Female Bloggers Have It Easier 

Part of a new conceptual series entitled "Being Controversial Gets You Noticed".

Anyone who writes a blog and cares about getting traffic directed to it knows how hard it is. I'm often times frustrated by the lack of traffic coming my way. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I've come to the conclusion that women have a much easier time starting blogs and getting traffic than men. The reasons for this are simple, available for everyone to see, and yet rarely acknowledged. First comes the mythology.

Some time ago, an LA Times columnist stated that the blogosphere was male dominated, and it was all the fault of men (I don't have the link anymore sadly). The top male bloggers were keeping women out of the game because they didn't prominently link to many female bloggers. It was all our fault. I believe quite strongly that the opposite is true. Female bloggers aren't as popular as male bloggers quite simply because there are fewer of them around. And in fact, the popularity of the current female bloggers is because of men.

Now for the simple reasons behind this. The first reason is that there are more male readers in the blogosphere than female readers. The second reason is that the vast majority of men in the world (and by extension the majority of blog readers) are heterosexual. There are also only so many blogs that a person can read, which makes people selective. You just can't read them all. So given a choice between reading some guy's blog, or some woman's blog, I think more guys choose a woman's blog.

I think it satisfies a voyeuristic tendency in many people. The internet is very anonymous, especially in what you choose to read. Not only that, but there is such a long standing history of pornography on the internet, that male readers naturally expect that at some point, the female bloggers they read will eventually post naked pictures of themselves on their blogs. Sure... we all claim to go to their blogs for their "fascinating opinions" and to "gain insight in the female mindset", but that's all just smoke and mirrors. Every time we click, we're really just hoping to see a little T&A. That's why anonymous female bloggers tend to be even more popular... because we figure that there's a better chance they'll divulge something dirty, since their name is not attached to it.

Men are such simple creatures aren't we?