blog post..Convince me… (voting outside the box)
I took a rather long hiatus from blogging professionally and am just getting my feet wet again. With that said, I personally tend to spend more time blogging and writing and less time on promoting and working with all the gadgets needed to make money…
To be honest, I don’t even know how to monetize a blog…I have links to Google’s webmaster tools, but no idea how to use them. I couldn’t tell you how to find and place advertising or what all the acronyms that people use stand for.
Of course, I have yet to create a blog that is there solely for money…most are a jumping board into getting IC writing work that isn’t always blog related. However, I do have a ton of domain names that I’d like to start creating sites for and monetizing…so I have my work cut out for me.
Maybe too many women are like me, or spend too much time socializing on networks like twitter (hoping that will bring in visitors) when a more proactive stance is needed???
I think you’re over-interpreting the data, because there are some vital details missing:
- time spent on blogging
- number of blog posts per day/week/month
- comments per blog post
- how well linked the blogs are
I doubt very much that there’s a direct and simple correlation between how much someone spends on their blog per year and how successful those blogs are (whether you measure that by advertising or any other measure).
I suspect that on average women blog less often than men, because they are more likely to be both working and looking after the family and are thus more time-poor. If they blog less often then they’ll get less traffic, which will mean less advertising revenue.
I also suspect that women’s blogs are, again, on average, less well linked to than men. Certainly I’ve seen more than my fair share of discussions, in the tech blogophere at least, about how male bloggers cite and link to other men more than women. If that’s true then, again, that means less traffic and thus less ad revenue.
We also have to ask if women’s blogs have fewer comments than men’s. If so, (and number of comments may be a function of traffic), then that means fewer repeat visits to the website itself, which means less repeat exposure to ads, which may mean less ad revenue.
I don’t think we have enough information to really figure out what’s going on here, and have to be very careful not to draw unwarranted conclusions.
Suws last blog post..Women in technology: What are the real issues?
I won’t buy that stats.I believe there are far numbers of women blogging who remains anonymous or perhaps have chosen to have male pen names.Nice info here, thanks!
Thanks for the great statistics.
I guess as a person relatively new to blogging it surprised me too that the women figures were low.
My experience is that women are often the best networkers, love to do things together and blogging done well would represent the chance for them to do something they excel naturally at.
Monetizing a blog is a journey very different to simply having an online chat with the outside world. It is however in my experience so far a really useful way of getting to know who is out there and what they’re saying without the threat of being sold to.
Andee Sellman, One Sherpas last blog post..Do you really know where your profits are coming from?
I wonder if the income thing has to do with the content and how much advertisers pay for different subjects.
There is a very technical element to blogging for money that might be an obstacle for many women, who don’t seem to be as concerned with playing with technology and figuring out how it works as men are. Of course, that’s a generalization based on my own limited experience.
That said, I think the comments above make very good points about how inconclusive this data really is. In order to discover any gender inequality you’d have to do an apples-to-apples comparison; compare blogs of similar topics with a similar readership who are earning less.
Otherwise, it’s just reading too much into too little.
Dobes Vandermeers last blog post..Accounting software is crucial during an economic downturn
If you use Twitter you will see that there are tons of women who blog. Most of them use Blogger from what I can see. There are tons of e-moms out there that are all chasing that working from home dream.
I do know that for the most part, the technical side of things is usually more male dominated.
I have been working in the IT industry for many years and no matter where I went it was always male dominant.\
I guess it is just that in this culture, women are not that fond of tech as much as men are. But it could easily change and probably will over time.
There is one thing I noticed. Hot women can easily become more popular on a blog than guys when they show pictures of themselves.
I saw a blog the other day all about that idea.
I can’t stand the young bloggers who are woman like the ones from townhall.com Men use conservative woman as tools, as eye candy, play things, mainly to attract attention these woman need to be more independent
I believe the stats. Women are blogging but they don’t know how to do the technical part. I’m one of those. I spend hours trying to figure out how to change things on my blog and come up empty-handed. Plus, the time factor. Someone above said women are time-poor and that is true.