Digital Parents Community Survey 2012

DIGITAL PARENTS
COMMUNITY SURVEY 2012
Copyright 2012 Digital Parents.All rights reserved.

AIM OF THE STUDY
The aim of this survey, just as in the ﬁrst survey of 2011, was to gain an in-depth understanding of
the Australian parent blogging community. It was also to benchmark results against the ﬁrst
Digital Parents Survey of 2011. This year, with the rise in discussion of monetisation, extra
questions were included to generate more knowledge on this topic. The Digital Parents
community is vibrant and growing.
Digital Parents Community Survey 2012

THE SURVEY
Digital Parents and Catherine Archer, of Curtin University, conducted the survey. Digital Parents, created
by Brenda Gaddi, is an online community where Australian mum and some dad bloggers get together
online to swap ideas and share stories. Catherine Archer, a lecturer in the School of Marketing at Curtin
University, is currently completing her PhD on parent blogging.
The online survey was conducted in October and November 2012 over two weeks. The survey was
created and emailed to over 2,000 Digital Parents members from the Digital Parents website and a total
of 245 responded, with 238 usable responses.

MAIN FINDINGS
• Only women responded to this survey (100%). The majority of Digital Parents (DP) are
aged between 26 and 45 (89%) and are married (80%), many with two (younger) children.
• Blogging is seen to have positive impact on bloggers’ lives and the majority of bloggers said
they would quit their job to become a full-time blogger if they could.
• Most DP bloggers write about parenting (81%) and home life (72%) and write in a
conversational style (83%). There is a strong sense of community amongst bloggers and most
bloggers interact with each other on a daily basis.
• Most bloggers believe brands should offer compensation to bloggers for mentions of
brands on blogs (81%) and 69% would like to be a brand ambassador. Relevance to their
blog (96%) and interest for their readers (93%) were cited by the DP bloggers as “most
important” for working with brands. While advertising and sponsored posts are the most
common ways of generating money, 58 per cent of bloggers said they did not generate any
money from their blog.

• The majority of bloggers believe they can influence readers to purchase an item they
recommend on their blog and blogs are still seen by bloggers as a better source of
information than traditional or mainstream media (92%).
•The opportunities, creative outlet and sense of community were mentioned as blogging
benefits in the open ended comments section of the survey while challenges included
finding enough time to blog.

THE FINDINGS
In 2012 all respondents to the Digital Parents (DP) survey were women (100%) and the majority
were between 26-45 years of age (89%). On average DP bloggers have 2 children (44%). However,
some don’t have any (3%).
Please indicate your age

How many children do you have?

Most of the bloggers’ children are toddlers, 1-3 (52%), pre-schoolers (39%) and primary school (49%).
Parents with adult children were only 5% of the total. Most of the DP respondents are married (80%).
What is your current marital status?

Besides blogging, most of the bloggers engage in part-time, freelance or casual work (52%)
with only 11% in full-time paid work and 37% not in paid work. Most bloggers want to blog
full time if they could as 47% said they would quit their job if they could become a full-time
blogger and 32% said they might.A total of 5 respondents (3%) had become full-time bloggers.
If you could quit your job to become a full-time blogger would you?

How do we blog?
The majority of DP respondents have been blogging for two years or less (64%) with 34%
having blogged for three years or more and most only having one blog (68%). The most
popular topics for blogging among the DP community are parenting (81%), home life (72%)
and food and cooking. Popular topics under “other” included craft and sewing and
gardening. However, there was a huge range of topics ranging from Christianity to
camping, writing, photography, technology and even the occult. The content on blogs
includes personal stories (92%), how to articles (53%) and opinion pieces (50%). Product
reviews are also popular (53%). Most bloggers describe their writing style as conversational
(83%) with a minority describing their style as journalistic (3%), professional (4%) or
confessional (5%).

What sort of content do you write for your blog? Please indicate all that apply.

Most bloggers post between 1-2 (35%), and 3-5 times (35%) a week. The vast majority of
bloggers believe blogging has had a mostly or extremely positive inﬂuence on their lives (92%).
How would you describe the impact of blogging on your life?

The favourite forms of social media used by bloggers (other than blogs!) are Facebook (97%),Twitter
(87%), Pinterest (79%) and Instagram (63%).
What types of other social media do you use besides blogs? Please tick all that apply.

THE BLOGGING COMMUNITY
The average time spent across all forms of social media is between 3 and 4 hours a day. The
blogging community is important to bloggers, with 100% saying they participate (read AND
comment) on other people’s blogs. Over half of bloggers (57%) participate daily, with 29% doing so
2-4 times a week. Motivations for participation include socialising (85%), sharing opinions (71%),
recreation (55%) and gaining advice (50%) with “driving trafﬁc to my own blog” also being an
important motivator (43%). Those who ticked other (7%) wrote of community/support and one
even wrote “solace”.

What motivates you to participate in other people’s blogs? Please tick all that apply.

Topics followed on other people’s blogs include parenting (89%), home life (79%) and food and cooking
(68%), health and well-being (53%). Other popular topics are business and blogging (45%) and fashion
and beauty (47%). Under the “other” heading, craft was the most popular choice. An overwhelming
majority of bloggers (91%) believe there is a sense of community amongst bloggers while the rest are
unsure.The majority of DP bloggers consider other bloggers they know to be their friends (64%) while
20% were unsure and 16% disagreed.The majority of bloggers are somewhat to very satisﬁed with the
blogging community (81%) with 14% neutral and only a small percentage dissatisﬁed.

What topics do you follow on other people’s blogs? Please indicate all that apply.

Do you believe there is a sense of community amongst bloggers?

BLOGS AND INCOME GENERATION
Sponsored content
The majority of bloggers do not currently take payment for sponsored content on their blog but
a sizable proportion do (41%). While 11% do not take sponsorship and wouldn’t want to, 48%
don’t but would like to.The majority of bloggers would prefer to be compensated for sponsored
content with both cash and free product or experience (68%), 14% would prefer cash only and
13% product or experience only with 5% saying they would not accept compensation. The
majority of bloggers strongly agree or agree that bloggers should receive compensation for
mention of brands (81%) while 17% are neutral and only 3% disagree.

Have you accepted payment for sponsored content?

Advertising
The majority of bloggers are neutral about advertising on blogs (51%) while 41% like it and 8% don’t
like it. While most bloggers don’t currently take advertising, 42% do and 29% would like to. The
majority of bloggers generate less than $150 per month from advertising on their blog (57%) while only
2% currently generate more than $1000 per month.
Do you use advertising on your blog/s?

How much money do you generate from advertising on your blog per month?

Sponsored posts
Most bloggers like (41%) or are neutral about sponsored posts on blogs (46%) and 14% don’t like
them.While more than half of bloggers don’t currently do sponsored posts (55%) 38% would like to.
Do you include sponsored posts on your blog/s?

Product reviews
The majority of bloggers like product reviews on blogs (70%) while 26% are neutral and only 4% don’t
like them.While 37% don’t do product reviews, 24% would like to and the rest do reviews weekly,
monthly or rarely.
Do you include product reviews on your blog/s?

Brand ambassadorship
The majority of bloggers like the idea of being an ambassador for a brand (69%), but 28% have never
thought about it and 3% don’t like the idea.The majority of bloggers have been approached for some
sort of writing, product review, give-away or sponsorship by a brand or PR consultant (60%).
When working with brands, the most important considerations for bloggers are that the brand is
relevant to their blog (96%), it is something their readers might be interested in (93%) and the brand
contact communicates clearly (76%). The majority of bloggers don’t currently generate income from
their blog (58%). This statistic is 5% lower than last year so more bloggers are apparently generating
income.Those bloggers generating income do so mainly from advertising (31%), sponsored posts (30%)
and afﬁliate marketing links (12%).While 20% of bloggers generate under $1000 per annum from their
blog, 48% said they don’t make money from their blog and 16% said blogging costs them more money
than they actually make.

What’s important to you when working with brands? Please indicate all that apply.

How do you generate money from your blog/s? Please choose all that apply.

How much income per annum do you make from your blog?

BLOGS AND INFLUENCE
The question of influence has been answered in this survey! The majority of bloggers completely or
somewhat agree they can influence their readers to purchase an item recommended on their blog
(84%) while only 3% somewhat disagree and for 13% it does not apply to them. Most bloggers
completely or somewhat agree that blogs are a better source of information than mainstream media
(92%). The vast majority of bloggers (88%) have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a
blog. Those that have bought goods or services have purchased child-related products (44%), beauty
products or services (43%), fashion (37%), books (36%) and groceries (34%), to name some. The
characteristics of a blog that influence the respondents to buy a recommended product include “I trust
the blogger” (75%), “the blogger has similar opinions to me” (69%) and “I like the way the blogger
writes” (63%).

Do you believe that blogs are a better source of information than traditional or
mainstream media?

What have you purchased in the past six months after seeing a recommendation
from a blog?

What characteristics of a blog inﬂuence your decision to purchase a recommended
product? Please indicate all that apply.

FINAL COMMENTS
When asked about ethics, the majority felt there were no ethical issues with blogging (68%).
The opportunities, creative outlet and sense of community were mentioned as blogging benefits
in the open ended comments section of the survey while challenges included finding enough
time to blog.The following comment is typical:
“The main benefit for me as a blogger is it has helped me reconnect with a part of myself that I
thought I had lost, and it has been an incredibly inspirational and uplifting experience (as it has
happened alongside me becoming a mum I'm sure these feelings are amplified). The main
challenge for me is finding the time to write posts, and read and engage with other bloggers.”

Digital Parents Community Survey 2012

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