A lot has been written recently on the hot job market for web analytics positions. Perhaps because there is such a profound gap between the number of open positions and the number of experienced practitioners looking for jobs, web analytics salaries run pretty high. We collected a bunch of data on salaries earlier this year and our report on the subject is available now.

Some of the key insights:

• The average U.S. web analytics practitioner, across all job types (end-users, vendors, consultants, agencies) is reported to be earning $86,883 annually in salary and bonus
• Those of us working for vendors are the best paid, with the average vendor practitioner earning $105,192 in salary and bonus
• Unless you’re working for a very large company (5000+ employees), the difference in average salary is negligable
• There appear to be three “tenure groups” for salary, which may be as much a function that people get raises by switching jobs as they do waiting patiently for a substantial salary increase
• As we’ve published previously, companies relying on defined business processes are paying far better than those relying on employees or those lacking any formal approach towards web analytics
• There may be hope on the horizon for those companies actively seeking experienced practitioners

Because I’m trying to write shorter reports, I’ve also created a companion web page that will allow readers to examine all of the salary data we used to produce this report, segmented over 30 different ways. Hopefully everyone will find this data interesting, regardless of whether you’re looking to hire or looking for a raise. The report and companion data are available here:

• Web Analytics Salaries 2007: Insights and Observations (PDF format)
• Web Analytics Salary Data

I welcome your feedback on this research — your reaction to the data as well as your opinion about the value of our publishing this research on an annual basis. I have to admit I rather enjoy being able to publish this research so hopefully everyone out there is finding it valuable.

UPDATE: I am lame for forgetting to thank June Dershewitz, James Gardner, and Dylan Lewis for spending the time to review this report prior to its publication.  Thanks June, James, and Dylan!