The ATS 2007 Demographic Profile
In Winter of 2007, we ran our third survey to understand the demographic makeup of the people who come to AboveTopSecret.com. For the first time ever, we opened the survey up to visitors as well as members to get a full understanding of our complete audience. In just four weeks, 39,178 people took the survey (11,418 members, and 27,760 guests), which is a sampling of about 7% of the total site visitors for the period.
The Average Age of ATS Visitors
Our first question asked for the age of ATS visitors, and we encountered our first surprise... our visitors skew older than other typical discussion boards. The coveted demographic group of people between 19 and 35 makes up 44.1% of all ATS members and visitors. While a surprising 19.5% are the slightly older group between 36 and 44. The age group typical of online discussion boards, 13 to 18, makes up only 8.5% of ATS visitors.
It's a Man's Conspiracy World
No surprise here, the vast majority of visitors are men, which is typical of our topics.
Education Helps Deny Ignorance
Nearly half of all ATS visitors and members report either some college, or a 4-year college degree. Also, 16.1% report either being in a graduate degree program, or already have an advanced degree.
Denying Ignorance Means Aspirations
48.3% of ATS members and visitors plan to have one or more college degrees.
How Long?
While the non-members certainly influence the "less than 30 days" category, 46% of respondents reporting visiting ATS for more than a year.
We're Sorry About Being Addicting
And in this category, again, non-members are showing in the "once a month" cateogry, 41.2% of the respondents report visiting once a day or more. And apparently, 2% of those never leave.
Favorite Topics
The most popular topic continues to be Aliens & UFO's with nearly a quarter of all respondents picking that topic. A continued surprise is the decline of the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theory topics. In previous surveys, 9/11 issues scored poorly, but this result is the poorest yet at second from last.
Least-Favorite Topics
Political conspiracies finishing as the least-favored topic may reflect the general fatigue with political topics in general. And in line with the previous question, 9/11 conspiracies are the third least-favored topic.
Content Is King
Over three-quarters of all visitors and members picked content (threads, experts, and podcasts) as their favorite feature of ATS. A bit of surprise is the popularity of the podcasting, with over 30% of respondents picking that as their favorite ATS feature.
First Impressions
No surprise here, more than half of all respondents indicate finding us through a search.
Household Income
Nearly one-third of all respondents report making more than $50,000 per year. (Nearly half of our respondents elected not to answer this question.)
Would You Buy Our Book?
Over 54% of you said you would either definitely or most likely buy a book published by ATS, with only 16% say they'd likely not buy it.
Would You Listen To Our Radio Program?
An amazing 58% of you said you'd listen every day, with a staggering 80% saying you'd listen weekly!
