Elanso

I am very happy with the results of the recent reader satisfaction survey that I conducted a few days ago. If you haven’t filled out the survey, it’s not too late. I am going to keep this survey up and running for a little bit longer so that I can continue to monitor how well I am doing on this blog. My goal here on this blog is to help people learn more about blogging and how they can make money online with a blog. If you haven’t filled out the survey please do, here is your chance to give me feedback so that I can adapt more closely to your own personal needs.

With that being said, I am very pleased with the results. So far I have received 50 survey submissions and the information from these entries are truly priceless. I want to share the survey results with you so far. I know that you are interested in seeing these results. I know for a fact that I have learned A LOT from running this survey and I am very thankful that 50 people took the time out of their day to provide me with this information.

Q.1 Overall, how satisfied are you with my blog?

1. Very Satisfied 19 (38%)
2. Satisfied 23 (46%)
3. Somewhat Satisfied 8 (16%)
4. Not Satisfied 0 (0%)

84% of the people that completed my survey are at a minimum satisfied with my blog. 16% of the people that completed the survey said that they are somewhat satisfied. Not a single person said that they were not satisfied. All in all, I think this is an excellent rating. However, I still want to improve so that I have a higher % of people say that they are very satisfied. I think I can easily do that by following the results of this survey. I think in about three months I can turn around and do another survey and see a huge improvement on this question.

Q.2 Do you trust me and the content I publish?

1. Yes 47 (94%)
2. No 3 (6%)

Wow! That is awesome news. I was honestly nervous to find out what the public felt about me in regards to trust. I am very honest with people and most importantly with myself. However, in the world of blogging, perception is the true key. Even though I am an honest individual it doesn’t matter unless people have that perception. I am so happy that that 94% of my readers trust me. I think also with adjusting how I run this blog based off the remainder of the feedback received in this survey, I will hit 100% next time I run this survey, which will be in about three months.

Q.3 How many articles should I publish per week?

1. 3 Articles per week 12 (24%)
2. 7 Articles per week 31 (62%)
3. 14 Articles per week 4 (8%)
4. 21 Articles per week 3 (6%)

Asking this question was HUGE! I really needed to know how people felt about this. The results are VERY clear to me. The old saying, “An apple a day will keep the doctor away” is true. In order for my blog to stay healthy, I need to make sure that I provide my readers with just ONE apple per day.

It is very clear to me that my readers do not want to get overwhelmed with a ton of posts through out the week. You spoke and I will listen. I will ONLY publish a maximum of 7 articles per week. What I will try to do is release ONE post per day at 12:01 AM CST. Thank you very much for this feedback. Question #3 was HUGE!

Q.4 What Is Your Preferred Method of New Article Notification?

1. FeedBurner Email Notification 8 (16%)
2. I just visit directly when I can 10 (20%)
3. My Free Mailing List 10 (20%)
4. RSS Reader (i.e. Google Reader) 22 (44%)

It is clear that most of my readers read my content using a RSS aggregator such as Google Reader. This is very important to know. Over the last few days I have done a lot of work on improving my Free Mailing List so that people can enjoy this service a lot more.

As it stands at the moment, I have adjusted my mailing list so that subscribers can not only get direct email from me but also receive an email with a listing of my 5 most recent posts. This will ONLY happen once my blog has 5 newly published posts. So with me publishing only one post per day, mailing list subscribers will get ONLY one email every five days that simply provides a re-cap on posts that they might have missed during the week.

In addition to providing post re-caps on my mailing list, I am going to work very hard towards improving the overall quality of my mailing list. While it is very clear that people do not want a lot of volume published on my blog, I can only believe the same to be true with receiving email.

So starting now, when I send you an email through my mailing list, you can totally count on it being something very important. Thank you so much for this valuable information.

Q.5 Does reading my blog help you learn more about making money online?

1. Yes 46 (92%)
2. No 4 (8%)

Once again, just like question #2, I was really biting my nails on asking this question. The foundation of why I publish content on this blog is for helping people learn how to make money online with a blog. If this score was found to be low, I would have been very disappointed in myself. I scored a 96% which is HUGE! I am very happy to know that my blog and my writing actually helps people. Question #7 has information on how I can improve this score to 100%.

Q.6 How often do you visit my blog?

1. A few times each week 35 (70%)
2. Once a day 7 (14%)
3. Multiple times each day 8 (16%)

These numbers are very consistent with question #3. They basically go hand in hand. If readers only visit my site a few times a week and I have too much newly published content, the chances are that many of my readers will miss some killer content that I write. I need to slow things down and do exactly what my readers are requesting. By publishing only one post per day, I will allow for my readers to better absorb the content that I publish and lessen the chance of them missing something.

Doing this coupled with my new focus on my free mailing list will totally assure a very nice blend and perfect balance that I think everyone will not only enjoy but appreciate.

Q.7 What is most important to you?

1. Email List Building Tips 2 (4%)
2. Internet Marketing Tips 5 (10%)
3. Reviews and Announcements of New Make Money Online Programs 4 (8%)
4. Search Engine Optimization Tips 6 (12%)
5. Search Engine Marketing Tips 9 (18%)
6. Tips on Making Money With Existing Programs (i.e. AdSense) 20 (40%)
7. WordPress Tips / Design / Tweaks / Coding 4 (8%)

Question #7 is vital. This basically gives me a road map that tells me exactly what people want me to write about. This is a huge. Based on these results, here is my take on the situation.

My readers seem to be WELL AWARE of the different make money online programs available. People are here to get my opinions on these programs and most importantly my advice on how to make better use of these programs.

For example, I believe that my readers want to know how to make more money with Google AdSense or how to get better conversions on their Pepperjam campaigns. Things like that. This is now very clear to me. Question #7 will play a huge part in the future direction of this blog. I am very thankful that people took the time to complete question #7. I will be more than happy to supply you with the information you requested.

Additionally, I will not ignore the other requests as well and will carefully balance the secondary needs of my readers with providing a nice low stream volume of articles that help with Internet Marketing, bringing out awareness of newly released programs that help make money online in addition to providing search engine optimization and marketing tips. Thank you for this.

Q.8 I might remove all paid banner and text ads from my blog, how does this make you feel?

1. Good - I only clicked a few anyways 7(14%)
2. Very Good - The ads bother me 4 (8%)
3. Doesn’t Matter I Don’t Click Them anyways 24 (48%)
4. Terrible - I really enjoyed visiting your advertisers 2 (4%)
5. Bad - I sometimes clicked the ads. 11 (22%)
6. Excellent - I can’t stand ads on a blog 1 (2%)
7. Very Bad - I click on the ads often 1 (2%)

Question #8 was very important to me personally. I enjoy making a little bit of money on my personal blog, but honestly I really don’t like to have advertisements on my blog. I feel that by having advertisements on my blog it can dilute my blog and take FOCUS away from my content.

I consider my content priceless and anything that takes attention off me and the content that I write is an element that I tend to take very seriously. Based off the results in question #8 is it clear that people don’t click my ads.

That is good information to know. Because I don’t like to have do things that aren’t effective. I don’t want to waste the money of my advertisers nor do I want to take away from the physical appearance of my blog. Having advertisements and banners on a blog is ugly. You know that and I know that. So, if people are not clicking these ads, I so very much want to remove them as they are totally not needed, take away from the physical appearance of my blog and waste money from my advertisers.

Believe me, I have no hard feelings about this and I am actually very happy with the feedback from my readers. I was hoping to see these results so that I could remove the ads. I don’t like ads on my blog and now I know that I can safely cancel these ads and not cause harm to my readers.

Thank you very much! As you know, I have plenty of blogs that make money. My personal blog is very PERSONAL to me and anything that takes focus off me and my content has got to go. All ads from my blog will be removed in the next week or two.

Q.9 How satisfied are you with my current blog design?

1. Not Satisfied - Many things I don’t like about it. 8 (16%)
2. Satisfied - It’s ok 28 (56%)
3. Very Satisfied - Don’t Change It Again! 14 (28%)

Given the circumstances, I am somewhat pleased with these numbers. I was honestly expecting much worse. Fortunately for me, in question #10 which was an open field for people to submit their direct feedback to me, many people provided valuable feedback that related to question #9. As you can see, of all the questions asked in this survey, question #9 is one of my biggest weaknesses.

This lower score was received due to how often I change my blog design. People do not like that at all and I am going to totally listen to my readers on this and discontinue making sudden and shocking changes to my blog.

In the next few days I am going to make some minor changes to my blog based off the feedback received in question #10. However, I am NOT going to change my theme. We are all stuck with this theme and I feel that this current theme holds a strong foundation. The only thing I am focused on here is just making some minor improvements to help people find things much easier and to make my blog less cluttered. Thank you so much for your honestly here on question #9.

Q.10 Help me improve, what feedback can you offer me? What is important to you?

Asking readers to submit their open feedback was really one of the smartest things I could have done in this entire survey. I received 34 responses and all of them just blew my mind. I couldn’t believe how much TIME people invested into providing me with such amazing feedback. Many entries in question #10 exceeded 250 words. Amazing! Thank you so very very much. You do NOT know how valuable this feedback is and how much it will help me in the future of running this blog.

It would be overwhelming to publish all 34 responses here on this blog post, so what I want to do is publish a few of the ones that impacted me the most and will influence me the most with the future direction of my blog.

I don’t mind if you remove or keep the paid stuff, occasionally I click on a 125 If you change your theme its always great…. but I like your current one very much.

Thank you. I will be keeping the current theme design for a long time. It has a great foundation and based off all the feedback I have received, I can totally make easy improvements to increase reader satisfaction. The ads and all button banners are going to be removed very soon.

I like the space at the top to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter. I don’t like the jumbled tags at the top or the way things in the sidebar are displayed under “Blogs I like to Read,” “My Blog Friends” etc. It’s just crowded and too busy for me.

Thank you for the feedback, I think you are right and will work on correcting these issues to make the blog less cluttered and more useful to people. I think simple is the key and I understand that my blog must be overwhelming to many people.

I have been visiting your blog for a loooong time and you have helped me a lot and did trust you but lately (say this year) most posts are almost adverts disquised as an article. Also, I don’t click your links anymore because they are masked and don’t know where they are going - eg. I clicked a link in a post “John Chow” and it went to some other persons site that paid for the link. After that I never clicked again.

This piece of feedback is HUGE. It ties directly into question #2, “Do people trust me and the content I publish on the Internet.” Thank you so much for communicating this to me. I can’t invest time into correcting my older posts. However, starting today, I will never mask a link URL in my blog again. Readers will have a clear knowledge of what the LINK URL is prior to clicking. This also includes affiliate links.

Hi - just wanted to clarify - what I don’t like about your current blog design is how busy it is - I find all the ads very distracting and I probably leave sooner because it is all too much - I am not against you having ads, but just a few so that the page is less confusing and hectic -

I agree with you 110%. Based off question #8 I discovered that readers don’t click the ads anyways. So now it is an issue of discovering if the ads bother people are do not bother people. The way I feel in this situation is, “Why Risk It?” Why risk bother my readers if I am not running a system that is effective. Everyone and their grandmother knows that people do not CLICK on banners, so why have them? In the upcoming weeks, my entire blog will become 100% ad free. Thank you for the feedback.

This Completes The Survey Results

I want to thank everyone for taking the time to complete this survey. As mentioned in the beginning of the post, I will leave it up for a few more days to get some last minute submissions. However, for the most part, I have collected the needed information to make changes on the blog and to gain a new direction for the blog.

What Can You Do For Me?

I am a simple guy with simple feelings. I am not complicated at all. If someone asked me specifically, “Garry, what do you want out of your blog?” I would say that I want to help others learn what I can deliver to them and I want feedback based on that. I want to know that I am helping people and I want to know when someone reads my posts.

If someone asked me specifically, “Garry, what could your readers do for you to let you know that they read your posts and found them helpful?” I would say that the best way readers can let me know that they read my posts is simply by taking just a few moments to leave me a comment. They don’t have to spill their guts and write 200 word comments. At a minimum, all I need is a simple comment that says, “Hey Garry… I wanted to let you know that I read the post and found it helpful. Nice work.” Of course longer comments that share feedback are amazing. But at a minimum, I’ll take a 10 word comment versus NO COMMENT.

So, for me I am all about helping my readers and I am very particular about making sure I perform and maintain my blog to my best ability to help others. My traffic scores a TON of traffic and one thing that I would like to ask from my readers is to shoot me a comment on my posts.

By commenting on my posts you let me know that you read it. You basically confirm with me that you read my article and I have the comfort knowing that I am not investing time into publishing articles into thin air. I want people to read what I write and most importantly, I want to KNOW that people read what I write.

After you read my articles, it would make me very happy to have at a minimum, just a simple, “Hey Garry, nice work…” comment rather than no comment at all. Quite honestly, it makes me feel good and helps motivate me to continue doing what I am doing.

Thanks again for everyone’s work on providing me with this wonderful information, I am totally excited with the results as it gives me a clear path to travel down. Thank you so very much!

ShareThis