State of the Blogosphere 2009

The growth of the blogosphere's influence on subjects ranging from business to politics to the way information travels through communities continues to flourish. In a year when revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, bloggers are blogging more than ever, and the State of the Blogosphere is strong. Indeed, it's so strong that the attitudes held by bloggers don't differ very much by age or gender, or even across geographies — which is why we've decided to display the results of the survey according to four different types of bloggers:

1) Hobbyists. Representing 72% of the respondents to this survey, hobbyists say that they blog for fun. They don't make any money from their blogging - and only some would like to do so. More than any other group, though, Hobbyists say they blog to express their "personal musings" (53%). 71% update at least weekly, while 22% update daily. Because 76% blog to speak their minds, their main success metric is personal satisfaction (76%).

2) Part-Timers. The next largest cohort, at 15%, part-timers say they "blog to supplement their income, but don't consider it a full time job." 75% of them blog to share their expertise, while 72% blog to attract new clients for their business. Their business and personal motives for blogging are deeply entwined - while 61% say that they measure the success of their blog by the unique pageviews they attract, 60% say they also value personal satisfaction.

3) Self-Employeds. At 9% of respondents, self-employeds are in many ways the most professional of the cohorts. They say they "blog full time for their own company or organization," and 10% do report blogging 40 hours per week or more. 22% say that their blog is their company, while 70% say they own a company and blog about their business. Self-employeds also privilege page views (63%) over personal satisfaction (53%) as a success metric, and 53% are blogging more than when they started. Finally, in a demographic (bloggers) awash with Twitter users, self-employeds are the Tweetiest of them all — 88% say they use the service.

4) Pros. The smallest cohort, representing just 4% of respondents, pros say they "blog full-time for a company or organization" — though actually very few of them actually report spending a full 40 hours per week blogging. 46% are blogging more than they did when they started. 70% blog to share expertise; 53% blog to attract new clients for the business they work for. Accordingly, pageviews are the most important success metric for pros, valued by 69%, compared to 53% for personal satisfaction.