Technorati Research: Are Male Bloggers More Successful than Female Bloggers?
October 23, 2008 by Liz Fuller
Filed under Social Media
I’ve been reluctant to mention it, but there is an aspect of the Technorati State of the Blogosphere research 2008 that makes me wonder whether there is a gender bias for success in blogging.
It’s hard to imagine how that could be, but let me give you the statistics and see what conclusions you can draw.
Overall, there are almost twice as many male bloggers than female ones:
- 66% male vs. 34% female
There are fewer younger female bloggers (18-24):
- 15% male vs. 9% female
As compared to male bloggers, female bloggers are more likely to be personal rather than professional bloggers (83% vs. 76%); they tend to talk more about personal musings (66% vs. 47%) and family updates (36% vs. 16%). Their goal is more likely to be to keep family and friends updated (45% vs. 25%) or to meet and connect with like-minded people (75% vs. 59%).
On the other hand, female bloggers are twice as likely to sell through an affiliate brand (16% vs. 7%), and more likely to have affiliate links (41% vs. 32%).
Female bloggers are also more likely than male bloggers to have participated in a blogroll, linked to other blogs, gotten listed on a blog directory, and produced content for other blogs (all activities designed to drive traffic to a blog).
Interestingly – more female bloggers have converted business leads from their blog versus male bloggers (36% vs. 27%).
When it comes to the high revenue earning bloggers, women are even more scarce:
- 4 out of 5 of the bloggers with the top 10% of earnings are male.
To put it on equal comparisons:
- 4 out of 20 female bloggers are professional bloggers
- 5 out of 20 male bloggers are professional bloggers
- yet – 16 out of 20 high revenue earning bloggers are male
So – my question is why is there such a difference in the ways that women and men blog?
Blogging would appear to be an equal opportunity activity. Anyone can blog with very little barrier to entry. And the choice of topic is a personal decision. Women seem just as aware or even more aware than men of the ways to make money from a blog, and drive traffic to a blog.
Overwll the research implies that while women might be slightly more inclined to blog in support of a business (driving leads), they seem less inclined to blog as a business, and significantly less successful when they do.
So – why do you think women are less likely to blog and less financially successful when they do?
Great question Liz, and one that I hope generates some serious discussion.
Speaking as someone who has blogged for nearly two years, I think that women may be more likely to have additional commitments that may distract them from blogging.
The age difference would seem to support that too – if women are a little older when they start blogging, then they are also more likely to: be in a serious relationship, have a non-blogging job, or be a parent. All of those other things take time.
It will be interesting to see what the readers have to say.
Hi Liz,
Two thoughts. First, it is hard to look at these numbers alone and draw any serious conclusions. For example, I would suspect that there are more male business owners than female, which might shed some light on why men are more likely to have a “professional” blog than women. If someone were to overlay business owner stats over these ones, we might be able to see things more clearly.
Second, women communicate very differently than men, so it is not a surprise necessarily that they blog differently too. In “real life”, women are much more likely to talk about personal issues than men, so why wouldn’t that hold true in the blogosphere too?
Really then, I think there are at least two issues at work here. Of the professional blogs, there are likely more men writing than women because there are (probably) more male business owners than women.
And since these stats seem to be saying that there are more professional blogs than personal ones, it isn’t all that surprising that there are more male than female bloggers.
IMHO,
~Graham
Hi Graham
Thanks for your response. I understand why there might be fewer female bloggers than male bloggers – but the difference between how many professional bloggers 4/20 vs. 5/20 is not too large.
But when you get to the top bloggers – the discrepancy is huge – 16/20 are male.
My question is – why are these women who are blogging professionally – so under-represented in the top earners?
Hi Liz,
I didn’t find those numbers for professional bloggers (4/20 and 5/20), but what I did find is that 46% of bloggers are considered “professional” and 12% are considered “corporate”, so about 58% of bloggers are blogging on work- and/or business-related topics.
Note too that there is an awful lot of overlap between these numbers. Lots of “professional” bloggers, for example, also maintain personal blogs. To complicate things even more, it seems that “personal” blogs are still listed as personal, even if they generate advertising dollars.
Now the report does say specifically that women are more savvy about advertising including participating in ad networks, generating new business leads, etc.
So why the discrepancy? I don’t know. Perhaps time is a factor? One would assume that for the most part, blogs that have been around for a while will also tend to be the most successful in terms of profit. Perhaps initially there were more men than women blogging (I mean greater than the 2/3 split right now) so they are more likely to be at the top now.
Maybe also women make more on average than men (which I don’t think was measured here…) In other words, women are more successful blogging on average than men, but they are more likely to reach a certain point and say “I’m happy” and devote time to other aspects of their life.
Perhaps men, on the other hand, are more interested in seeing how much they can make. Like that famous line from Wall Street – “How many yachts can you waterski behind?” I could be wrong, but men tend to want more toys than women. Therefore, the top earners will be more likely to be men.
Again, I’m not sure that we can come to any firm conclusions based on the data here. These are all just possibilities. But thanks for mentioning this report — lots of great informational nuggets at the very least!
~Graham
I hadn’t realized that the blogosphere was dominated so much by men, but I think women are very active online, but just elsewhere.
In my opinion, women are more social and are likely to be found on forums/message boards simply to keep up with each other. With a blog, you can do that, but with a forum it is a place of equals where anyone can start a conversation.
Hi Matt
Interesting point about the forums. Maybe women are looking more for the two way conversations in forums rather than the predominantly one way conversations in blogs.
Forums can be effective places to gain a reputation, brand your business and bring readers to your blog (as long as it is done subtly). So, a combination of the two is great if time affords it.