Target Demographics for Internet Writers

Know your audience. That was probably the best writing advice I ever received. While this advice was in regards to writing fiction, the same tenet holds true for writers producing content for the internet.

Whether you are writing for pleasure, blogging as a diary, or producing content for profit, the target demographics of your audience is critical to success. Even if you are writing a blog just for yourself, you are your target audience. However, that exception aside, most people write online to disseminate information to a wide audience, which means generating page views. Knowing internet target demographics will yield just that.

So who is online and what do they do? Let's break down your audience so you can see who you are writing for.

Target Demographics for Internet Writers

While the internet has a global reach, for the sake of simplicity, we'll stick to the United States. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 71% of Americans use the internet. That's a big number, but there it is. Your online writing has a potential audience of 215 million people.

Gender

Out of that 215 million, your target audience is split nearly 50/50 between men and women, with slightly fewer women using the internet than men.

Bottom line: for internet writers this means that male or female-oriented content should do about equally as well.

Age

As you probably suspect, a greater percentage of young people use the internet as opposed to older individuals - 87% of adults between the ages of 18-29 use the internet as compared to 32% of people over 65. For the internet writer, this target demographic is telling. Content geared toward younger audience members has a much larger target audience in terms of percentage.

Bottom line: More young people use the internet, so content aimed at this target demographic should yield higher page views.

Rural vs. Urban

Urban and suburban households have about the same percentage of internet users - roughly 73%. Approximately 60 % of people living in rural areas use the internet.

Bottom Line: With greater concentrations of people in urban and suburban areas, content targeted to this audience should yield higher page views. In addition to greater internet penetration, the raw numbers of people in metropolitan areas is much greater than rural areas - roughly 255 million urban and suburban persons as opposed to 55 million living in rural areas.

Income

There's a large disparity between internet usage based on income. With individuals who make under $30,000 a year, just over half of this demographic uses the internet. Almost 100% of individuals making over $75,000 a year use the internet.

These numbers are a bit misleading once the percentage of individuals is compared to the actual numbers. With almost 75% of the total population earning under $75,000, the raw numbers of people make up for the lower percentages of internet usage.

Bottom Line: Internet content targeted at lower income individuals has a greater than equal audience in comparison to higher income brackets despite lower percentage of internet usage.

Education

While over 90% of college graduates use the internet, only 40% of people who did not graduate high school do so.

Bottom Line: These numbers can be a bit deceptive as the survey is based on adults. Therefore it does not take into account those under 18 who have not graduated high school.

Overall

To see a more complete breakdown of internet target demographics, click HERE.

Target Demographics of Internet Usage

These statistics are vitally important for the internet writer. Rather than recite the information here, check the link to the Daily Internet Activity Chart located below to see what people do when they go online. The percentages are based on the percentage of internet users. What this means is that out of the 71% of Americans who use the internet, this is what these users do on a typical day.

For the internet writer, the key to this chart is seeing what people do online. After checking email, the main thing internet users do is use a search engine to find information. The next highest category after that is checking for news.

If you check out the chart, notice the large numbers of individuals who use the internet to explore a hobby or craft. Another large percentage uses the internet to research a product or a service. Ever wonder why those craft articles do so well? Why product reviews get page views? It's all in these numbers.

You can access the Daily Internet Activity chart by clicking HERE.

Conclusions

By utilizing internet demographics, web writers can target their audience more effectively, increasing page views and potential ad revenue.