Survey Says

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts in last week’s reader survey. It was the first survey we’ve done here since July 2012, and I had so much fun reviewing the (538) responses. I felt like I had a pretty good idea of who reads this blog, mostly because of the lively comments section, but you all surprised me with some of your answers.

I promised I’d share the responses with you. Here you go.

First, some basic demographics.

Three-quarters of readers are between 26 and 44.

85% of readers are married. This surprised me a lot.  

69% of you have children living at home.

63% of you found MMD when another blogger linked to it. (Thanks, bloggers!)

53% of you said the books and reading posts were your favorite, but many of you went on to say you didn’t want to choose just one. More on that below.

Most of you read this blog via email or RSS.

Feedly is your RSS service of choice. I expected Bloglovin’ to be the more popular choice, but it wasn’t even close.

Now, the fun stuff.

I asked you, “What other blogs do you read regularly?” and got a wealth of responses. The top ten were:

1. Simple Mom
2. Joy the Baker
3. Young House Love
4. Money Saving Mom
5. Ain’t No Mom Jeans
6. Conversion Diary
7. Chatting at the Sky
8. Laura Vanderkam
9. Hollywood Housewife
10. SortaCrunchy

I’m familiar with all those blogs, and most are actually in my reader. (I even included some in my short list of my favorite mid-sized blogs earlier this week.)

You also listed a ton of blogs I wasn’t familiar with. I created a new category in my reader for the blogs you all recommended and filled it right up:

Among the additions: House Unseen. Life Unscripted, Memories on Clover Lane, Everyday Reading (doesn’t that sound up my alley?), and Darling Magazine.

My second open-ended question was “What other feedback do you have?” 

Hands-down, the most frequently mentioned thing was the variety. You said, over and over, that your favorite thing about this blog dabbles in a little bit of everything, but still manages to hang together.

When given the opportunity to say whatever you wanted in the free form, you said you loved the personality posts, the twitterature link-up, and Stitch Fix posts. Several of you pointed to specific posts from the past year that made a big impact on you, or a new favorite book you found through this blog. (Hooray!)

The phrase “kindred spirits” appeared with regularity. I love that.

My very favorite comment just might have been this one: “I feel like we are friends. Is that weird?” (Nah.)

Quite a few of you wanted to know a little more about my family. You might have noticed that I’m kinda sorta talking about everybody by name a little more often these days. Now that I’ve been blogging for two and a half years (!!) I’m thinking of writing a post formally introducing them all to you. Maybe.

A couple of you said you had trouble subscribing by email. I’m so sorry. I switched services a few months ago: would please try using this new link and see if that works for you?

Thanks again for participating in the survey! If there’s anything you want to tell me that you didn’t tell me there, feel free to leave it in comments.