Where are all the horse people?
Looking at the advertising pages of some of the most popular, professional horse sites, such as Horse Channel, The Horse, HorseWeb, DreamHorse, HorseCity and Equisearch, I see that these sites get between 550,000 and 6.8 million visits per month – not bad for a niche market. Equisearch says that their research shows that over 90% of horse owners are internet-savvy, using the web to look up information and shop for new tack and apparel. Given these numbers, I wonder where all the horse people are when it comes to blog traffic. There has been a marked increase in horse blogs in the last 18 months and some of these blogs are truly well-crafted, well-written sources of information and entertainment. Yet many of the most linked-to sites get less than 10 comments per entry.
I am obviously not privy to the stats of each individual site, so I can only guess at traffic based on comments. It may be that for some reason horse blogs have an unusually large audience of lurkers, who enjoy reading or visiting the sites but decline to comment. However, given how passionate and opinionated most horse enthusiasts are, that seems surprising to me. Another possibility is that the majority of horse owners read their blogs through an RSS reader, as I do myself. This of course means that even though the content is still being read, the actual site isn’t being visited and therefore is registering a misleadingly low visitor count. (It’s for this reason that I visit my RSS sites at least once or twice a week.) Still, a number of RSS readers show how many people are subscribed through the reader to each site, and the numbers are low, if not virtually non-existent.
Of course there are exceptions to this trend, such as the charming and clever Bazzy Boy, winner of the 2007 Webbies Best Animal Blog, which seems to hold an appeal beyond the horse world to pet lovers in general, much like I Can Has Cheezburger? appeals to far more than cat fanciers. Another site with a very respectable number of comments to each post is Fugly Horse of the Day, which provides a scathing commentary on ads for horses taken off of Craigslist and other sources akin to a Go Fug Yourself for horse lovers, albeit with a much more serious message about the perils of backyard breeding. But these exceptions exist at least in part because the blogs have been able to cultivate an audience outside of horse enthusiasts, which does nothing to answer my original question of where the horse people are in relation to blog traffic.
We know the audience exists – after all, the number of horse owners and enthusiasts has risen each year for the last two decades, and a majority of this audience is female, a demographic that lends itself to reading exactly the kind of horse blogs that most owners create – personal, inclusive, and character-specific. The rapid rise in readership of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman shows just how successful this style can be, particularly when presented in an elegant and creative package. The most successful mainstream books on horses of the last few years – The Tao of Equus, Seabiscuit, The Man Who Listens to Horses - all used personal stories to drive the narrative forward and engage the emotionally-driven sentiment that horses produce in even the most jaded of readers.
How do we tap into this audience and, even more on-topic, how do we lead this audience to our blogs? While few bloggers are in it for an income, all bloggers long for readers or we wouldn’t be putting our stories and opinions online. There’s a glaring gap in blog readership here that’s waiting to be bridged – a wonderful opportunity for all of us, if we can just find a way to get our stories across.
I am with you on this one. I have asked myself this same question at least a zillion times (or at least it seems like a zillion!) Figuring out how to get horse people to read horse blogs is a whole strange animal in itself.
interesting observations. maybe you’ll have the magic touch to tap the mainstream horsey audience. i look forward to reading more from you!
MiKael, Michelle,
Thank you both for visiting. I appreciate the comments!
I think the people who read horse blogs the most are horse bloggers themselves. All of my steady traffic comes from the horse blogger community (and my mother’s lesson students). I’ve had a few major traffic posts (Extreme Home Makeover and Budweiser commercials) that garnered search engine attention for a few days, but there are few repeat visits.
Horse people looking for information may come to a specific post that meets their needs, but I don’t know that they become regular readers.
Pioneer Woman is so popular because she’s a fun, engaging writer with an interesting story to tell, and women … whether they’re blogging about cooking, horses, husbands, jobs, whatever, connect with her. I think if we want to get a larger following for the horse blogs, we need to constantly write about relevant topics, things people are interested in, and let our personalities shine through.
Enjoyed reading your comments and the replies. I couldn’t agree with you more. I haven’t written much. Just mostly play. I’ll be back.
Ken
Jackie, I totally agree. I think I’ll be writing a little about that soon, about what works in general, the commonalities of successful blogs. But I’m still not convinced it will work for the horse audience. I feel like there’s something missing that I haven’t figured out yet, so I appreciate the feedback.
Ken, thanks for stopping by! Keep up with the updates from Utah!
I have to confess to wondering the exact same thing at times. Horse people being what we are, one would think we would jump in on topics and have some good discussions.
Goo dluck in figuring out how to knock on the doors out there, and let people know we are here!
I’ll be back for updates, to see if you have made headway, and for progress reports!
Thanks, Mrs. Mom!
I think the most successful horse related blog out there is Fugly Horse of the Day. That site has been fueled simply by word of mouth. People tell other people about it mainly because its author uses humor quite well, writes well and keeps it fresh. Simply put, it has interesting unique content and is entertaining.
Overall though, I’d say that it’s probably pretty hard to be successful as a horse blogger.
For a little more insight into the horse audience, I’ll share some of our stats for my site Equine Now and give you a so you can get a better idea of some specifics. You can follow along if you like by opening our Quantcast Profile since we publicly share our stats there (http://www.quantcast.com/equinenow.com).
The first thing to realize about the horse community online is that it’s dominated by women. The audience is at least 75% female and on Equine Now, I think 90% of the user accounts we have were created by a woman. Women ride and love horses a lot more than men. It’s also usually the woman in the house who takes care of any horses most of the time.
Further sub dividing the audience a bit more, you end up with a few different groups. There’s a large audience of girls under 18 who own a horse or are fascinated by horses. A lot of these girls own a horse, are into hunter jumpers and compete in horse shows.
A larger audience consists of older women 35 and up who generally own a horse for western or trail riding purposes. These women are generally more affluent than the average American (it takes land and property to own a horse) and live in areas that are a bit more rural than most people (not in larger cities). They often live in areas where the internet is an easier form of entertainment than might be the case for someone who lives in an urban environment. This is the group that I think a successful horse blogger needs to cater to.
So, given that, think about Fugly Horse again. It’s a site which gossips and talks about other people’s horses and does it in a scathing manner. For the audience I mentioned above, Fugly horse is the equivalent of the tabloids you see when buying your groceries.