An overnight email from Vuelio:

How’s your blog doing? How big is your audience, and what are you doing to grow it? Is blogging a hobby, an awareness-raiser, or a money-spinner?

We’ve joined up with Canterbury Christ Church University to launch our first ever UK Blogger Survey in a bid to find out what blogging is all about in 2016. We’re asking bloggers all over the country what kind of blogs they’re writing, how popular they are, and how commercial they want to be.

The survey takes just seven minutes to complete.

We know you’re busy, so we’ll be entering all respondents into a prize draw. We have one iPad Mini 4 and one Lily Drone to give away – and the survey closes at the end of next week, so don’t delay!

We’ll also give respondents a sneak peak of the findings prior to publication, so you’ll know where you stand in relation to your peers – socially speaking – giving you an edge on the competition.

So I took the survey and got a sneak peek at the findings up to my input and that of 503 others at the time I took it.

Some interesting but not surprising metrics.

For instance, the top four reasons people say why they blog:

1. It’s a hobby – 34 percent
2. To express my thoughts and opinions – 21 percent
3. I plan for it to be my main source of income in the future – 13 percent
4. To become established as an expert in my field – 12 percent

And a series of connected questions close to my heart:

• Question 7 asks “In a typical week, how many times are you contacted to promote a particular product or brand?” Over one third (35 percent) said more than seven times.
• Question 10 asks “How do PRs pitch to you?” with almost 99 percent saying by email and 41 percent saying social media.
• In multiple-choice question 12, it was good to see a clear majority of responders (61 percent) say “Sponsorship disclosure is important for every collaboration.” But I wonder what it will take to get that figure closer to 100 percent in the future.
• In ranking-question 13 on “the challenges of working with PRs,” 63 percent scored this challenge 1 and 2 on the scale of 1 = most challenging and 4 = least.

Some work still to do, then.

If you write a blog, add your voice to Vuelio’s survey and see all the results. Closes at the end of next week (which I guess means either Friday February 26 or Sunday February 28).

(Dilbert cartoon at top by Scott Adams via Dilbert.com)