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Yesterday ReadWriteWeb Content VP Marshall Kirkpatrick posted the results of a survey that apparently looked at "Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants" and the current pay they receive. The title doesn’t mention tech bloggers but Marshall notes that the survey only went to "20 top-tier tech bloggers and social media consultants". I wonder what makes someone a top social media consultant. More importantly only 10 people participated in the survey. That in itself makes the survey unreliable and probably should not have been posted without more responses. But hey, it hit Digg, apparently that instantly makes it reliable and accurate.

So what do we know about, and from, this survey?

• The survey went to 20 people (including me, I didn’t reply) and only 10 apparently replied
• The 10 participants posted on a wiki page and we have no idea if it was actually 10 unique individuals
• Site founders weren’t included
• We have no way to tell what makes someone a "top-tier tech blogger or social media consultant" - i.e. there’s no benchmark
• RWW was able to grab data for use with their own bloggers in future negotiation
• Apparently RWW bloggers weren’t included in said survey unless Marshall makes a max of $90k
• Less than 24 hours were offered to participate
• There are numerous disclaimers within the survey findings
• Apparently the survey was sent to only Web 2.0 bloggers, not tech bloggers in general
• No mention on U.S or International

One apparent respondent says they make $15/post but $300/hr consulting. That’s hilarious. The real issue is that without knowing A LOT more about the responses and detailed information about the overall situation, it makes it near impossible to take this data for anything. What scares me is that Jeremiah Owyang calls this a "great post" - isn’t he supposed to be an analyst?

Would a blogger pay survey be a good idea? Absolutely! But it needs to be well thoughtout, have appropriate questions and answers, be statistically relevant, and get a diverse range of responses.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under Quick News, analytics, readwriteweb. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.