Dave Pollard, on January 4, wrote a very interesting post in his blog about the blogosphere.
He took a lot of the recent survey results and reports and information from a variety of online sources and blogs to come up with some very interesting statistics that he then rendered graphically (above and below).
Here are a few fun facts from his post:
• There are 100 "A-list" bloggers — they get an average of 150,000 hits/day
• There are 2,000 "B-list" bloggers — 2,500 hits/day average
• "C-list" bloggers number 18,000, with 500 hits/day average
• Up-and-coming bloggers number 80,000, averaging 100 hits/day
• The other 5 million bloggers average 3 hits/day
I find it interesting that to move up to "Up-and-coming" status you have to have over a 30-fold increase in traffic.
The next two steps require multiples of 5 each.
The final push to major-league status requires a 60-fold increase in traffic.
Pollard went on to calculate that the average B-list blogger, with an average 90-seconds-per-visit, gets 62 hours/day total of reader attention.
He compared that to a total of 170 reader-hours/day for the average newspaper article.
Thus, the average B-list blogger gets about one-third the total reader attention/day as the average newspaper story.
But look at it another way, as Pollard did: no matter how many hours a day you're putting in on your blog, it can't exceed 24; if you make it onto the B-list, then you're getting several times more hours worth of attention being paid than you invested.
With the rapid increase in blog readership that's occurring (top), Pollard estimated that in less than three years (conservatively) the average B-list blogger will get significantly more reader attention than the average US unsyndicated newspaper article or column.
As for the A-list, he projectd daily reader attention about equal to that of the average US daily paper.
Pretty impressive for a bunch of girls and guys sitting around in their pajamas, he wrote.
Sitting here in my PJs, it's hard not to agree, what?
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
yeay, we are A
2 - Eric Berlin
Interesting/good post. I'll be very curious to see the numbers for A, B, etc. one and two and three years out.
Sucks that my home blog is not even considered up-and-coming (average about 30-40 visitors a day) but, alas, I only set up shop last November.
I get the feeling that if a blogger is consistent, friendly and engaging to new readers, puts out decent content that serves some (or any) kind of need, and sticks around for a period of time, that readership will rise.
I'm curious to hear others thoughts on this.
3 - RJ
I'm a Z-List blogger! Yea!
4 - Thad
Cool article. But why does he base everything on hits instead of page requests/page views? I thought the latter had become the standard measurement.
5 - Eric Berlin
I think unique visitors is the best ways to gague how a site is doing. Pair that with return visitors, and you get a pretty good measure.
6 - jadester
i'm right down there at the bottom. But then, my blog is more of an archive of almost all of the articles i've posted to BC. I currently don't really have time to do much more on it (and even if I did, I'm not sure I could consistently write that much)
7 - Dave Nalle
Hey, am I supposed to be counting hits on my blog? Cool idea!
BTW, I just bought some cool new Pajamas.
Dave
8 - Shark
"Blogging: pissing graffitti on the walls of some back alley off the information highway." --- Definition by Shark, ca. 2000
"Don't overestimate the importance of an "art" with the shelf-life of warm buttermilk." -- Shark on bloggers egos, ca. 2001
9 - Dave Nalle
I admire your humility, Shark.
Dave
10 - Bithead
I've been holding 100-125hpd for nearly 2 years, now.
Am I still 'up and coming'?
(Sigh)
11 - Shark
DaveNalle: "...I admire your humility, Shark."
Well, yer lucky, Dave; I stopped short of posting a shameless, egotistical "plea" for the phone number of a film director who used a font I designed.
12 - Dave Nalle
>>Well, yer lucky, Dave; I stopped short of posting a shameless, egotistical "plea" for the phone number of a film director who used a font I designed.<<
Actually, I would have preferred an email address for someone on his staff, but he's bizarrely reclusive. There's now a lot more to that story, but it will have to be told another day.
Dave