Blogging Statistics 2022: 270+ Useful Statistics for Growing Your Online Presence

The rapid growth in internet access has presented numerous opportunities in content marketing and e-commerce. Blogging provides a convenient way to leverage these opportunities.

However, for you to have an impact with blogging, you need the right approach. These statistics will provide you with the information you need to make sound data-driven decisions.

Who will benefit from these statistics?

These statistics will be useful to anyone who is interested in leveraging online content including:

• Bloggers, especially beginner bloggers, who want to make an income online from blogging.
• Content and digital marketers who want to increase the effectiveness of their online marketing efforts through blogging.
• Small businesses that wish to leverage the power of blogging and other content marketing techniques to acquire leads and drive sales.

Some of the insights you can expect

Some of the important insights you will get from looking at these statistics include:

• How much can you realistically expect to earn from blogging?
• What is the best platform to start your blog on?
• Does blogging still work as a marketing tool?
• Should you incorporate emerging trends such as video into your blogging?
• Why you need to optimize your blog or website in terms of design, speed and security.
• Which is the most reliable traffic source for long-term growth?
• Where the growth opportunities in blogging going to come from?

1. Statistics on Blogging Popularity and Growth

#1. Statistics on number of websites/blogs and bloggers

1. In the United States, there were an estimated 31.7 million bloggers in 2020. The number of bloggers in the United States has increased from 27.4m in 2014 to 31.7 in 2020 (Statistica, 2021a).

2. There are currently (in 2021) 1.21 billion websites in the world but only 263 million or 21.8% are active (Netcraft, 2021).

3. The highest number of websites in the world were created in 2018 where 1.84 billion websites were recorded in February (Netcraft, 2021).

4. In 21 years, the number of websites in the world has increased by 6,018.9 % from 19.8 million in August 2000. The number of active websites has increased by 2,280.2% from 8.4 million active websites in August 2000 (Netcraft, 2021).

• August 2021: 1,211,444,849 total websites
• August 2021: 201,056,429 active websites
• August 2000: 19,798,570 total websites
• August 2000: 8, 447, 214 active websites

5. In one year (August 2020-August 2021), 9,568, 571 active websites were created. That represents 26,215 websites created every day and 18 websites created every minute (Netcraft, 2021).

• August 2021: 201,056,429 active websites
• August 2020: 191,487,858 active websites

6. It is estimated that there are over 600 million blogs worldwide (Hosting Tribunal, 2021). On only one blogging platform (Tumblr), there were a total of 496.1 million blogs as of April 2020 on the microblogging site Tumblr (Statistica, 2021b). The number of blogs could actually be much higher considering the large number of blogging platforms available.

#2. Statistics on creation of web content creation

7. There are an estimated 3.6 billion webpages on the internet (as of September 2021) but the number could be as high as 50 billion depending on the estimation method used (Worldwebsize, 2021)

8. In 2021, there were 85.6 million posts and 9.8 million pages created in one month(August) on wordpress.com. That is roughly 2.8 m posts a day, 1,981 posts a minute and 33 posts a second (WordPress, 2021a)

2. Blogging Income Statistics

#1. Statistics on blogger earnings

1. According to ConvertKit (2017), the average blogger earned a mean net income of $38,016 in 2016 after deducting expenses (n=835 bloggers)

2. 14% of the bloggers were able to earn a full-time income blogging (more than $72,165 for those with families and $33, 805 for those without) (ConvertKit, 2017).

3. Results from Convert Kit correspond well to our own meta-analysis (Indie Bounty, 2021) of 7 blogger surveys (2007 to 2020) covering of 7,038 respondents. In this analysis, 15% of bloggers earned a gross income of over $30,000 a year. Here is the breakdown of earnings.

• 8% of bloggers earn over $10,000 a month ($120,000 a year)
• 12% of bloggers earn over $5,000 a month. ($60,000 a year)
• 15% of bloggers earn over $2,500 a month ($30,000 a year)
• 19% of bloggers earn over $1,500 a month ($18,000 a year)
• 31% of bloggers earn over $500 a month ($6,000 a year)
• 47% of bloggers earn over $100 a month ($1,200 a year)

To put this into perspective, the real median personal income in the US was $35,808 in 2020 (FRED, 2020).

4. Blogging has created many millionaires. Some of the bloggers who have made over a million dollars from blogging (based on income reports) include:

• Melyssa Griffin: $283,680 a month (December 2016 report)
• Adam Enfroy: $281,776 a month ( June 2021 report)
• Heather Delaney Reese: $222,857 (August 2019 report)
• Michelle Schroeder-Gardner: $139,233 a month (January 2017 report)

5. Blogging can be a fairly passive way of earning an income. 42% of pro bloggers interviewed by the ConvertKit (2017) survey said that they were able to make more than the median US household income working only five hours a week or less.

#2. Statistics on high-earning blogging monetization methods

6. According to ConvertKit (2017), 65% of bloggers surveyed had a product or service for sale. 74% of bloggers sold digital products (books, courses etc) while 52% of all bloggers offered a service.

7. How much money you make from blogging depends on the monetization method you choose. High earning bloggers make most of their money from online courses and affiliate marketing (The Blog Millionaire, 2018).  Here is the breakdown:

• Bloggers earning over $25,000 a month made most of their money from: courses (80%), affiliates (12%), ads (3%), and sponsored posts (3%).
• Bloggers earning between $7,500 and $25,000 a month made most of their money from: affiliates (38%), ads (30%), sponsored posts (11%), online courses (10%), and services/consulting (1%)
• Bloggers earning between $2,000 and $7,500 a month made most of their money from: ads (35%), affiliates (27%), sponsored posts (14%), services/consulting (7%), and online courses (3%).

8. Bloggers featured in this article made a median RPM of $50 per 1,000 views. Finance blogs had the highest RPMs at $174 per 1,000 views. Mom (Parenting) blogs had the lowest at $30 per 1,000 views (Blog Income Reports).

#3. Statistics on high-earning blogging niches

9. According to The Blog Millionaire Survey (2018), the highest earning bloggers were in the Personal Finance Niche. Here are the niches that are favored by bloggers earning over $2,000 a month.

• Personal Finance- 24%
• Marketing- 21%
• Food- 17%
• Lifestyle- 15%
• Mommy- 12%
• Travel- 11%

10. The most popular niche among bloggers (according to the ConvertKit, 2017 survey) was personal development. 42% of bloggers who responded to the survey were involved in this niche. Other popular niches were:

• Entrepreneurship- with 33.5% of bloggers
• Small Business- with 29.3% of bloggers
• Online Business- with 26.6% of bloggers
• Productivity- with 26% of bloggers

11. The least popular niches (with less than 5% of bloggers involved) were: Home improvement, outdoor recreation, Social Enterprise, Interior design, Sustainability, Sports, Science, News, Non-profits, Celebrities, Real Estate, Politics, Law, Insurance, Race, Automobiles, Gossip (ConvertKit, 2017).

#4. Statistics on blogging expenses

12. With blogging, you need to spend some money to make money. According to ConvertKit (2017), bloggers spent an average of $15,895 a year ($1,324 a month) in expenses.

13. When starting out blogging, you can run your blog for very little. The ConvertKit survey (2017) found that bloggers who were not making money from their blogs spent $953 a year or $79 a month in expenses.

14. The profit margin in blogging can be quite high because of the low blogging expenses. Most of the blogs in this report had over 80% profit margins. To put this in perspective, a traditional small business has an average profit margin of 10%. (Venturespark, 2021)

3. Statistics on Blogger Characteristics

1. Blogging is most popular with young adults. Roughly 38% of bloggers fall between 25 and 35 years (ConvertKit, 2017).

• 23% are older than 45 years
• 8% are younger than 24 years

2. Bloggers are more likely to be female. 62% of bloggers are female while 38% are male (ConvertKit, 2017).

3. Bloggers are generally well educated. 91% of bloggers have qualifications beyond high school while 30% of bloggers have advanced degrees (a master’s, doctorate or professional degree). (ConvertKit, 2017)

4. Bloggers are more likely to be married. 69% were either married or in a domestic partnership while 22% were single (ConvertKit, 2017).

5. Bloggers are more likely to have children. 52% of bloggers had children while 48% had none (ConvertKit, 2017).

6. Most bloggers (24%) are motivated to get into blogging because they want to be self-employed. Here is a breakdown of various motivations for starting a blog (ConvertKit, 2017)

• Become self-employed-24%
• An outlet for creative expression- 16%*
• Build an audience- 15.5%*
• Teach what they know-13%*
• Earn more money-10%*

7. Money plays an important role in blogging. Although only about 10% of bloggers get into blogging to earn more money, 73% of bloggers use money as a way of gauging the success of their blogs (ConvertKit, 2017).

4. Blogging Platforms and WordPress Statistics

#1. Statistics on blogging platforms/content management systems

1. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform and it is used by 42.6% of all the websites in the world (W3Techs, 2021a)

2. Of the remaining 59% of websites, 36.7% do not use a content management system (CMS) while 22.3% of websites use other content management systems (W3Techs, 2021a)

3. According to W3Techs (2021a), the top 5 most popular content management systems are:

• WordPress (64.7%)
• Shopify (5.4%)
• Joomla (3.3%)
• Squarespace (2.5%)
• Wix (2.4%)

4. WordPress is especially popular with bloggers and businesses.  76% of bloggers use WordPress as their website and blogging platform (ConvertKit, 2017) and 61% of B2B Companies Use WordPress as Their CMS (Backlinko, 2020b)

#2. Statistics on WordPress plugins and themes

4. There are 58,287 WordPress plugins available as of 2021 (WordPress, 2021b)

5. According to WordPress (2021b), the top 5 most popular WordPress plugins all have over 4 million downloads and these are:

• Contact form 7 (5m+ downloads)
• Yoast SEO (5m+ downloads)
• Classic Editor (5m+ downloads)
• Akismet Spam protection (5m+ downloads)
• Elementor (5m+ downloads)

6. There are 8,219 WordPress themes available as of 2021. Many of these are free (WordPress 2021c)

7. Theme Forest (Envato Market), one of the largest commercial themes repositories, has over 9,800 WordPress themes and website templates available for sale (Themeforest, 2021)

#3. Statistics on WordPress core and Gutenberg editor

8. The latest WordPress version (5.8) has been downloaded over 40 million times since its release in July 2021 (WordPress 2021d)

9. Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor has been installed over 72 million times and has been used to write over 225 million posts since its release in 2018 (Gutenstats, 2021).

5. Statistics on Blog Security

#1. Statistics on scale of cybercrime/hacking

1. According to cybersecurity firm Sophos over 30,000 websites are infected with malicious code daily (Sophos, 2012).

2. According to a report from Cybersecurity Ventures, damages caused by cybercrime are estimated to total $6 trillion USD globally in 2021 and will grow to $10.5 trillion USD annually by 2025 (Cybersecurity Ventures, 2020)

3. Ransomware attacks on businesses are predicted to increase to one every 11 seconds by 2021, up from one every 40 seconds in 2016 (Cybersecurity Ventures, 2020)

#2. Statistics on hacking and businesses

4. According to Symantec, 43% of target small businesses compared to 35% for large enterprises and 22% for medium sized businesses (Symantec, 2016)

5. Although this figure has been disputed by some, it is estimated that 60% of businesses close down within six months of falling victim to a data breach or hack (Bankinfosecurity, 2017)

#3. Statistics on WordPress security

6. According to Sucuri, WordPress is the CMS platform that is most affected by malicious attacks. 90% of infections detected by Sucuri were on WordPress followed by Magento (4.6%) and Joomla (4.3%) (Sucuri, 2018)

* This does not mean that WordPress is necessarily less secure than other platforms, it reflects the fact that most of the websites in the world are hosted on WordPress.

7. 89% of the vulnerabilities in WordPress sites come from plugins (Wpscan, 2021). Other sources of WordPress vulnerabilities are:

• WordPress themes: accounts for 7% of the vulnerabilities
• WordPress core:  accounts for 4% of the vulnerabilities

8. According to Nordpass, the most common password in 2020 was 123456 where over 2.5m users had this password. It takes less than a second to crack this password (Nordpass, 2020). The top 5 common passwords in 2020 were:

• 123456 (2.5m+ users)
• 123456789 (960k+ users)
• picture1 (370k+ users)
• password (360k+ users)

6. Statistics on Blog Speed

#1. Statistics on impact of page loading speed on ranking and bounce rate

1. A study by Backlinko found that the average loading speed for a page in the first page of Google’s results page was 1.65 seconds. They however did not find a correlation between site speed and Google rankings. (Backlinko, 2020a)

2. 53% of visits are likely to be abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load (Think With Google, 2016a)

3. According to a Google study, the slower your website loads, the higher the probability of your visitors bouncing (Think With Google, 2018b).

• The probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds
• The probability of bounce increases 90% as page load time goes from 1 second to 5 seconds.
• The probability of bounce increases 106% as page load time goes from 1 second to 6 seconds.

#2. Statistics on Impact of page loading speed on conversion rates

4. Even a modest improvement in page speed can have a positive effect on business results. According to a study by Deloitte (2020), a 0.1s site speed improvement led to:

• Increased conversions by between 8.4 % to 10.1% depending on industry
• Retail consumers spent almost 9.2% more
• More engagement with page views increasing by 7% to 8% depending on industry

5. A study by Portent (2019) on impact of page speed on conversion rates found that:

• A 0-4 second load time is best for conversion rates
• The first 5 seconds of page load time have the highest impact on conversion rates
• Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5)

6. According to a study by Unbounce (2019), nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed influences their likeliness to buy from an e-commerce site

7. According to Unbounce (2019), 45.4% of the visitors are less likely to make a purchase from a slow e-commerce site while 36.8% are less likely to return to the site.

#3. Core Web Vitals Statistics

Core web vitals are a measure of user experience.  The three main core web vitals are Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout shift and First Input Delay. In June 2021, Google started using Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal. Other factors (and not just loading speed are taken into account)

8. Contentful Paint (LCP) is a measure of the amount of time it takes to load the largest elements of your webpage (such as an image, text block or video) in the viewport (i.e. visible area of the webpage). An LCP of less than 2.5 seconds is good while a LCP of more than 4 seconds is poor (Google, 2021).

9. 43% have good LCP performance on mobile (below 2.5s) while 53% of websites have good performance on desktop. 22% have poor LCP performance (over 4s) on mobile while 17% of websites have poor performance on desktop (HTTP Archive, 2020).

10. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a measure of the unexpected shifting of elements of your web page. A CLS of less than 0.1 is good while a CLS of more than 0.25 is poor (Google, 2021).

11. 60% of websites have good CLS performance on mobile (below 0.1) while 54% of websites have good performance on desktop. 21% of websites have poor CLS performance (over 0.25) on both desktop and mobile (HTTP Archive, 2020).

12. First Input Delay (FID) is a measure of how soon visitors can start interacting with your web page while it is still loading. An FID of less than 100 milliseconds is good while an FID of more than 300 milliseconds is poor (Google, 2021).

13. 80% of websites have good performance on mobile (below 100ms) while 100% of websites have good FID performance on desktop. 20% of websites have poor FID performance (over 300ms) on mobile (HTTP Archive, 2020).

#4. Statistics on increasing your page loading speed

14. Having large webpages can slow down your site. In 2021, the median page weight on desktop was 2174KB (2.2 MB) while the median page weight on mobile was 1925.9 KB (1.9 MB) HTTP Archive, 2021). Google recommends a page weight of less than 500 KB (Think With Google, 2018b)

15. You can reduce your webpage size by reducing the size of your images. Images account for about 45% of the average web page weight. The median image size on desktop was 988.5KB on desktop and 881.9 KB on mobile (HTTP Archive, 2021).

16. A large number of http requests will also slow down your site. In 2021, the median number of requests by a webpage on desktop was 74 requests while on mobile was 69 requests HTTP Archive, 2021). Google recommends having fewer than 50 requests (Think With Google, 2018b)

17. Having a slow server from an unreliable web hosting company will also slow you’re your site. According to Google, the average time to first byte (how fast and responsive a mobile web server is) should be under 1.3 seconds (Think With Google, 2018b).

7. Statistics on Blog Design

1. According to a study by Missouri University S&T (Sheng et. al. 2013), it takes a very short time (less than 0.18 seconds) for people to form the first impression of your website.

2. When assessing your site, visitors will focus on certain parts of your website. According to the Missouri University S&T study (Dahal. 2013), here are the sections people look at the longest:

• The logo: 6.48 seconds
• The main navigation menu: 6.44 seconds
• The search box: 6 seconds

3. According to a study carried out by researchers from the UK (Sillence et. al. 2004), 94% of websites visitors use design to from create a first impression.

4. According to the UK research (Sillence et. al. 2004), some of the design factors that will cause your visitors to mistrust and reject your site even before reading your content include:

• A complex and busy layout that makes it difficult to navigate to the important sections
• Poor use of background and text color
• Irrelevant popups and banners that try to sell something
• Text that is too small to read

5. A similar study from Stanford University (Fogg et.al. 2003) found that 46% of visitors use design to assess the credibility of a website.

6. If you have a business website, what do your visitors want to see first? According to KO Marketing (2015):

• 86% want to see your products and services
• 64% want to see your contact information
• 52% want to read about your company (in your about page)

7. If you have a business website where you sell products or services, 46% of your visitors will leave if they cannot tell what your company does or offers. Below are the top reasons that cause visitors to leave and the percentage of visitors that leave because of the mistake (KO Marketing, 2015)

• Not being clear about what your company does- 46%
• No contact information- 44%
• Animated ads- 42%
• Poor design/ navigation- 37%

8. Other common design factors that will annoy your visitors include: automatic video, intrusive livechat, sliders, tiny text and stock photos (KO Marketing, 2015)

9. Here are the most common web design mistakes that small businesses make (as  identified by web designers- Goodfirms, 2019):

• Crowded web design- 84.6%
• No call to action- 38.5%
• Hidden navigation- 30.8%
• Bad web typography- 26.9%
• Poor use of white space- 19.2%

10. Major reasons why visitors leave a website Goodfirms, 2019:

• Slow loading- 88.5%
• Non-responsive website-73.1%
• Bad Navigation-61.5%
• Outdated design- 38.5%
• Poor content structure-34.6%

11. Color also plays a major role in repelling or attracting visitors. According to research by Top Design Firms (2021a), 39% of respondents said they appreciate color more than any other component of a website’s design.

12. According to Top Design Firms (2021a), 21% of consumers will leave a site because of outlandish colors. Most respondents preferred primary colors with 46% of them preferring color blue for a website.

8. Blogging Traffic Statistics

1. According to ConvertKit (2017) the average traffic bloggers get is between 22,602 (least popular month) and 52,806 (most popular month) although the median traffic was much lower at between 400 (least popular month) and 2,000 (most popular month)

2. According to Orbit media (2020), most bloggers used social media to drive traffic to their blog social media (84%). Other popular ways of driving traffic were:

• SEO- used by 63% of bloggers
• Email marketing- used by 66% of bloggers
• Paid services- used by 15% of bloggers
• Influencer collaboration- used by 12% of bloggers

3. However, according to most bloggers, social media was the least effective method of driving traffic (Orbit media, 2020). The most effective methods were

• Influencer outreach where 39% of bloggers had strong results
• Paid services where 34% of bloggers had strong results
• SEO where 32% of bloggers had strong results

4. According to Orbit media (2020), a majority of bloggers do some amount of keyword research before publishing a post. Only 17% didn’t do any kind of keyword research. 25% of bloggers did keyword research on all posts.

5. Longer headlines are correlated with more social shares. Headlines that are 14-17 words in length generate 76.7% more social shares than short headlines (Backlinko, 2020).

9. Statistics on Google SEO and Getting Google Traffic

#1. General Google search statistics

1. There are at least 3.5 billion searches that happen on Google every day and 1.2 trillion searches per year based on 2015 data (Internet Live Stats, 2021) but the estimates could be higher.

2. Search Engine Land (2016), estimates that are more than 5.5 billion searches every day and over 2 trillion searches a year

3. 15 percent of Google searches done by users on a daily basis have never been seen before (Google, 2019)

4. In 2021, Google held a 92 % market share of all search engines. Other popular search engines were Bing (2.5% market share), Yahoo (1.5%) and Baidu (1.4%) (Statcounter, 2021a).

#2. SEO benefits and ROI for e-commerce statistics

5. Google is the top referrer of traffic to websites. In 2019, it accounted for 66% of visitors sent to websites. Facebook was next with 5.2%, YouTube third with 4.8% of visitors referred to websites (Sparktoro, 2019a).

6. BrightEdge (2019) had similar results. They found that organic search accounted for the most traffic to websites (at 53%). Other sources of traffic were:

• Paid traffic- 15%
• Organic social media- 5%
• Other sources- 27%

7. Google traffic is also great for generating revenue. B2B and technology companies generated 2x more revenue from organic search than any other traffic source (BrightEdge, 2019)

8. 90% of surveyed global shoppers who visited a shop in the last week said that they searched online first (Google, 2020).

9. Nearly half (47%) of Global shoppers say they use Google before buying something new (Google, 2020).

10. 23% of items being shopped for were prompted by something the shopper said they saw on a Google product (Search, Maps, YouTube) (Google, 2020).

11. Although Google has been the primary way people find out about new products, Amazon has caught up. In 2018, nearly half (46.7%) of US internet users started product searches on Amazon compared with 34.6% who went to Google first. In 2015, it was the reverse. 54% of people searched for products on Google while 46% searched on Amazon (eMarketer, 2018)

#3. Local SEO statistics

12. 30% of all mobile searches are related to location (Think With Google, 2016c)

13. Every month people visit 1.5 billion destinations related to what they searched for on Google (Think With Google, 2016c).

14. 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day (Think With Google, 2016c).

15. 28% of those searches for something nearby result in a purchase (Think With Google, 2016c).

#4. Statistics on Google traffic and rankings

16. Although Google is a top referrer of traffic, a majority of web pages are unable to take advantage of Google. In 2020, 90.63% of all web pages got zero traffic from Google and a further 5.29% of them got ten visits per month or less (Ahrefs, 2020)

17. Backlinks are important for ranking in Google. The number one result in Google has an average of 3.8 times more backlinks than positions two to ten (Backlinko, 2020a).

18. Despite the importance of backlinks, 66.31% of web pages don’t have a single backlink, and 26.29% have links from three websites or less (Ahrefs, 2020).

19. It takes roughly 2 years to rank on the first page of Google. A study by Ahrefs found that the average page ranking in Google’s top 10 results is more than 2 years old and those that rank in position 1 are almost 3 years old on average (Ahrefs, 2017a).

20. Only a minority of newly published webpages (5.7%) will rank in Google’s top 10 results within a year (Ahrefs, 2017a).

#5. Google CTR (Click Through Rates) statistics

21. The number one result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7% (Backlinko, 2019).

22. The top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks and most users don’t scroll past the 5^th result (Backlinko, 2019).

23. Some of the things you can do to increase your CTR include having a keyword or a question in the title. The Backlinko study found out that titles with keyword had a 45% higher CTR while those with questions had a 14.1% higher CTR (Backlinko, 2019).

24. You can also increase CTR by optimizing for snippets. A featured snippet will get 8.6% of the clicks (on average).

25. Featured snippets reduce the number of clicks that go to the first result on the search results page. When there’s a featured snippet at the number one position, the page ranking below it will get 19.6% of the clicks. For search results without a snippet, the first result will get 26% of the clicks (Ahrefs, 2017b)

26. 12.29% of search queries have featured snippets in their search results (Ahrefs, 2017b).

#5. Zero-click searches statistics

27. In 2020, 64.82% of searches on Google (desktop and mobile combined) were zero- click searches, that is, they ended in the search results without clicking to another web property. (Sparktoro, 2021).

28. In 2020, only 33.59% of the searches resulted in clicks to organic results while 1.59% of searches resulted in clicks to paid results (Sparktoro, 2021).

29. In 2019, 5.98% of searches resulted in clicks to a Google property (e.g. YouTube, Google Maps etc) (Sparktoro, 2019b).

#6. Voice Search Statistics

21. 27% of the global online population use voice search on mobile (Think With Google, 2018a).

30. 58% of consumers used voice search to find information on a local business in the last 12 months (BrightLocal, 2018).

31. Majority of voice search users used a smartphone (56%). Desktops/laptops (28%), tablets (26%) and smart speakers (18%) were also commonly used for voice searches (BrightLocal, 2018).

32. 46% of voice search users look for a local business on a daily basis (BrightLocal, 2018).

33. 24% of adult Americans (around 60 million Americans) own a smart speaker.  53% of smart speaker owners have two or more smart speakers (Smart audio report, 2020).

10. Statistics on Blog Readership and User Engagement

1. 60-80% of people read blogs regularly (Hubspot, 2020).

2. WordPress.com estimates that over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month (WordPress, 2021b)

3. Readers on WordPress.com also actively engage with bloggers and they leave over 81 million comments every month. (WordPress, 2021a)

4. According to Databox, about 68% of visitors will be new visitors (i.e. visitors who have never been on your website before). This means that only 32% are likely to have been to your site before (Databox, 2020)

5. 73% of readers will skim though blog articles (HubSpot, 2017a).

6. You can increase how long people read your posts by including multimedia content. 57% of readers thoroughly read a multimedia article (HubSpot, 2017a).

7. Most people don’t actively read online content. 55% of people who click on a post spend less than 15 seconds actively on a page (Time, 2014)

8. 66% of attention on a normal media page is spent below the fold (Time, 2014).

9. On average, visitors will read about 20-28% of the content on a webpage (Nielsen Norman, 2008)

10. 59% of people share headlines without reading the content (Independent, 2016)

11. You can build credibility and get people to read your by improving how your website looks. 46% of website visitors use the design of the website to judge a website’s credibility (Fogg et. al., 2003). Other ways visitors judge credibility include:

• The structure and organization of the website (28.5%)
• Focus and depth of information on the website (25.1%)
• The motivation driving the owner of the website (14.8%)
• How useful the information is (14.8%)

11. Mobile Statistics for Bloggers and Content Marketers

#1. Statistics on impact of mobile

1. About 50% of the world’s 7.8 billion people now own a smartphone. In 2021, 3.9 billion people owned a smartphone with the Asia-pacific region (56%) and middle-east and Africa (14%) having the largest number of smartphone users (Newzoo, 2021).

2. The number of active smartphones is actually higher than the number of users indicating some people own several smartphones. The number of active smartphones is estimated to be 4.6 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to 5.3 billion by 2024 (Newzoo, 2021)

3. The top 3 countries with the highest number of smart phone users are China (918.5m), India (439.4m) and United States (270m) (Newzoo, 2020)

4. The smartphone penetration rate in India (31.8%) and China (63.8%) still lag behind that of the United States (81.6%) indicating potential for future growth (Newzoo, 2020)

5. 15.4% of smartphones (703m) are expected to be 5G ready by 2021 and this will grow to 45% by 2024 (2.39 billion) (Newzoo, 2021)

6. In 2021, 56.9% of web traffic came from mobile while 40.3 % came from desktop and 2.8% from tablet (Statscounter, 2021b).

7. In 2021, the average time spent on apps globally was 4.2 hours a day. This was an increase of 30% compared to two years prior (App Annie, 2021)

8. The amount of time that the average American spends on apps has surpassed how much time they spend watching live TV. In 2020, the average American watched 3.7 hours of live TV a day, whereas they spent 4 hours on their mobile device (App Annie, 2021).

#2. Mobile e-commerce statistics

9. The global mobile commerce market reached a value of US$ 628 Billion in 2020 (IMARC group, 2020).

10. $143 billion was spent on the appstore in 2020 (App Annie, 2021)

11. Mobile traffic accounting for 70% of all traffic to ecommerce sites in 2020 up from 53% in 2019 (Wolfgang Digtal, 2020).

12. Mobile traffic was responsible for 57% of all online retail revenue in 2020 (Wolfgang Digtal, 2020).

13. 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day (Think With Google, 2016b)

14. 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results (e.g., “click to call” option) (Think With Google, 2019).

12. Statistics on Blog Content and Content Creation

#1. General blog content creation statistics

1. The average blog post took 3 hours and 55 minutes to write in 2020. This is 63% longer than in 2014 where the average time spent was 2 hours and 24 minutes (Orbitmedia, 2020).

2. The average blog post was 1, 269 words long in 2020. This is 57% longer than in 2014 where the average blog post was 808 words long (Orbitmedia, 2020).

3. According to Backlinko (2020), the average blog post ranking in Google’s top 10 results contained 1,447 words.

4. Longer posts get more backlinks. Content longer than 3000 words gets an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than content shorter than 1000 words (Backlinko, 2019)

5. Most bloggers publish one blog post a week. According to Orbit media (2020), here are the publishing schedules:

• One post a week- 22% of bloggers
• 2-6 posts per week-17% of bloggers
• One post a month- 16% of bloggers
• One post per day-3% of bloggers

6. The most popular types of post with bloggers are ‘How to’ posts where 77% of bloggers wrote ‘How to’ posts. Other popular blog post types were Lists (at 57%) and News and Trends (at 47%) (Orbitmedia, 2020)

#2. Statistics on importance of grammar in content creation

7. Three quarters (74%) of British web users pay attention to the quality of spelling and grammar on company websites and more than half of them (59%) would avoid doing business with a company that made obvious spelling or grammar mistakes on their website (Real Business, 2013)

8. Bad grammar may affect your Google rankings. While grammar is not a Google ranking factor, page rank seems to be correlated with grammar where pages with low PageRank also have bad grammar (Google Search Central, 2011)

9. Despite the importance of good grammar, 43% of bloggers don’t have a formal editor and they do the editing themselves. Only about 23% of bloggers have a formal editor while34% of bloggerseither have more than one editor or show their work to a few other people to read before they publish (Orbitmedia, 2020)

#3. Statistics on importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in content creation

10. In 2020, Liam Porr created an entire blog using AI (GPT-3). The blog got 26,000 visitors in two weeks and only one person noticed that it was written by A.I. (Liam Porr, 2020)

11. Bloomberg News uses an A.I system (Cyborg) to publish roughly 30% of its content (NYTimes, 2019)

12. Press Association, a leading UK news agency, using AI to write as many as 30,000 local new stories each month (Bernard Marr, 2021)

13. Content Marketing Statistics for Bloggers and Small Businesses

#1. Statistics on size and growth of the content marketing industry

1. The global market for content marketing was estimated at US$300.7 Billion in 2020 (Global Industry Analysts, 2021a)

2. This market is expected to grow to a size of US$723.6 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 15.6% between 2020 and 2026 (Global Industry Analysts, 2021a).

#2. Statistics on content consumption

3. In 2020, the consumers spent an average of 6 hours 59 minutes a day consuming content (Double Verify, 2020).

4. The amount of time spent consuming content almost doubled in 2020 compared to 2019 where consumers spent an average of  3 hours 17 minutes a day consuming content. This is attributed to the lockdowns brought about by the Covid 19 pandemic. (Double Verify, 2020)

5. Consumers spend most of their time on social media (48%), news websites/apps (47%) and streaming services (47%) (Double Verify, 2020).

6. The most popular platforms for content consumption were YouTube (43%) and Facebook (40%) followed by Instagram (32%) (Double Verify, 2020).

#3. Statistics on content marketing

7. 79% of B2B marketers reported their organization has a content marketing strategy although less than half (43%) have it documented (Content Marketing Institute, 2021).

8. Less than half of content marketers (43%) have a documented content marketing strategy (Content Marketing Institute, 2021).

9. 31% of marketers report that their organization had been either extremely or very successful with content marketing in 2020 while 54% say they have been moderately successful Content Marketing Institute (2021).

10. Most of the marketers successfully used content marketing to nurture subscribers/audiences/leads (60%), generate sales/revenues (51%) and build a subscribed audience (47%) (Content Marketing Institute (2021).

11. Creating blog posts was the most popular content marketing strategy used by B2B marketers in 2020. 93% of marketers created blog posts or short article (Content Marketing Institute, 2021)

12. Other popular forms of content marketing were: Email Newsletters (77%), Case Studies (68%), Videos (68%) and Virtual Events/ Webinars/ Online courses (67%)

#4. Statistics on content marketing platforms

13. The top ways marketers distribute content organically are social media platforms (89%), email (87%), and their organization’s website/blog (86%) (Content Marketing Institute, 2021).

14. LinkedIn was the top organic social media platform used B2B marketers in 2020 (used by 96% of the marketers) (Content Marketing Institute, 2021). 

15. Other popular social media platforms with marketers were Twitter (82%), Facebook (82%), YouTube (62%) and Instagram (49%) (Content Marketing Institute, 2021). 

#5. Statistics on costs of content marketing

16. Content marketing costs 31% to 41% less than paid search (31% for mid-sized businesses and 41% for larger businesses) (Kapost and Eloqua, 2012).

17. The cost of content marketing goes down over time. Cost per lead for content marketing drops by as much as 80% in the first 5 months (Kapost and Eloqua, 2012).

14. Video and YouTube Statistics for Bloggers and Content Marketers

#1. Video marketing statistics

1. 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy. This number is up from 78% in 2015 (Wyzowl, 2021).

2. More than 99% of video marketers say they’ll continue using video in 2021. 67% of them plan to increase their spending while 29% plan to maintain their spending (Wyzowl, 2021).

3. 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video (Wyzowl, 2021).

4. 85% of people would like to see more videos from brands in 2021 (Wyzowl, 2021).

5. About 69% of people say the prefer watching a short video to learn about a product or service (Wyzowl , 2021).

#2. Video content creation statistics

6. The most commonly-created types of video are explainer videos (73%) (Wyzowl, 2021). Other commonly created videos are

• Social media videos (67%)
• Presentation videos (51%)
• Sales videos and video ads (41% )

7. 36% of marketers make videos a few times a week, while 14% make videos every day (Biteable, 2021).

8. 39% of marketers make videos in-house, while 17% continue to fully outsource video creation (Biteable, 2021).

9. 49% of marketers use online tools to make videos while 58% use professional software(Biteable, 2021).

10. Most marketers spend between $100 and $1,000 on average per video (Biteable, 2021).

#3. Video consumption and engagement statistics

11. In 2021, people watched an average of 2.5 hours of online video per day. This was an increase from the 1.5 hours per day watched in 2018 (Wyzowl, 2021).

12. 68% of consumers say the pandemic has impacted the amount of video content they’ve watched online, with the overwhelming majority (96%) saying this has increased (Wyzowl, 2021)..

#4. Video for business statistics

13. The biggest benefit businesses that use video see is increased traffic to their websites (86%) (Wyzowl, 2021). Other benefits include:

• Increase in the average time users spend on their web page (83%)
• Increase their users understanding of their products or service (94%)
• Helped generate leads (84%) and sales (78%)

14. 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool in 2021. This is an increase from 61% five years ago (Wyzowl, 2021).

#5. Video and social media platforms statistics

15. YouTube (89%) is the most widely used platform by video (Wyzowl, 2021). Other popular channels are:

• Facebook (70%)
• LinkedIn (63%)
• Instagram (58%)

16. Use of Tiktok by marketers is still low (at 20%) but it is quickly growing. Its usage doubled in one year between 2019 and 2020 (Wyzowl, 2021).

17. YouTube (35%) was also the platform that delivered the highest return on investment (ROI) (Biteable, 2021)

#6. Video for traffic and SEO statistics

18. 28.7 % of mobile searches and 10.5% of desktop searches in the US contain a video (Advanced Web Ranking, 2021)

19. Videos increase the amount of time visitors spend on a page. Wistia found that people spent on average 2.6x more time on pages with video compared to those with none. Time spent on pages with video was 7 minutes and 21 seconds while time spent on pages without videos was 2 minutes and 48 seconds. (Wistia, 2016)

20. Posts with videos included will attract almost 3 times more links than a plain text post (Moz, 2009).

#7. YouTube Statistics

21. In 2021, YouTube had approximately 2.24 billion users and this is projected to grow to 2.85 billion users by 2025 (Statistica, 2021d)

22. YouTube is the second most popular social media network after Facebook (with 2.8 billion users) (Statistica, 2021e)

23. According to Similarweb, YouTube is the second most visited website (after Google). In 2021, it got an estimated 31.5 billion visitors every month (Similarweb, 2021)

24. In 2020, there were approximately 37 million YouTube channels, an increase of 23% (Tubics, 2020)

25. Over 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute (YouTube, 2021)

26. Over  90% people say they discover new brands or products on YouTube, whether it’s through how-to videos, unboxing videos or influencer content (Google, 2020).

27. A third (29%) of kids in the US want to become Vloggers or YouTubers when they grow up. A similar survey in UK found that 52.3% of kids aged between 6 and 17 years old wanted to become either a vlogger, a blogger or a YouTuber (CNBC, 2019).

28. According to research by Mathias Bärtl, a professor at Offenburg University in Germany, the top 3% of YouTube channels get 90% of all the traffic (Observer, 2018).

29. Based on this, Prof. Bärtl estimates that 97% of YouTubers will make less than $16,800 a year given earnings of $1 per 1,000 views and 1.4 million views per month (Observer, 2018).

#8. Mobile video statistics

30. Streaming video accounted for over 65% of all mobile traffic by volume (Sandvine, 2020)

31. YouTube accounted for more than 25% of the total worldwide mobile traffic by volume (Sandvine, 2020)

32. 70% of global YouTube watch time happens on smartphones and tablets (Think With Google, 2018c)

33. In 2020, TikTok was the most popular mobile application by volume (Sandvine, 2020)

15. Digital Advertising Statistics for Bloggers and Content Marketers

#1. Digital advertising vs traditional advertising growth statistics

1. In 2021, total digital ad spending is expected to reach $419 billion globally (Magna, 2021)

2. Despite the pandemic, digital advertising grew by 20.4% in 2021 up from 10.4% in 2020 indicating the resilience of the digital ad industry (Magna, 2021).

3. Total digital ad spend in 2021 is expected to account for 64% of total media ad spending (Magna, 2021).

4. Digital ad spending surpassed that of traditional advertising since 2019 and it is expected to grow to 67.8% of all media ad spend by 2024. The growth in digital ad spend is due to the increased amount of time people are spending consuming digital content (Magna, 2021).

5. In 2020, consumers in the US spent more time on digital media (digital video and audio, smartphones, connected TV and subscription OTT) than they did on traditional media was more than that spent on traditional media (traditional TV, radio, newpapers and magazines) (eMarketer, 2021a).

6. Search advertising is still popular among advertisers. In 2020, search advertising accounted for the largest share of digital advertising at $164 billion (49% of total digital advertising) (Magna, 2020). Other popular forms were:

• Social $87 billion (26%)
• Video $45.5 billion (13.5%)
• Display $29.8 billion (9%)

7. In 2020, Google (28.9%), Facebook (25.2%) and Amazon (10.3%) captured the majority of the digital advertising spend while all other channels shared the remaining 35% (eMarketer, 2021b).

#2. Digital Video Ads and Social Media statistics

8. In 2020, global digital video ad spend grew by 14.9% to stand at $45 billion. This was driven mainly by the popularity of short-form video (Magna, 2020).

9. Digital advertising on video accounted for 13.5% of global digital ad spend in 2020 (Magna, 2020).

10. In 2020, social media digital ad spend grew by 17% to stand at $87 billion (26% of global digital ad spend). This was driven mainly by increase in time spent on social media during lockdown billion (Magna, 2020).

#3. Mobile advertising statistics

11. Mobile ad sales (generated by impressions and clicks on smartphones) grew by 15% to reach $246 billion (Magna, 2020)

12. Mobile advertising now accounts for almost 73% of the total digital ad spending globally (Magna, 2020)

13. Mobile ad spending is expected to top $290 billion in 2021 (App Annie, 2021)

#4. Digital Ad blocking statistics

14. In 2020, 843 million devices were blocking ads globally. Almost 70% of ad blocking was done on mobile (586 million users) while the rest was done on desktop (257 million users) (Blockthrough, 2021)

15. In 2020, ad blocking on mobile grew by 10% while ad blocking on desktop grew by 8% (Blockthrough, 2021)

16. Research by Juniper Research predicts that ad blocking will cost publishers almost 27 billion by 2020 (Juniper Research, 2016)

17. The top reason people give for blocking ads is that the ads are too many (48% of respondents) (GWI, 2019). Other major reasons why people block ads are:

• Ads are annoying or irrelevant (47%)
• Ads are intrusive (44%)
• Ads contain viruses or bugs (38%)
• Ads take up too much screen space (38%)

18. 57 percent of polled online users in the US would rather filter ads than block them all, while 71 percent said they understood that publishers rely on advertising to keep their content free (eyeo, 2019)

16. Affiliate Marketing Statistics for Bloggers and Content Creators

#1. Affiliate marketing growth statistics

1. Affiliate marketing spending in the US is estimated to be $7.4 billion in 2021 and this is expected to grow to $8.2 billion in 2022 (Statistica, 2019). In 2016, this figure stood at $4.8 billion (Forrester, 2016).

2. 81% of large US companies (with more than 200m in revenue) use affiliate marketing to as an opportunity to expose their customers to new and compelling product and service (Forrester, 2016).

3. 86% of large US publishers (the top 5,000 US sites by traffic) use affiliate marketing to monetize their content (Forrester, 2016).

4. Approximately 15% of the digital media industry’s revenue now comes from affiliate marketing (Business Insider, 2016).

#2. Affiliate Earnings Statistics

5. The top reason publishers give for using affiliate marketing is that it makes it easy to monetize their site (according to 76% of publishers) (Viglink, 2017). Other reasons for using affiliate marketing are:

• It bring in additional revenue (65%)
• It does not disrupt user experience (45%)

6. 17.6 % of affiliate marketers are able to earn above the annual median US income* while almost half earn less than $20,000 a year. (AffStat, 2016)

• $100,000 a year: 9.6%
• $40-100,000: 8%
• $20-40,000: 17%
• Under $20,000 a year: 48.4%
• Prefer not to answer: 17.1%

* Real median income of a US worker in 2020 was $35,805 (FRED, 2020)

7. Top sources of traffic for affiliate marketer are Search Engine Optimization (69.2%), Social Networks (67.3%) and blogging (64.5%) (AffStat, 2016)

8. The top niche for affiliate marketers (based on number of top affiliate programs available) is Fashion (with 23.3% of top affiliate programs) (AM Navigator, 2015).

#3. Affiliate Networks and Platforms Statistics

9. In 2016, the most popular affiliate network was ShareAsale (for 55.8% of affiliates) (AffStat, 2016). Other popular affiliate networks were:

• Rakuten Linkshare (40.64%)
• CJ affiliate (43.03%)
• ClickBank (35.8%)

11.  How do affiliate marketers choose affiliate networks? According to AffStat (2016), the top 3 considerations that affiliate marketers have when choosing an affiliate program are:

• How relevant the product or service is to their audience (18.2%)
• The reputation of the affiliate program (15.9%)
• The affiliate network or tracking platform that hosts the affiliate program (11.6%)

12. Most affiliate marketers find affiliate programs by searching for information on the merchant’s website (24.5%).  They also find information by searching on Google (19.2%) or on the affiliate or CPA network website (17.5%) (AffStat, 2016)

13. How do merchants choose affiliates to work with? Most of them (64%) want affiliates that have expertise in the merchant’s niche (vertical) (Viglink, 2017). Other common considerations are:

• The overall quality of the affiliates’ site (59%)
• Number of followers/visitors (53%)
• Look and feel of affiliates’ content (46%)

14. ShareASale, one of the big affiliate networks, paid its affiliates over $1 billion in 2021 (See more)

17. E-commerce Statistics for Bloggers and Small Businesses

#1. Statistics on growth of e-commerce

1. In 2021, the number of digital buyers is estimated to be 2.14 billion (Statistica, 2021c). This represents 27.6% of the 7.8 billion people in the world and 41% of the 5.2 billion people that have access to the internet (eMarketer, 2021a).

2. In 2020, the e-commerce industry was estimated to be worth $4.213 trillion and this is expected to increase to $4.921 trillion in 2021(eMarketer, 2021a).

3. The COVID 19 pandemic helped boost growth of e-commerce in 2020 where global e-commerce sales grew by 25.7%(eMarketer, 2021a).

4. In 2020, global ecommerce sales grew by to stand at $4.213 trillion and this is expected to increase to $4.921 trillion in 2021 (eMarketer, 2021a).

5. In 2020, ecommerce sales accounted for 17.8 percent of all retail sales worldwide and this is expected to grow to 24.5 percent by 2025 (eMarketer, 2021a).

6. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to account for 60.8% of all retail ecommerce sales worldwide in 2021 followed by North America at 20.3% and Western Europe at 12.6% (eMarketer, 2021a).

#2. Statistics on small business e-commerce and adaptation to COVID-19 pandemic

7. 44% of small businesses reported that they made over a quarter of their sales through digital channels during the COVID-19 pandemic (Facebook, 2020)

8. A survey of 1,000+ Canadian small businesses during the pandemic in 2020 found that only 26% had online operations while 74% of the businesses were not equipped to sell or service online (CIBC, 2020).

9. The CIBC poll also found that while other Canadian small businesses were experiencing decreasing sales, 30% of those businesses that had online operations saw an increase in sales while 25% of those businesses had sales similar to pre-COVID levels (CIBC, 2020).

#3. Statistics on popular e-commerce companies and platforms

14. Amazon is by far the most successful e-commerce platform and it showed even greater growth during the pandemic. In 2021, Amazon accounted for 40.4% of all e-commerce sales.

15. Other popular e-commerce companies are Walmart (7.1%), eBay (4.3%) and Apple (3.7%) (eMarketer, 2021b).

16. Amazon experienced amazing growth during the pandemic. In 2020, Amazon’s US sales grew by an incredible 40%. In 2021, Amazon US sales are projected to grow by 15.3% to stand at $367.19 billion (eMarketer, 2021b).

17. While not everyone can build an e-commerce platform at the scale of Amazon, there are tools and software that can help you create an e-commerce platform. Once of the most popular e-commerce a platform is WooCommerce which powers 28% of all e-commerce stores (BuiltWith 2021).

18. Other popular e-commerce platforms include Shopify (20% of stores) and Magento (8%). WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento collectively build 56% of all e-commerce stores (BuiltWith 2021).

18. Email Marketing Statistics for Bloggers and Content Marketers

#1. Statistics on impact of email marketing

1. Over half of the world’s population (51.6%) use email. There were 4.03 billion email users globally in 2020 and this number is expected to grow to 4.5 billion in 2025 (Radicati Group, 2020).

2. The total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day will exceed 306 billion in 2020, and is forecast to grow to over 361 billion by year-end  2024 (Radicati Group, 2020).

3. The global e-mail marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027 (Global Industry Analysts, 2021b).

#2. Statistics on benefits and effectiveness of email marketing

3. About 87% of B2B marketers use email to distribute their content. Email is the second most popular method of organic content distribution after social media (Content Marketing Institute, 2021)

4. About 85% of Americans check email at least once a day and 25% check their emails many times a day (The Inbox Report, 2017).

5. About 38% of Americans are likely to make a purchase after reading an interesting marketing email (The Inbox Report, 2017).

#3. Statistics on average Return on Investment (ROI) for email marketing

6. Email marketing has high returns. For every dollar brands invest in email marketing, they receive 42 dollars in return in 2019 up from 38 dollar sin 2018 (Litmus, 2021)

7. The travel and tourism industry has the highest ROI ($53/dollar spent) from email marketing (Litmus, 2021). Other  industries that have high ROI are:

• Media, publishing, sport, events and entertainment: $45 return for every dollar spent
• Retail, ecommerce, consumer goods and services: $45 return for every dollar spent
• Marketing, PR and advertising: $42 return for every dollar spent
• Software and technology: $40 return for every dollar spent

#4. Statistics on email open rates

8. According to GetResponse, the average email open rate is 22.02% across all industries (GetResponse, 2020). A Mailchimp study gives a similar open rate of 21.33% (Mailchimp, 2019).

9. According to GetResponse, Non-profits (30.85%) and restaurants/food (30.09%) have the highest open rates while technology (19.9%) and internet marketing (14.9%) have the lowest (GetResponse, 2020).  

10. According to the Mailchimp study, Government (28.8%) and hobbies (27.7%) have the highest open rates while daily deal/e-coupons (15.06%) and vitamin supplements (15.03%) have the lowest (Mailchimp, 2019).

11. According to GetResponse, 21% of emails are opened within one hour of sending while over half of the emails (55.09%) will have been opened within four hours of sending (GetResponse, 2020).

12. Adding a video to your email can increase your open rates. Email without videos have an open rate of 19.2% compared to 24.7% for those with a YouTube video and 38.9% for those with a Vimeo video (GetResponse, 2020).

13. Here are some important metrics on email across industries (GetResponse, 2020).

• The average email click-through rate is 2.13 %
• The average email click-to-open rate is 10.12 %
• The average email unsubscribe rate is 0.12 %

19. Blogging Statistics for Small Businesses

#1. Statistics on businesses with blogs/websites

1. Roughly 63-72% of all US small businesses have a website. Although this number is quite high, it means that a third of all US small businesses still don’t have a website. Below are percentages of small businesses without a website from different surveys:

• Backlinko (2020) survey: (28%) (sample size =502)
• Top Design Firms (2021b) survey: (28%) ( sample size =500)
• Clutch.io (2018) survey: (36%)  (sample size = 351)
• Visual objects (2020) survey: (37%) ( sample size =500)

2. Almost half of all small businesses without a website (44%) plan to create one in 2021 (Top Design Firms, 2021b).

3. For those businesses without a website, the common reason given (by 27% of respondents) was that a website was not relevant to their industry (Clutch.co, 2018). Other reasons given were:

• The cost of starting was high (26%)
• They preferred to use social media instead (21%)
• Lack of technical challenges (15%)

#2. Statistics on cost of starting and operating a business website

4. Although cost is commonly given as a reason for not having a website, it is possible to create one quite cheaply. Nearly a third of small businesses created their websites for less than $500. (Clutch.co, 2018). Below are other starting costs:

• $501-$1,000- 18%
• $1,000-10,000- 30%
• More than $10,000- 15%

5. A big reason why businesses are able to create blogs cheaply is the wide availability of DIY website builder software. A third of small businesses (32%) use DIY software to create and manage their websites (Top Design Firms, 2021b). Other ways are:

• Using in-house employees- 46%
• Working with an agency-34%

 See how you can create a business for your website for less than $50 a year

#3. Statistics on effectiveness (ROI), uses, and challenges of having a business website

6. Having a blog for your business has many benefits. It can help you get more leads, more sales and better search engine rankings and more visitors. Businesses with blogs:

• Get 55% more website visitors (Hubspot, 2017)
• Acquire 126% more leads (Hubspot, 2015)
• Acquire 97% more inbound links (Hubspot, 2017)
• Have  434% more pages  indexed by search engines (Hubspot, 2017)

7. Almost one-quarter (24%) of small businesses start a website to showcase their products and services (Visual objects, 2020).  Other reasons for creating a website are to:

• Allow customers to make a purchase (17%)
• Establish credibility and authority (17%)
• Be found in search engine results pages (14%)

8. The biggest challenge of having a small business website is getting traffic. One-in-five (21%) of small businesses say getting traffic is a challenge (Top Design Firms, 2021b).Other major challenges faced are:

• A lack of time and knowledge to maintain a website (14%)
• Changes in search engine ranking (12%)

#4. Statistics on getting SEO traffic for businesses

9. A B2B blog receives an average of 282 visits from organic search each month (Backlinko, 2020b).

11. Most B2B companies (51%) realize the importance of creating educational content on their blogs for generating traffic (Backlinko, 2020b).

• The majority (51%) publish both educational and company-focused content
• 38% publish purely educational content
• Only 8% publish purely company-focused content

10. B2B blogs that create education content receive 52% more organic traffic than those that mainly publish content about their company. (Backlinko, 2020b)

20. Internet Statistics for Bloggers and Content Marketers

#1. Statistics on internet access, growth and penetration

1. As of 2021, 65.6% of the world’s 7.8 billion people are now online (5.2 billion internet users) (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

2. The number of people with internet access has increased from 1.97 billion (28.8% of the global population) to 5.2 billion (65.6% of the global population) in 11 years (2010-2021). (Internet World Stats, 2021b)

3. Three regions account for 82.9% of the world’s total internet users (Asia-54.9%, Europe-10.6% and Africa-17.4%) (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

4. Africa and Asia not only have high numbers of internet users but also have the largest potential for future growth because internet penetration rates are still low. Africa has a penetration rate of 43.2% while Asia has 63.8%. Compare this with North America (93.9 % penetration) and Europe (88.2% penetration). (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

#2. Statistics on internet speeds

5. The global average mobile internet speeds were 55.07 Mbps (download) and 12.35 Mbps (upload) while the fixed broadband internet speeds were 107.5 Mbps (download) and 58.27 Mbps (upload) (Ookla, 2021).

6. The countries with the highest mobile internet speeds (download) were United Arab Emirates (190.03 Mbps) and South Korea (189.2 Mbps) while the countries with the slowest mobile internet speeds (download) were Afghanistan (6.7 Mbps)   and Venezuela (7.6 Mbps) (Ookla, 2021).

7. The countries with the highest fixed broadband internet speeds (download) were Monaco (256.7 Mbps) and Singapore (256.03 Mbps) while the countries with the slowest fixed broadband internet speeds (download) were Cuba and Turkmenistan (both at 4.61 Mbps) (Ookla, 2021).

#3. Statistics on internet costs

8. The global average mobile internet costs in 2021 (in USD/GB) was $4.07 while the average global fixed broadband internet speeds in 2020(in USD per month) was $78 (Cable.co.uk, 2020 and 2021)

9. The countries with the most expensive average mobile data costs (in USD/GB) were Equatorial Guinea ($49.67) and Falkland Islands ($44.56) while the countries with the lowest mobile data costs were Israel ($0.05) and Kyrgyzstan ($0.15) (Cable.co.uk,2021) 2021)

10. The countries with the most expensive average fixed broadband costs (in USD per month) were Eritrea ($2,666.2) and Mauritania ($712.5) while the countries with the lowest fixed broadband were Ukraine ($6.4) and Syria ($6.7).(Cable.co.uk, 2020)

#4. Statistics on internet languages

11. The language with the highest number of internet users is English which has 1.19 billion users (25.9% of all internet users). (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

12. English also dominates as the language of choice for websites. 62.8% of all websites in the world are in English (W3Techs, 2021b)

13. Chinese is the second most popular language (19.4% of all internet users) followed by Spanish (7.9%), Arabic (5.2%) and Portuguese (3.7%). (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

14. If you have your content in English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese, you would be able to reach 62.1% of internet users worldwide. (Internet World Stats, 2021a)

15. Many languages with large number of users tend to be left out. In 2021, India had 755.8 million internet users yet only 0.1% of blogs in the world were in Hindi (Internet World Stats, 2021a, W3Techs, 2021b).