The Difference Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 Readers

I’m lucky to be able to draw a direct comparison between this blog and my wife’s travel blog Lanzarote Information. They were started at the same time, and they enjoy broadly equal levels of traffic. But there the similarities end, and It has been fascinating charting the differences in the way readers behave and react.

Image: Francesco Marino / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You see, you and I are Web 2.0 people. We like to be part of the conversation, and we like to be part of an online community. But our terms for that are very different to the readers of my wife’s blog. They are Web 1.0 people – they are still in the “Broadcast web” mode. Nothing wrong with that, but it means we need to be adaptable when we move into different niches.

Let me show you what I mean:

Comments

My site averages 9 comments per post

Julie will get one or two if she’s lucky

Her readers see the web as a great place to go for information, but not somewhere to participate

Email Subscribers

She’s consistently beaten this blog and now has around 30% more email subscribers than I do. And they are really, really engaged. When she asks a question in an email, dozens reply. Her open rate on emails is over 90%, which is astonishing compared to mine at 60%.

Her readers are totally comfortable with using email as their primary communication source, and they are also much more comfortable with giving their email addressees out. You and I, however might use Twitter, comments, Wave, Facebook or something else to talk to each other.

RSS Subscribers

This blog has four times the number of feed subscribers, reflecting the fact that readers here are much more web savvy, and would prefer to stay in touch with blogs using the feeder service.

Conversion Rate

We’ve already talked about how her subscribers open more emails. Well, once they’re open, they are far more likely to buy something as well. Almost three times more likely! Web 1.0 readers haven’t been burned by so many scam marketing campaigns over the years, and seem to need much less proof and trust to actually buy something.

Expectations

This is a weird one. Julie’s readers have some quite bizarre expectations of what she should be doing for them. I’ll give you a couple of examples: She put a post up with a list of Wi Fi Hotspots on the island, and one lady emailed her asking if she could print it off and post it to her in Ireland, as she didn’t have a printer! Another man asked her to email him the list of events she posts every month. When she suggested he should subscribe either to RSS or email updates he responded that he didn’t do that kind of thing, so would she please just email him a link to the post each month.

Neither example is too onerous, but it just shows how differently people used to Web 1.0 think. I don’t imagine any of you would dream of asking me to print a post and send it to you!

The Point

So what’s the point of all this? I’ve learned a lot about it from observing the differences, and we have been able to change our strategies over time to reflect that. The learning point is that we can often fall into treating “Readers” as a mass of people who all think and act like we do. And that’s a mistake, and one which can become bigger when we move into other niches. The fact is, most people in the world don’t use RSS readers, most haven’t heard of Google Wave, many have never been of the receiving end of an email marketing campaign, and lots don’t know anything about affiliate product sales, for example.

You can’t judge a blog’s success using one set of metrics. If you looked at my wife’s blog’s Alexa ranking and RSS stats compared to mine, you’d dismiss it as not being a valid comparison. But if you compared the income of the blogs over the last three months……..well, put it this way: She’s going to be driving an Audi R8 sooner than I am.

Who else runs blogs outside of the blogging niche? What have you found?

Other interesting stuff:

1/ How to make money from blog advertising

2/ Making money blogging is easy

3/ The elements of a blogging brand

Naomi Dunford said:

…Beyond Blogging is probably going to become one of those standard products that everybody in the industry buys…