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DC Food Bloggers Survey Results

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Who makes up the D.C Food Community?   What motivates them?  Where do they live?  How are their blogs doing?   How do they measure success?  How do they interact with restaurants, other bloggers, and their readers?

These are fun questions, and here’s how we answered them.

We polled 44 food bloggers in the Washington DC Metro area and asked them 33 questions about their food blogging activity and their backgrounds.  We ran the data and isolated the most interesting statistics we found.

For instance, the typical DC Metro food blogger is a young,  well-educated  female who lives in NW Washington DC .  More specifically, well over 80% of the respondents were women between the ages of 18 and 34 who hold at least a bachelor’s degree.

As we shall see, DC Food bloggers have a wide range of motivations for blogging.  Almost half of them have no goals to earn money from their blogs while others have turned their blogs into full time earnings.

Using the data we collected, we’ve been able to discover their tastes, blogging habits, collaboration practices, and how big a part their blogs play in their lives.

Let’s get to know the DC Flood Blogger Community

So, a group of primarily young, well educated women in Washington DC seem to be almost single-handedly driving the online sentiments for restaurants and food trends in the city .   I wouldn’t be surprised if this partially explains the rise in Organic, Vegan, Whole Foodlike spots and the fall of hot dog joints in the city.  Okay, the second one isn’t exactly true, but if it does happen, we know who is to blame.

It appears that the often heard sentiments about the D.C dating scene hold true, because the majority of this group of young, highly educated, successful women in the D.C area are single.

How Food Blogs are doing

The DC food blog community appears to well established.  70% of  the sites we surveyed have been around for more than one year and of that number, 43% Have been around more than two years.

44 blogs =134,000 Combined Readers per Month

Almost 25% of the blogs surveyed currently attract more than 100 readers per day.  I ran the numbers using the mid-range of the results, and even with some of the lower numbers we’re looking at an estimated combined readership of 134,250 readers per month for the 44 blogs surveyed.

For perspective, if this group of food blogs were a single D.C magazine, it would be among the top publications in the city.

With an estimated combined traffic of 134,000 monthly readers, we wondered if folks might be interested in a more collaborative network.  Looks like there is an opportunity to do something fun here.  If someone can up with a way that can tap this combined traffic in a non-obtrusive yet meaningful way…

imagine how awesome that would be!  *Clears Inbox*

Blog Income

Before we get into income, it’s worth noting that almost half the people surveyed  have made no attempt to turn their blog into a money making venture. It’s all about the passion for food!

With that said, here’s what the income results look like:

So it appears that close to 10% of the blogs we surveyed make more than $500 per month.  Sweet!  We thought we would isolate these high money making blogs to see what makes them tick.

The Anatomy of a Money Making D.C Food Blog

We first took a look at the number one source of income for blogs making more than $500 per month and Google Adsense was the universal winner.

Not too surprising,  Adsense is fairly easy to add to a blog and can be maintained with little effort.  However, there appears to generally be missed opportunities for direct ad sales to local restaurants.  Something to think about.

These top earning bloggers don’t just depend on Google Adsense however.  They diversify their income by hosting events and consulting with restaurants. These sites were typically older than 2 years old and mostly did restaurant reviews.

So in summary…the typical money making food blog

1) Has been around for more than two years

2) Mostly does restaurant reviews (great for the adsense clicking crowd)

3) Earns most of its income from Google Adsense (fairly easy residual income if done right)

4) Diversifies income with offline events or consulting opportunities with local restaurants.

Best of luck if you’re out to make some income for your efforts.

Blogger interaction with their readers

We wondered how else bloggers kept lines of communication open with their readers.  From my personal experience, Facebook is in the top 3 sources of traffic for this blog, and email subscriptions provide a consistent source of loyal readers as well.  We found some missed opportunities with less than half our surveyed blogs having a Facebook page or allowing email subscription.

These are easy fixes that could end up doubling traffic for some blogs.  Go for it!

How DC Food Blogs Interact with Restaurants

A recent survey of online behavior indicated that online reviews are second only to word of mouth (personal advice from a friend) in the ability to influence behavior and perception.  And 80% of these reviews come from 10% of a restaurant’s customer base (Food blogs and reviews on places like Yelp make up the lion share of online reviews).

We asked for advice for restaurants on how to better engage food bloggers and the communities they serve.  Most of the answers were very similar so we narrowed it down to this list of ten.  So without further ado, and as reported by our survey participants, here are

10 Ways for Restaurants to Better Engage Food Bloggers

1) Provide opportunities to meet with the owners and chefs
2) Host blogger Happy Hours
3) Get on Facebook and engage with clients
4) Hold Tweetups
5) Sponsor blogger networking events
6) Blogger nights to sample new menus
7) Monitor the social space and respond to negative feedback
8 ) Put a face to your business and get that person out there and talking to the community.
9) Have more multiple restaurant food tastings
10) Follow the examples of @cocosala and @bourbonsteakdc in the social space.

Not everyone was on board with special events for bloggers.  One response stuck out:

I would say restaurants should focus on what they do (food and service) with each and every customer each and every day. I shy away from special treatment or special events for foodies because that is not the way to provide an accurate picture of what the restaurant does for all customers.

What do you guys think? Would love your thoughts on this and the entire survey in the comments below.

Do Bloggers tend to work with each other

Second to last section, you’re almost there!   So, we wondered how often bloggers work with other bloggers.  1/3 of the blogs surveyed have collaborated with other blogs in the last 6 months.  Not bad, but we think this is one area that could be improved upon that will lead to to sites rising together.  I’ve seen it personally here.  Collaboration works.

We think that this network of D.C blogs serves a valuable purpose.  Not only do they provide great information online, but they help to drive economic activity in the city.  So when we collaborate, and improve as a collective, the entire city benefits.  Thanks to everyone that has participated in this collaborative effort.  Our efforts have even been shouted out on a Technorati Top 100 Small Business Marketing blog.

How bloggers like their eggs (and special thanks)

So this concludes our survey results for the blogger portion (blog readers survey to follow next week).  This was a group effort that could not have been completed without each and every on of you.  See this article as a living document that can be altered and improved upon with your input.  If there is some way you would like to see the data tweaked or a different way of reporting it, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks to our cohosts:  SchmoozingDC (for finding a great sponsor for this survey to help us attract more bloggers -dinner winners to be announced soon) and Spoonbyte (for all the assistance in recruiting bloggers to participate).  If you guys aren’t following them on twitter yet, please do: @spoonbyte and @schmoozingdc

Special thanks to the blogs that wrote articles to share the survey with their readers: Delectabelle, The Soup bowl, Strawberries in Paris, Discojing, Never Turn Down a Cupcake, Barklessvegetables, TCrumbley, Foodie Heaven DC, What Mickey Eats, Tande in DC, Fledgling Foodie, Hungry With Children.

Expect the survey of the blog readers next weekend, followed by a special thanks to each and every one of you.  Seriously, thanks again!

I hope you found this information valuable and fun, and if so please share it with your networks:

[tweetbox width="500" height="50" label="We made it easy"> We made it easy" content=" {Add your own intro} DC Food Blogger Survey Results: http://tinyurl.com/3lpm4jb #dcfoodies #dc"]

Now, without further ado, I present the wackiness that is the D.C Foodie Community.  See how they like their eggs.

CLICK THE VIEW LINK IN THE TABLE BELOW TO SEE WHAT I MEAN.