As our fifth blogiversary week draws to a close, we want to send a huge thank-you to everyone who shared their kindness, humor, and time by taking the quick poll we dropped into Monday’s post. More than 30,000 of you responded — wow. Your participation made the whole exercise so much fun and gave us a great snapshot of who reads this site.
Obviously this wasn’t a scientific study, but the survey did reveal some clear patterns about our readership. To present those findings we created a handful of simple, visual graphics that highlight the key takeaways. They’re light on analysis but heavy on personality — exactly what you’d expect from a blogiversary celebration. Below you’ll find those images along with a bit more context about what we learned and what surprised us.
Key takeaways from the reader survey
The most consistent pattern was that many of you share similar life stages and interests with us: a large portion of respondents are married, own homes, and have pets. That mirrors our own lifestyle closely, especially Sherry’s observations that align with much of the readership. One notable shift this year is that the blog’s team is now slightly older than a majority of our readers — a fun reminder that names don’t always tell the whole story. Maybe it’s time to consider whether “young” still fits in our title, or whether we should embrace a new, more accurate label.
What surprised us (and what we want to explore next year)
While nothing in the results was shocking, we enjoyed seeing the small differences that make our audience unique. Some of you have priorities and habits that look different from our own daily routines, and that’s exactly the kind of nuance we love to learn about. If there’s one thing we’d like to do for next year’s survey it’s to dig a little deeper into those differences — what specific home projects interest you, what kinds of budgets you work within, and which formats (detailed tutorials, quick tips, videos, or photo-rich posts) help you most. Tell us: what would you like to see included in next year’s poll?
We had a blast poring over the responses and turning them into simple visuals. Did anything in the graphics jump out at you? Was there a result that made you nod along or laugh out loud? Share your reactions in the comments so we can keep this conversation going and shape future content around what matters most to you.
Oh, and if you missed yesterday’s post about goals, we noted that that specific post was under 375 words (not counting the text embedded in the graphics) — a deliberate experiment in brevity. This post takes a different tack: a longer, clearer recap of the survey and the takeaways we hope will guide our content moving forward.
Image sources: Beyonce, Ultrasound, Black Eyed Peas, Tina Fey, J.K. Rowling, Martha Stewart and Candice Olson.
Update – Many readers asked for more information about blogging as a profession (how we built the site, grew our traffic, and turned it into full-time work). For anyone interested, we compiled our experience into a practical guide that explains how we started a blog, grew traffic, and turned it into a full-time job. If you’re curious about starting your own blog or expanding a hobby into something more, that resource walks through the steps we took and lessons we learned along the way.