Last month I asked you guys to kindly take a survey so I could get a better idea of who you are and why you keep hanging around heredespite my inability to correctly use then and than. I did this because sometimes this whole blogging thing seems like a one-sided conversation and I wanted a better idea of who all I’m talking to/at.
To my great surprise almost 200 of you turned up and filled my survey out! It’s been really illuminating, weird (one guy said he “envied my body”) and satisfying to read the answers, so I though I would share some of the pertinent facts and respond to some concerns.
Contents
Who Are You??
I already had some ideas of who reads this blog and they were mostly confirmed. 80.6% of the readers of this blog are under 30, which I guess makes sense considering the title.
52.5% of you are young professionals, and 20% of you are established with your career. 16.6% of you are still in college with a handful in grad school. Almost 10% of you are currently on a career break- good job guys!
The majority of you (66.1%) prefer to take independent vacations (me too!) and are not long term travelers. 25.1% take 3 vacations a year (not too shabby) and only 1.6% of you take no vacations each year (sadface). Only 9.6% of you are nomadic full time travelers.
What Do You Want?
I asked you guys where you would most like to travel in the next 12-18 months. The top 5 results were:
- South East Asia- 45.9%
- Central Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary etc.)- 41.4%
- USA- 39.2%
- United Kingdom- 33.7%
- Australia/New Zealand- 33.1%
Italy, Central America and Canad were also popular choices along with a rainbow of write-in answers.
I also learned that 77.1% of you follow my blog for travel tips, and 68.8% follow it for personal stories and essays. I will keep this in mind when writing in the future! Sadly only 19.8% follow my photography skills, which I think means I need to up my game in the future.
What Do You Think of This Blog?
The open ended answers were sometimes hard to swallow. Most of you had really wonderful things to say and for that I thank you! Very encouraging stuff. Still, a few of you expressed some concerns:
The blog has a distracting amount of typos, most related to incorrect use of homonyms or easy misspellings.
This is sad and ironic because I am usually the proof-reader for my friend’s work. Unfortunately when I’m working fast, trying to get an article out, I do tend to overlook easy mistakes. I will work harder in the future to avoid grammar mistakes.
I would like you to talk more about how you’re able to support yourself.
The reason I don’t talk about this very much on the blog is because my main goal is to encourage people to travel, not necessarily to travel blog. It’s hard work and not-so great money and I don’t think it’s the best way to fund your travels. That said, I will try to cover more ways to support yourself during travel, as it’s definitely a hot issue.
The only one thing that I would suggest is for you to make links open in a different tab or window. I keep having to go back and forth between your site and the ones you link to!
Will try to remember to do this going forward!
I would love if there was an easier way to find information on a particular country or area. At the moment it is all through the search engine and all the information can be difficult to navigate.
Noted. I’m hoping to do some revamping of the site this year and I will try to incorporate this in.
It’s really awesome that you can get some of your travels sponsored (visitFinland, Fiji, rail passes) but it’s unrealistic for everyone else, and makes your advice seem…inauthentic.
I do see your point. It’s a hard line to walk since the way things currently are I need those sponsorships to keep this blog running as it does and to make an honest living. I try to split the content evenly between sponsored and unsponsored and to be upfront about exactly what is being paid for and by whom. I am not of the opinion that a sponsored trip means a sponsored opinion. I am a strong believe that the most important component of my blog is integrity and authenticity and that this simply will not work if I’m anything but honest. I hope that comes through in my writing.
The guest posts aren’t always relevant. I prefer your posts to guest posts.
I would actually really love to hear some more opinions on this subject. How do you guys feel about guest posts? Do they detracts from the main storyline or add much needed other perspectives? At the moment I have a moratorium on guest post submissions until I decide on a new policy for how to deal with them. Let me know!
Thank you so much to everyone who responded to the survey and those who said really nice things about me and the blog. It was very encouraging. As time goes on I hope to make this an even better resource.
