Growth of 9rules?
June 20th, 2007 | Categories: 9rules, blogs, marketing, networks, trends
I will be the first to admit that I’m proud to be a part of the 9rules network. It is a great group of people. In addition, the quality of the content is second-to-none. In other words, I believe it to be the most prestigious blog network on the Internet - but I’m rather biased.
Having said that, I was perusing some Alexa stats and ranks the other day and noticed that the 9rules site has remained somewhat stagnant over the past year. It has remained consistently within the 5,000 - 10,000 range, swaying up and down from time to time. Now, don’t get me wrong… I know that Alexa stats are skewed to say the least, but I am surprised that network traffic hasn’t trended upward more so over the past year. Obviously, I don’t have actual site data or stats, but I’d be curious to see if the Alexa info is relatively correlated to the actual stats or completely out in left field.
This brought me to another point that I know Scrivs (9rules co-founder) has brought up in the past: there are advantages and disadvantages to growing a network, especially in the case of 9rules. This network in particular has prided itself on providing the utmost quality content. Having said that, some might argue that by adding more and more blogs to the network, the overall quality decreases by default. This may not necessarily be the case, but an argument can definitely be made for a smaller, more selectively chosen group of blogs.
From the other side, others will argue that more blogs not only increase the variety and diversity of content, but also build upon current traffic levels to provide more exposure to existing member blogs.
Finally, another interesting point gets raised with respect to current 9rules members. I am not of this mentality, but I believe that some of the older and more core members may be: as the network grows, the ‘club’ becomes less exclusive as more members are able to enter. I have heard this mentioned a couple times, but is it truly the case? I think that every member has their own opinion and coming to one conclusion is naive and unjustifiable.
Let me reiterate that I love the network and I’m proud to be a part of it. Future growth will be interesting to observe. Even more interesting will be the development and synthesis of the community - and whether growth hampers the evolution process.
Thoughts?…
June 21st, 2007 at 7:12 am
A better snapshot than Alexa is Compete (data: http://snapshot.compete.com/9rules.com), which shows a 300-400% increase for 9rules.com, which is very healthy
Just like Alexa, ignore the actual numbers, just watch the trends, and 9rules.com is obviously gaining in popularity.
Either way, though, a far better metric of popularity is how active the local Notes community is, and how engaged they are and how much fun they’re having. That’s really the strength of 9rules, moreso than the network of content sites.
June 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hey Jeremy,
Ya, it seems that more people are turning to Compete rather than Alexa, as the numbers appear to be more accurate. I will use Compete for future reference. Thanks for the heads up and thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
Aidan
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Np
Not saying Compete’s numbers are accurate. End of the day, the only people who know the 9rules stats are the team there. But, personally, I’d be very, very surprised if it wasn’t growing at a healthy pace!
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I tried to apply to join 9rules and the web page said that they are not accepting new applications.
nada