Tonight I did some research online at Alexa.com (an Amazon company) looking at pagerank and popularity of certain bonsai sites.

Alexa measures "reach," which is a measure of where people are going on the Internet vs. where they are not going. Reach measures popularity of a site relative to other sites. Not relative to its own history! This is an interesting point because although the simple statistics show our pageviews here at bonsaiTALK are growing by leaps and bounds and we have around 6,000 members where we had probably 3,000 two years ago, the relative popularity of bonsai as an Internet activity is actually dropping. It's growing in numbers but simply not increasing as fast as other areas of the Internet.

This graph shows the Reach for the past two years for both bonsaiTALK and IBC.org




1) The reach of both bonsaiTALK and ibc.org are very, very similar, which is probably to be expected. However, the popularity of both, in terms of "reach" peaked sometime between the fall and winter of 2003. With a reach of about 12: at that time, approximately twelve in one million Internet users was looking at a bonsai page. Today it's something like five in one million.

2) Bonsai is small potatoes. Something like 99.999% of the people on the Internet aren't looking at bonsai. bonsaiTALK is the 341,272nd most popular site on the Internet. We're just tiny!

What does it all mean? I don't know. There are several possibilities. One likely possibility is that the Internet population is growing by thousands every day and comparably fewer of them are interested in looking at bonsai. So we can gain 10 or 12 members a day as we have, and still losing in popularity overall against the Internet in general as people flock to trendier sites like MSNBC and Friendster (reach=5000) or something.

What's in store for the future? Probably more growth! It's reasonable to expect that bonsaiTALK can continue to grow and even thrive in the shade of these Internet monsters, but we are, and are likely to remain, a "bonsai community."

Regards,

Matt

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That is very interesting. Matt. Thank you for the Report.

I stated a couple weeks ago I felt the same thing Was occuring at Ebay.

I have no hard evidence only anectdote of course, but After looking at the "bonsai" search on ebay for almost 5 years- everyday, and selling several hundred items, I could sense an overall lack of interest .

Making It a good time again for buyers. These ebbs and flow can save a prudent buyer a lot of money . Any one else notice this?

As long as bonsai and bonsai sites are growing and not declining then there is not a problem. I think maybe a more accurate gage would be to pick some other popular subject on the net and determine how much that particular subject is growing. You are correct I am sure, that compared against the overall growth of people on the INTERNET, bonsai sites are not keeping up but you are comparing the world wide web against one small segment of it. The truth be known probably the largest audience would be found in the porno sites, then the sports sites, and then chat sites of various forms.

I think perhaps the real difference is the ability to attract new members and keep them. If this site is growing then that's what has been going on here, and you can't really ask for much more than that.

Hello Matt,

I have been noticing this relatively recent decline in growth and I propose one possible theory. It seems that more and more companies and individuals are fraudulently conducting business as bonsai vendors, and once an internet customer is burned it is very hard to regain their trust. When the tree that is pictured is sent to the consumer as a pitiful dead twig, word starts to get around. So many times on ebay, you just don't know what you're getting or how it might be shipped or really from where. A picture of a tree that is only so many inches tall may appear very large in a close up photo. Also, the more important part of the purchase, the hidden roots, may be in terrible condition and I know of several people who have received trees that appeared to have been repotted days or minutes before the tree was shipped. Trees that are doomed from the start really seems to constitute fraud in my mind. These few "bad eggs" have a huge negative impact on the whole of bonsai. It seems the only recourse is to focus on educating the public as to what is or is not actual 'bonsai' (glue on the rocks should be the first clue, lack of branches, juniper-twig-in-cheap-pot-scenario) and then encouraging them to seek out reputable dealers and sources of material. Forums like this one are a great start to that end, as are local clubs. The process will be uphill but I believe as more people find the joy of 'real' bonsai and the friendly encouragement of other enthusiasts the numbers will start to reflect that. I hope.
Thanks for the detailed research.

Michelle

I realise we are about the 300,000 zillionith site looked at on the web, but we are only seedling in the world wide web

Chuck us in the ground for a couple of years until we grow on and then come back with an updated study - im ure we will be ready for some refinement then.

.....to be honest there isnt alot of good bonsai sites out there - maybe people in the past have been looking and then the interest has been lost, but the bigger this site becomes the interest will be held in the future.........its a work in progress

It also might be interesting to note if the "peak" interest in both IBC and BT conicided with any new redesign or offering, like "gallery sections" ect. I may be remembering this wrong, but didn't IBC and BT have some significant changes at the end of 2003/beginning of 2004? The dual peaks back then may have been an anomaly...

I have a more benign theory than Michelle's (although she makes a good point).

It could simply be that people looking for bonsai information were "forced" to the web sooner than later, since it's easier to find bonsai info online than at the bookstore. In other words, the possible audience has by and larger already been reached.

People looking for music, news, and entertainment have augmented their access through the web, whereas bonsaisits had fewer outlets.

or something totally unrelated

pootsie

Maybe its because now there are more and more younger people on the internet and the proportion of those interested in bonsai are lower than in more adult populations, that can skew the sample size. Also the creation of more and more sites can also cause this too.

I also agree with pootsie in the people were very active in searching for information when the internet became availible to many. But as time passes, the internet is a utility to keep in touch with people and check mail and they start checking into only essential sites. The novelty has worn off for a lot of people I think

I find this to be a very interesting article, and in particular a topic that has been running around in my head for some time now.

It is obvious that there are many factors that contribute to the traffic and membership of Bonsai related sites. I would like to share my thoughts on this subject.



Firstly, let me pose some answers to some of the comments made so far.

,





Perhaps the main reason for this is that, by and large, both sites consist of many of the same people/membership.

Quote:

So we can gain 10 or 12 members a day as we have, and still losing in popularity overall against the Internet

Not sure that comparing against the Internet has any significance, however comparing against other similar sites has. While we gain 10 or 12 in the front door, we loose 12 or 15 out the back door. Taking the statistics from the Home page, BT has over 9500 registered members.



Questions are:-



1. How many of these registered members are still active members?

2. How many members are posting regularly today?

3. How many of these people are posting bonsai related topics?

Quote:

What's in store for the future? Probably more growth! It's reasonable to expect that bonsaiTALK can continue to grow and even thrive in the shade of these Internet monsters, but we are, and are likely to remain, a "bonsai community."

Whenever I hear this question, I can’t help remembering the old saying. ‘If we continue to do the same things today as we did yesterday, we will get the same result tomorrow’. I think that creating a ‘Bonsai Community’ is the real reason that many people continue to post. Many internet friendships are made (and some enemies – often due to misunderstandings) and we just like communicating with each other.

Quote:

It could simply be that people looking for bonsai information were "forced" to the web sooner than later, since it's easier to find bonsai info online than at the bookstore. In other words, the possible audience has by and larger already been reached.

One only has to read the first posts of any new member to realise that ‘Information’ is indeed what draws most first timers to these sites. Has the possible audience been reached? Not a chance, new people will continue to join and for various reasons older people will drop out.



I believe that trying to keep people from dropping out is possibly the area that should first be addressed in order to make the site more successful. In saying that, I am sure that anyone who has a Bonsai business or who has taught bonsai will agree that the percentage of Hobbyists who in fact continue with the hobby and or develop into Artists is very low indeed – I hesitate to say possibly as low as one in a hundred.



Many people do not realise that creating good bonsai is not as easy as it may seem and give up in frustration. Bonsai is also not easily taught (I mean really taught comprehensively) and while there are many good Artists out there, the fact remains that not many of them are able to be good teachers or can explain how or why they did what they did.



So the problems as I see it are a combination of members differing proficiency levels (many of the better artists are simply sick of telling beginners to either plant their stick and wait for it to grow or invest more money for better stock), combined with their various ages ( the older do not always communicate well with the younger and visa versa) and we won’t even talk about egos.



Do I have any answers? – no, not really. However, one thing that I am sure of, is that the new style of site, like AoB and KoB which really are more knowledge and history based and less communicative (and hopefully less confrontational) and perhaps designed for the more advanced, will have a future as well as this Community based more casual site.



No matter what, the more that bonsai is discussed in one form or the other, the better it will be for all who decide to participate.



Jon Chown

The article was actually about the relative popularity of bonsai on the Internet, so the growth rate of a top bonsai site, vs. the rate of the growth of the Internet as a whole is topical, and the observation is that bonsai increasingly becomes a niche online topic over time.

As far as people coming and going, there are high turnovers on any website, and most subscribers to forums never actually post, whether they read or not.

To have meaningful stats, you'd need to define what you mean by "active". Take this plot for example:



Who's active here? The 5% or so that make 95% of the posts? The minority of 44.2% that posted at least once?


Regards,

Matt

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