After a fairly heated discussion over the validity of the SA Blog Survey, I have just received a corrected slide from the statistics company.
So, as you can see, 2.9% of bloggers are making over R3000 a month. I’m not going to go into a big discussion around this, if you’re interested in more information, click here.
Clearly, I’m doing something wrong ;)
Yet still – how are we meant to trust the other slides if they got this one wrong?
Hi Chris
Thanks for posting this. I would have responded earlier, but I chose to take the day off for my 30th yesterday. Not the best idea in hindsight, but hey. I appreciate how even handed you’ve been about this, but I have to say it annoys me how many people call an entire survey into question because of one mistake. Yes, we shouldn’t have made it in the first place, but these things do happen. Amanda is many things – professional, brilliant, passionate – but she is not (and has never been) sloppy. I can guarantee you this is the only mistake in the survey. I’m actually glad you helped us find it – however painful the experience has been. This kind of thing, in fact, is what makes blogging such a powerful medium. So, thanks, and I hope you can forgive us our slip.
Hi Alistair,
Firstly, well done on the survey, the questions asked were great and the information deduced from the results is interesting and useful to me, personally, and I’m sure others. What a lot of people won’t be realising is that these results tell us exactly who our competitors are, which is invaluable.
Ok, onto the mistake. I’m 100% aware that everyone makes mistakes, or perhaps it wasn’t really a mistake as Amanda explained due to the small sample size, however, it was an issue, clearly, but one which was resolved quickly and effectively, seeing that it was on BizCommunity several hours later. I have no doubt that Amanda is not professional, brilliant and passionate about what she does and who she works with, it was never a personal attack nor an attack at anyone per say, it was just a cry from us bloggers to find out the “pixel perfect” facts :)
I have printed a copy of the results for myself and have started to carefully read over all of them, it’s a great springboard into 2009 and I thank you for that.
Hi Chris
I’ve posted an update of this situation on my blog. Unfortunately another error was found – which makes me look extremely silly, but hey. I just wanted to let you know.
Awesome Alistair, sorry to hear that you came across another problem :( I can only imagine how annoyed you must be and I’m sorry if I added to that stress, I’m just doing my thing hey :)
Nah, it’s all good dude. I’m actually glad – I’d rather the survey was better and I looked a little (or a lot) silly than the other way around. I only get annoyed with the people who are clearly enjoying their criticism a little too much. In emails to us a certain “web strategist” (snort) called the survey “a monumental screw up”. That’s just unnecessary and comes across as more like sour grapes than constructive criticism.
I’m glad that that is your attitude Alistair, it’ll only stand you in better stead from here forth.
I guess my ‘null and avoid’ wasn’t too much better, but I did phrase it as a question at least :)