Romanian blogosphere: Half million euro for most blogs, over Euro 1M in total in 2013
Romanian blogosphere attracted over Euro 1M in 2013, according to data included in Romanian Blogosphere Report, study initiated by Costin Cocioaba and realized together with Alexandru Negrea. According to info provided by the participants to the study, Romanian blogosphere is a sector that attracted Euro 516,250 in promotion budgets from companies in 2013. Still, according to the authors, the value of the total budgets attracted by blogosphere is estimated to reach to over Euro 1M, when adding the estimated earnings of some A-Listers that didn’t participate to study and of bloggers that are celebrities or TV stars.
The study was made between June 24th – July 30th, with help from 578 Romanian bloggers, a representative sample for the total of 85,551 blogs in Romania (ZeList data).
Romanian blogger: 25-34 y.o, highly educated. They use to be men, now they are women
According to the collected data, 45% Romanian bloggers are aged 25-34 y.o., followed by those aged 18-24 y.o (25%) and then those aged 35-44 (18%), 45-49 (4%) and over 50 (5%).
The study shows that, during the last 2 years, the feminine blogosphere developed at a significant peace and is now dominant, reaching to represent 51% from the total number of bloggers in 2014, up from 40% in 2011 and 31% in 2009. The rise of the feminine blogosphere can be linked to last couple years’ development of fashion, beauty and cooking niches and of the blogs connected to these sectors. Back in 2011, the blogosphere was dominated by male bloggers, which authored back than 60% of the blogs.
Romanian bloggers have a high level of education and they graduated university (39%) and have a master degree (30%).
2014: Niche blogs doubled, blogging from mobile increases, personal and entertainment subjects – on top
Most of the bloggers participating to the study started their blogs in 2013 (16%), but there are many that write since 2009 (13%), 2010 (13%) or 2012 (13%). In 2011, bloggers had mainly personal blogs (85%), but there were also quite a few collective blogs (28%), with few niche blogs (12%), company blogs (8%) and other types of blogs.
2014 looks different, the number of personal blogs decreased to 59%, the collective blogs are now representing only 4%, while niche blogs more than doubled their presence compared to 2011(28%) and the numbers of company blogs slightly declined to reach 5% from the total number.
Among bloggers, 63% only write on one blog and 21% on two, with the rest posting materials on three or more blogs.
Romanian bloggers are posting on their blogs from mobile mainly occasionally (56%), some never do that (28%), while 16% are using their mobile frequently to post on their blogs.
In terms of time allocated to manage blog related activities, half are spending 1-3 hours, 37% say they need less than an hour and only 13% are using more than 3 hours to handle their blog.
When it comes of content, 37% are publishing materials at least once a week, while those publishing almost every day and at least once a month are equal (26% each), followed by bloggers that publish materials on daily basis (11%). On monthly basis, 83% of Romanian bloggers are publishing less than 30 articles, 27% have between 30 and 100 materials and only 2% can say they publish over 100 articles.
When it comes of subjects, Romanian bloggers write mainly about subjects of personal interest (18%), other subjects (11%) and entertainment (10%). Materials on Romanian blogs also cover education and music and film subjects (8% for each category), tourism (7%), new media and tech (6% each), general news and sport (5% each), environment, business and politics (3% each), but also religion, economy, games and others (2% and under each).
According to bloggers opinion, the subjects with highest impact in 2013-2014 came from politics (12%) and Tech (11%), entertainment, lifestyle, general and personal (9% each), new media and sport (7% each), but also from other sectors
Romanian bloggers – stars of their domains. Traffic – the most important success indicator
At this moment, in Romania, over half of the bloggers (52%) are using own hosting and domain for their blogs, 35% are still on free platforms, and 11% have their own domain but use free hosting.
Indicators for success are, according to the bloggers, the traffic (19%), the number of reactions in social media (17%), the number of received comments (14%), the number of offline reactions (12%), the ranking in an influence top (11%) and the number of newsletter subscribers and financial earnings (each with 10%).
In terms of subscribers, 41% bloggers said that they have less than 100 RSS subscribers and 34% don’t monitor the subscribers at all; only 2% Romanian bloggers have over 3,000 RSS subscribers, 3% have between 1,000 and 3,000 and 4% have 500-1000, while 16% have 100-500 subscribers. When it comes of newsletters, the situation is similar to RSS subscribers, although the percentages are slightly different.
The traffic on blogs – mentioned as the most important indicator of success by Romanian bloggers – is of less than 1,000 for 39% of the blogs and of over 100,000 for just 1% of them. 30% of bloggers have on their blogs between 1,000-5,000 unique visitors a month and 11% – between 5,000-10,000. Only 2% have between 50K-100K unique visitors, 3% have between 30K-50K and 7% attract between 10K-30K unique visitors every month. When it comes of page views, over half of Romanian blogs had, in 2014, under 10K page views, 24% had between 10K-50K, 6% had between 50K-100K and 3% – between 100K and 300K page views. Again, just 1% have over half million page views and 1% – between 300K – 500K.
A fifth of Romanian bloggers made at least Euro 500 from blogging; selected 1% goes over Euro 25,000
Although most of bloggers (69%) don’t get money from blogging, there is still close to a third from total that gains money from blogging activities, with only 4% stating that blogging is their main income source.
When it comes of money from blogging, 58% didn’t make any money from this activity this year, 21% got over Euro 500, 8% said they earned between 500-1,000 and 7% – between 1,000 and 3,000. When it comes of larger amounts of money generated by blogging, 2% had coming their way between Euro 3,000-5,000.
Only 4% of Romanian bloggers are earning from blogging amounts that start from Euro 5,000 and go over Euro 25,000 (1% – between Euro 5K-10K, 1% – Euro 10K-15K, 1% – Euro 15K-25K and 1% – over 25K).
Name the correct price! Money received, investments & benefits
Although 37% Romanian bloggers say they didn’t get money from blogging last year, those who did were getting paid mainly to write sponsored articles (22%), post banners or marketing affiliate links (11% each) or get involved in special projects (9%). They also obtained money for page or blog branding, speaking to events, video advertising or others.
When it comes of sponsored articles and fees, 22% Romanian bloggers posted sponsored materials on their blogs for less than Euro 100, 11% received Euro 100-300 and 2% were paid Euro 300-500. On the other hand, 2% got more than Euro 500 for sponsored materials on their blogs.
A little over a third of Romanian bloggers (37%) didn’t invest anything in blogging during the last 2 years. Still, over half of total (56%) say they spent less than Euro 500, but there are also bloggers that invested between Euro 500-1000 or over Euro 1,000 (4% each) in their blogs. When it comes of the money spent for the blog, 38% did that to buy hosting and domains, 14% to promote on Facebook and Google, 12% to generate photo or video content, 7% for marketing and advertising and 2% for editors. Of course, there are also those who didn’t invested at all, which represent 24% of total.
Blogging brings benefits to the bloggers: 47% gained in terms of personal branding, 28% received products and services and 13% got jobs due to blogging. Only 12% bloggers involved in the study said blogging didn’t offer them any benefits.