Hi there I have been on this sight for a few months now I find myself using most of my free time reading and I have only scratched the surface. I have entered the pipe cleaner contest and got 5th with my better work. (should have got a subscription or something i thought) I refrain from posting a lot because my experience is isolated from a geographical point of view. I started with what books I could buy at the nurseries here they seemed to say all the same things so after buying 4 or 5 I quit buying. I recently hooked into DSL and found BonsaiTalk to put on my home page through the RSS search I made. great way to get exposure.I am learning so much thank you all for your dedication to disseminating information on all levels of learning. some of the discussion forums are really thought provoking before they degenerate. My eyes are suffering from so much reading on the computer. I'm hooked. what I realized is the plants I used to win at the local fair are just potensi and a lot of them are in the ground now with a couple that have been growing for a few years. the local club is 40 miles from here and I belong to 4 volunteer orginazations already. I also learned I should have started this 25 years ago I'm 43 now. I will be a loyal member for years to come and will contribute from time to time.
Ive been captivated by the Mugo discussion recently and find that mine are actually back budding by accident.

Attached Images

	trident maple 1.jpg (39.1 KB, 22 views)
	mugo pine 2.jpg (24.5 KB, 21 views)

This summer i was bored, and upon searching pictures of bonsai on the 'net it was the gallery that got me interested in this site and gave me an incentive to go and get some nursery stock and start bonsai-ing all over again.


also, the lack of bonsai interest where i live forces me to go online to discuss and look at bonsai with other hobbyists.

Keep it up

Hi Matt,

Of course you are quite correct in saying

With regard to your graph, I would say that the 5% that make 95% of the posts are the more active (not that it should detract from the others who don't post but just read)

My point was more about, of the 9500 members who have joined over the years, how many of them still visit the site at all and how many of them are still involved in bonsai.

as to this statement


I guess that what ever we choose to discuss becomes topical, however a bonsai related site will by and large only attract bonsai lovers, while the internet in general will attract lots of people with various interestes.

Jon

Here are some partial awstats for the forum subdomain. The Sept stats look pretty typical.



In terms of unique users, we get between 1.5 and 2.4x of the total number of registered membership* visiting in a typical month. It varies on a seasonal cycle, as you might expect. The typical user visits the forum about once a week and takes in about 30 pages per visit. The average forum visit lasts just under 12 minutes.

*I don't know what percentage of those users are registered or not.

This attached chart represents just the forum area. The bonsaiTALK Gallery pushes a lot more bytes, but on a visitor basis it gets only about 20% of the forum's traffic.

Regards,

Matt

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2006 stats.gif (36.7 KB, 101 views)

Interesting stats Matt and thank you for shareing them with those of us who are somewhat anal.

Question. If there are 50,000 visits per month and many of us visit each day(sometimes twice a day). Do you divide the total visits by 30 which would equal 1,666 or around 17% of total membership.

Jon

Hi Jon,

It sounds like you want to know the number of unique users?

The unique monthly visit total is there in the first, orange column. That's based on unique IP addresses. So to the extent that users' IP addresses don't change with every visit (the majority of visitors' do not), that figure is accurate.

The stats suggest that the average user visits once a week, not once a day.

Regards,

Matt

This reminds me of a discussion on an iris group a while back. Why is membership in the American Iris Society declining?
After many reasons were proposed by different people, someone put on the membership of the national poeony club, lily club, daylily club, etc. Membership in each was down. Each had a longtime downward trend.
My point? It seems that gardening is down, or that joining clubs is down. The data wouldn't distinguish between those two explainations, or a combination.
But if membership in this group and IBC is going up even a little, they are bucking a trend and there is hope.

I cannot see membership at IBC and other forums besides two new ones going up. As we know the number of 'members' does not say much. While I do not have statistical data of forums it is not so difficult to get a picture for yourself. Just look at the varios sections where the threads are listd and then look at the hit rates. Some threads have higher, some have very high hit rates. These you forget, because it is the same people going there several times and thus raising the hit rate. Go to threads where there is a lower number. This is about the number of unique viewers, since normally no one wil look at a thread twice if nothing happens there. The numbers at IBC and most other forums besides two are going down drastically. Most threads in the general section only have a couple hundred users. They used to get over a thousand some time ago.

For my own homepage I do have statistics. This is amazing. I now have about 300 to 400 UNIQUE users every day. That makes it more than 10,000 per month and more than 100,000 per year. That is MORE than most forums have where something is going on every hour. And a year ago this number was only half of that. Now take away the robots that are searching the net on a routine and take away those that have stumbled onto the page accidentally. so maybe 50,000 unique people are visitng a bonsai homepage!in a year. A homepage where nothing is going on other than seeing bonsai in a gallery which I update only every six months or so.
So you are telling me that the interest in bonsai on the net is going down? I think the interest in forums in general is going ddown. Who wants to read all that? I don't much anymore. My interst in bonsai on the internet is not going down. I only want quality contents.

If we're comparing bonsai sites to other sites in general, there's not much real meaning there. How about a comparison with other intensive hobbies, such as collecting and working semi-precious stones, model railroading, breeding tropical fish, etc, in which the time and monetary investment is broadly equivalent to bonsai culture at the level most of us are involved in?