Survey Says….

Oh I love a good game of Family Feud.
Then again.. I like words.. and statistics.. and I’m pretty darn good at Family Feud if-I-do-say-so-myself. =)

When I set out to survey my readers, I must admit, I felt like nobody really read my blog anymore anyway so I was starting to think that some of these decisions didn’t really matter much. And now after the survey, I can see that I was wrong about a lot of other things, too.

Still, I only expected to get a dozen or so responses on my Classic Housewife Reader Survey. I hoped for 50. I GOT 48. You ladies rock. (I can say “ladies” because unless all of my male readers just simply didn’t respond.. I don’t have any. Except my husband who occasionally peeks in but didn’t take my survey.) And that’s not surprising but I will tell you, there were several things that I DID find surprising.

The Results:

~ SIXTY-FIVE percent of you found my blog through another blog! The numbers for Facebook and Twitter were much lower than I thought they’d be!

~ 63% of you have been reading my blog for less than 6 months (and 38% of that is less than ONE month!) That tells me several things actually.

~ Most of you watch for blog updates on Facebook – wow really? Followed closely by actually going to the website. (“Really?” again..) Followed by Google Reader or something similar. I never would have guessed.

~ An astounding 79% of you read the blog at least once a week. Sincerely, I am blessed. I had no idea. That 79 % was divided almost evenly between weekly, 2-3 a week, and daily/almost daily. I’m humbled and speechless.

~ More than half of you interact with the blog on Facebook, and more than half of you are also bloggers. The results for following on Twitter and Pinterest? Notsomuch.

~ The majority of my readers are stay home wives/moms, ages 25-45, married (or widowed) with 1-6 kids that they homeschool. Almost all of you, in fact, though a few of you were older or younger, single, without kids, non-homeschoolers or women who identify themselves as work from home or career moms. I welcome EVERYONE here. =) We are ALL MOMS. (Or mom’s to be.)

~ Nearly all of you are very interested (or at least semi interested) in reading about all topics here. Though I have to say that I was hugely blessed by the number of you that said you are very much interested in reading about my faith – 63%.  This has been on my heart lately and I wasn’t expecting that at all!! But all of these results confirm what I’ve been thinking in my head, that I’d like to return back to more variety. I just didn’t know if I’d lost all of my interested readers. Thank you. =)

~ And last but not least.. I was surprised (and a little scared) that 33% of you said the ideal posting frequency is 5 times a week. And a few of you even picked 6 or 7! However, 31% of you also said your ideal is THREE times a week. Consistency is not one of my strengths. (Just keeping it real..) So I’ll tell you now: my personal goal is to shoot for at LEAST 3. Maybe 5. Some weeks may be only 1 or 2.

That’s the end of the numbers part of the survey. And that was exciting enough as it was (well, to me anyway) but then I got to the comments.
Oh the comments!

Y’all just bless my socks off. First of all, I gave y’all an out. I flat out asked you to be honest about the worst thing and made it anonymous and not one of you pointed out my obvious faults with consistency and follow through. I thank you for not pointing out the obvious. From the bottom of my heart. =) Since I already know that I have those weaknesses to work on, some of the other comments were:

• switch to a double wide sidebar
• Your side bar is a bit cluttered.  I love being able to see a lot of the information in it though like the books that you are reading.  I’m not sure what you could cut out but maybe you can think of something.  : )
• it’s just a little plain. I recommend pretty-ing it up. : )
• You might try moving some things from your sidebar down to the bottom. There is a lot going on there. It’s things I want to see, but not all at once.
• Improved quality of pictures.

I’m noticing a trend here, you? I think the overall gist is that I can work on the visual aspect of my blog a little. And you know what? I agree. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come in and stared at my sidebar and tweaked it and moved things around and thought.. “what needs to go? How can I make this better?” I have some idea now and I just need to get working on it. But for the prettifying? I have to tell you that the thought of digging in the code right now is pretty TERRIFYING. I’m kind of out of practice. In my head it’s like a scene from a horror movie — “Stay away from the code!!” We’ll see, though, because I like the idea of a bigger footer to move some stuff out of the sidebar. I’ll keep it in mind…

And then I moved on to the “best thing that you want to see more of” comments and I nearly teared up, y’all. Thank you. So much. For your kind words.

• I love having glimpses into your homeschooling life.
• Encouraging, uplifting posts
• Love all your homeschooling ideas.  We’ve been h/s for 5 years now and it gets tough keeping it fresh.
• Younger tot/ preschool stuff, but only because that is my current situation. : )
• Your sense of humor.
• Husband encouraging, I can’t get enough of ways to continue to do that.
• Photos
• I love your blog…I enjoy reading posts from a like-minded mom.  I especially love your homeschooling posts.
• favorite websites and curr choices
• I like your honesty. I like that you don’t present your life as perfect, but you do it in a lighthearted way. I look forward to reading more.
• What attracted me to your blog was the 10 horrible very bad days.  : )  I am a new homeschooling mom.  Just started in November.  Its nice to know lots of homeschooling moms have bad days, esp. the one that have been doing it for a while.  I enjoyed reading on how to alleviate or prevent those days and sometimes you can’t!  You just have to switch directions.  : )
• I love your ideas on Christ-centered holidays, and would love to see posts about them!

As you can see, not just pretty compliments but some really good advice here! We’re a little past preschool but Little Prince is 6 and I do want to post more stuff at his age level, as well as more holiday stuff and more photos. I love the idea of more husband encouraging. In fact.. I’ve already acted on that. How would y’all like to see “Marriage Mondays” here starting next Monday? And.. there may or may not be a new camera in my future. =)

Okay, last one. I gave you a free for all, a place to add anything else you wanted. Some of you did. Here’s some of them:

• I started reading your blog for the mix of posts…family life plus faith plus homeschool made for a great balance. Then you started writing more and more about homeschooling. Since that’s not relevant me, I quit coming around so often.
• I enjoy your site mainly because it’s great to see that there are others like me out there that embrace their role as a stay at home mom in a more traditional sense.    It’s not something to be ashamed of or looked down upon as it seems to be.
• I appreciate you being open to sharing your daily life.  Please know that it helps to inspire me!  Thanks
• More posts! : ) maybe guest posters can help?
• All I know is every time I read your blog, or see how you do things, or see your homeschool choices, the more I think, “man, she and I would make great friends….” (<– AWWWW… Now I wish this wasn’t anonymous..)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HONESTY. (And more sweet comments.) That first one is exactly what I was afraid of, and what I wanted to know (And why I suspect most of my readers have been around less than a year.) I will be honest with you.. I was struggling with the time to post often, and I haven’t been getting to any of the non-homeschool posts in my head, save one here and one there. I didn’t intentionally drop the other topics, and I do want to bring them back. I think I will still post more about homeschool than anything else. Because that’s a large part of what we do around here.

There are changes afoot. Good ones. I recently joined iHomeschool Netwerk and let me tell you.. these ladies are amazing teachers, inspiring, challenging me to grow and learn and build my blog and be a better blogger. But not in ways that are going to compromise my integrity, my time commitment with my children or anything else. I feel positive and hopeful and I’m very much looking forward to blogging now, unlike the ho hum blogging of the past few months. My outlet, my mojo, it’s back.

And it’s good to have you ladies along with me on my journey.

God’s blessings to you all.

Photo Credit: Some rights reserved by Mykl Roventine