HUS Survey: Key Findings
Responses are still trickling in on the Strategic Directions Survey, but with over 200 submitted, I have lots of good data and thought you would be interested in the key findings.
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Although this is just a small percentage of daily traffic, it’s clearly comprised of regulars, who are the readers I value most. Thanks to all of you who took the time to weigh in. I learned a lot from this exercise and will do my best to tailor future offerings around your feedback.
Key Findings
1. You’re past college age, and lots of you are guys.
The age breakout is what I expected, based on comments on the blog as well as the mail I receive. This is interesting because it suggests that posts specifically targeting college students will not be relevant to many readers. There’s also a clear opportunity to produce more content for those in the 30-40 range.
2. You’re highly educated! More than half of you have gone beyond a 4 year degree.
3. Just half of you are looking for a relationship.
There’s a lot of interest in relationship dynamics beyond acquiring a partner.
4. Most of you have been reading HUS for a while.
5. And nearly all of you want HUS to include content for both sexes!
This surprised me – by popular demand I will commit to writing more posts for the guys. (You may have noticed that my most recent post is specifically addressed to a male reader.)
6. Most of you don’t comment, but check out why not.
More than half of you lurk. I’m going to do my best to make you feel comfortable jumping in, but for now let me say that as long as your input is constructive and sincere, you are most welcome here. I moderate all aggressive and adversarial commentary, so there are no sharks – the water’s fine!
7. I’m gratified that over 90% of you rate HUS content Very Good or Excellent.
8. Here’s the order of topics that you are Interested or Very Interested in:
- General relationship advice: 93%
- Science of sex: 84%
- Susan’s analysis of research: 81%
- Behavioral economics: 74%
- Personal advice to specific reader: 70%
- Online Dating: 52%
- Hookup Culture: 52%
- Debunking Red Pill: 46%
- Sexual Assault: 23%
I already do a lot of the top 5, so for me the interesting result here is in the lower four. I have done very little with online dating, so will add more posts on that.
With regard to the red pill, just 8% are not at all interested. I get a lot of male Red Pill Survivors here, so it’s bound to come up now and then but will not be a focus.
And apparently few want to discuss the changing landscape of sexual assault. Fair enough, I’d sort of figured that out.
The bottom line is that readers want to solve specific problems as well as increase their general understanding of how mating works. I see a lot of curiosity here and little tolerance for hostile debate or interest in contentious issues.
9. New products with the most interest include:
Podcasts: 70%
eBooks: 54%
I’m surprised by the podcast result – it beat out videos significantly. I’m a big fan of podcasts myself, and listen to them both in the car and when I’m working in the kitchen. So that’s something I’ll be exploring in the near future. I have several ebooks in development, and will focus on the topics of most interest to you.
10. Lots of you left helpful comments.
Some made me cry:
I have been reading your blog since my senior year of high school four years ago. Hooking Up Smart has been indispensable as I dabble in murky world of college relationships. You serve as a voice of reason that encourages me to expect more of myself and to expect more of peers. Whenever I find myself circling Cosmopolitan and Buzzfeed relationship quizzes in a bout of self-pity, I always return to HUS to get actual advice and face reality again. I have also shared your posts with friends whenever I see the chance (like when a good gal-pal went through a tough break-up). You taught me that I deserve to be respected and loved in my relationships. Please know that you have had a profound impact on outlook on relationships, love and myself. Thank you.
I am a 56 year old married mother of a 24 year old daughter living in NYC. My beautiful daughter is very disheartened by the current culture and truly fears that she will end up alone! It literally breaks my heart. I try to learn as much as I can about the mindset of young guys so I can help her deal with the BS she frequently encounters. I personally like when you answer letters from readers and address their specific issues, even if it is from a young guy. I glean a lot of information from the letter writer and your response. Let me take this opportunity to say that I think your blog is fantastic and your advice is always dead on. Let me also say that your blog always has an undertone of optimism no matter what the topic. This is so important.
and smile:
Great blog! Susan’s writing is engaging, thought provoking, and funny. This site helped me through the breakup of a 3.5 year long relationship and has helped me to navigate the dating world ever since. I would love to see more posts with advice from reader questions as the author always does a great job of addressing those. I’ve also loved her posts about red flags, filtering, and boundaries– anything that’s given me concrete actions I can do to improve at dating has been really, really helpful. The posts about campus rape and college hookup culture have not interested me quite as much since I’m 26.
I really enjoy that you back up what you say with data.
Hooking Up Smart’s use of Behavioral economics and research based evidence, connected to todays hookup culture, makes Hooking Up Smart unique and VERY interesting to singles around my age (30) who don’t want general Cosmo level advice/articles. A lot of singles are genuinely interested in relationship dynamics on a deeper level. Some of us (myself included) are fascinated by the psychology behind behavior and the power dynamics that follow.
My favourite part is the grounded, sensible, usually warm advice on relationships. I even wrote out the three elements of good sex as a kind of mantra. I’ve gotten a little older and more mature over the course of following your blog and I’ve found it’s really shaped my perspective. Keep up the good work!
I love hooking up smart! I’ve been reading it for a long time now. Susan, you always post interesting and well written pieces that are relevant. I have learned cool and important information from your blogs, I LOVE reading it. I also go through the archives to reference old articles or just to learn more. I also like that you try to include both sexes in the discussion, this is awesome, so you can understand each other better. I also like that you do offer specific advice/articles for both males and females too. All are important, I think, for the blog…You clearly care a lot about what you are writing about, and who you are writing for. So thank you! : )
I am clearly not your core audience, but I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for the interesting content you’ve posted. While its primarily catered at college and post-college females it still makes an interesting read (I think of it as intel into the mind of my target demographic… and it has proven quite enlightening at that).
I’m a big fan of the in-depth yet analytic/strategic aspect of your posts, please keep it this way!!
I like data that debunks red pill myths, because it really makes me feel more secure in my desire to meet just one great woman, and not feel like less of a man for that…For almost four years your blog and presence has really given me the encouragement to try to become a better person all the time, in all areas of my life. Thank you!
Many offered awesome concrete suggestions and constructive feedback:
I think you’re on the right track and have already collected a lot of important/strategic information. So I would be interested to keep this information organized and updated into an easily retrievable way, much like those sites for medical information such as webmd.com and others.
Include the over 40 singles more often!
Regarding focusing on women, men or both – I voted for both but neither expect nor desire a 50/50 split. The blog was meant to focus on women but I consider it impossible to do so without sometimes addressing men.
I like HUS for the research sourcing. I think SW is able to handle the research quite well (which is saying something as this would usually be terrible on a non academic blog). I also like reading life experiences from the young women; what is important to them. This is left field but it might be interesting if the blog had a forum. I do wonder if other responses will say they also enjoy the research sources sourcing as the best aspect of the blog. Wouldn’t surprise me.
I would love to buy a book from Susan Walsh. If you choose to go to book route, please develop a print version of your ebook (I prefer to read print books). I’d love to read more scientific-based relationship advice from Hooking Up Smart.
I would love some occasional guest posts providing insight into the male mind.
Hi Susan, I love your blog and really appreciate the high quality research and advice. However, it seems that you may be targeting college age (or recently graduated) people. I’m a woman in my early 30s and need guidance too! I wish I had a resource like this blog when I was younger. I will be 35 before I know it but still haven’t figured out dating, especially in NYC. Would it be possible to target some of your amazing advice at my demographic (older millennials who want to find real love and marriage)? Thanks again!
One small thing: I’ve found the comments section seems to be dominated by the same people. While I enjoy their perspectives it feels a bit like watching a small, familiar ground retread the same ground. I may be more inclined to comment if there was a greater mix of voices (and yes, I realize the best way to create a bigger pool is to jump in myself).
I was thinking maybe a section of married women sharing marriage anecdotes. Like how they resolved a conflict, when to pick their battles, things they had accepted about their husbands and things that had changed…a bit of a glimpse on how things are after the I dos.
I’m a long time reader of HUS. When I first discovered the site I really enjoyed the content and strategies you had for trying to get a relationship. In the last year or so I’ve becoming increasingly less interested in the contentry and no longer have HUS as must-read. While a lot of the science and politics discussions are interesting, I’m most interested in actionable advice.
More posts about how to be in a relationship successfully: eg, how to resolve conflicts like hanging out w his friends as opposed to your friends, how much time to spend together vs. apart, what to do if one of you is an introvert and the other an extrovert, how to decide if you should move in together, etc.
I love your dating advice and refreshing data analysis. What I like less are the recent post about assault, college rape etc. For me, that’s not what hus is about, and it also takes away much of the originality since you read about that stuff everywhere.
It would be nice for HUS to post very sex positive articles from certain other sources (blogs, online/print magazines, etc.) and comment on those as well. Basically, are these authors, many of whom are young, some still in college, writing with an agenda and if so, what does HUS think of the agenda and what do the readers think of the topics being discussed.
And some pointed out things that require immediate attention!
The pop up ads are painful on my iPad.
There are way too many intrusive ads and pop ups. It really takes away from the reading experience sometimes
You have many broken links.
Sometimes I will go to the blog’s homepage on my desktop computer or work computer, and the number of comments in the comment bubble on the upper right hand side of the post is inaccurate.
I wish it was easier to access old posts and that things were categorized better.
Please affiliate with some different mobile advertisers. Half the time I try to visit on my phone, the site automatically takes me to a new one, forces me into the App Store, and won’t even let me return to HUS when I press “back” in my browser.
Please know that I take all your comments very seriously, and will be addressing these issues as best I can. A note about advertising on the site: The ads on the site pay HUS’ expenses, which have become fairly significant over time. I have recently been experimenting with a variety of ad networks to find the ads that are the best fit. However, I am sensitive to complaints about intrusive ads – I hate them myself. So please do feel free to contact me with specific feedback about a particular ad and how it’s behaving. I’ve already deleted two pop-ups, and will consider any change that improves your experience here.
I hope you’ve found the survey results interesting and informative. I certainly have. By all means, use this opportunity to leave more feedback in the comments!
And for those of you who are lurking, now’s the time to introduce yourself – I promise we won’t bite!
Let’s discuss!
