2011 Lifehack Reader Survey Results
April 14 by Tucker Cummings 44 Shares | Site News
This past Monday, we debuted two reader surveys as part of our continuing efforts to make Lifehack.org the best that it can be. You guys maxxed out the number of responses the long form survey could handle in under two hours, and it wasn’t much longer after that when you maxxed out the short form survey as well. You guys had a lot to say, and we’ve spent the last couple of days tabulating data, reading over your comments, and planning a revamped editorial calendar.
We wanted your feedback because we want to tailor the site to your needs, and gauge how happy you are with the current types of content we provide. And overall, you guys seem to be really happy! But you also provided us with tons of great feedback about changes you’d like to see at Lifehack, both in terms of content and site design.
Here’s a smattering of the most important and interesting results.
About 50% of our readers are aged between 25-34.
81% of our readers are between the ages of 25 and 50.
72.9% of our readers are male, 27.1% are female.
75% of our readers have no children living at home.
63.3% of readers visit Lifehack between 5-8+ times per week.
57% of readers use a Windows OS.
33% are Mac users.
10% use Linux.
Somewhat surprisingly, we also found that 35% of our readers do not own a smartphone.
Not one respondent to our reader survey said that they were unsatisfied with the site, with almost 3/4 of you classifying yourselves as “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with Lifehack.
Obviously, that’s just a few tiny bits of info, not the full spectrum of results. We collected a lot of other data as well, and we’ll be making some changes in the coming weeks to better serve your requests for specific types of content, post frequency, and other concerns that you brought up on your survey responses.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We really appreciate it, and we’ll be working hard to keep you, our loyal readers, happy with the content featured at Lifehack.












Interesting. I never would have guessed that 72.9% of the people who read Lifehack and filled out the survey are male. I wonder if the vast majority of your readers really are male or if men were more likely to respond to the surveys early before they filled up? (Or maybe it’s a little of both!)
If the survey was over 2 hours after it was posted, then I would argue that it is somewhat flawed. Why? Because that means that only people who avidly read LH daily and those who happened to show up during the window and probably biased towards whatever time zone the post was centered in for that two hour window would fill it out.
I read LH, but have been considering dropping it from my feed because the posts seem (to me) to be lower quality than they used to be. If this survey is used to determine future articles then I almost certainly will. Other than the age bracket (25-50, not 25-34), I am not in the majority for any of the above results, so clearly this site isn’t for me.
You know why people visit 5-8+ times per week? Because new posts are a rarity and people have to check in constantly to read a new one.
Definitely agree with Michael Smith. It’s so disappointing to see a site with a lot of potential, a lot of readers, and a lot of contributers that is only able to produce a modicum of decent posts per week.
quality vs quantity ?
This site is devoted towards “lifehacking” and productivity. The point is to not read this site every day, and especially not check it every few hours as that goes against the very behavior that the content of this site speaks against.
I agree.. sometimes I wish that there was more content but at the same time I hope the site does not become a copy of lifehacker.com (which is a good site but seems to cover a too broad and frivolous subject matter).
To clarify, I find that overall Lifehack.org is about self improvement on a personal level and lifehacker.com is about improving / hacking everything eg. their front page currently contains posts on: brewing good coffee, fixing your suede, finding an easy root Android phone, running Windows 8 from a USB stick, etc.. which are all fine subject matter but not what I’m looking for in lifehack.org
Well so far this week this site has been hacked, was down, had a survey that filled up in two hours, had a quick summary of basic facts obtained from survey, and a pretty crappy article about a fictional office manager. If the site only produced the occasional article because each one took so long to write and they quality was amazing, then great.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that is what is happening at all. I think the quality and quantity are falling by the waste side. There are other sites (eg. one’s that have almost identical URLs!) that are producing good articles (and some bad ones) at least 10x more frequently than this site.