Half of women surveyed said that blogs influence their decisions to purchase. That comes from a recent survey of roughly 6,000 women by BlogHer (the network of women bloggers) and Compass Partners.

The study has a number of findings, but the one about purchase decisions stood out to me. Here’s the chart that shows the numbers:

Notice also that the percentage influenced tends to be higher among those who also publish their own blog(s) versus those who just read blogs. In other words, if you write a blog, you have a tendency to be more influenced in your purchase decisions by blogs. I suspect that means:

(a) you spend more time reading blogs versus other sources of information, and/or

(b) that you are predisposed to look for other blogs as sources of research for purchases, and/or

(c) you tend to trust other bloggers as a source of unbiased information.

Notice also, the negative impact of blogs on purchase decisions is almost as high as the positive impact. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of blog publishers say they decided to buy based on blogs, while 32% say they decided NOT to buy based on blogs. In other words, blogs are almost are as likely to convince women NOT to buy, as they are to convince us to make a purchase. That’s one reason for vendors to be monitoring blogs for negative statements, and to have a strategy in place to deal with negative sentiment from blogs.

Now keep in mind that not all of these women are entrepreneurs or business owners. But inasmuch as bloggers tend to be entrepreneurial, I thought the results could be instructive.

The summary results are available online — download the BlogHer blog study here.