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Tiny Sites Aren't Small Potatoes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the making-up-for-it-in-volume dept.

xtrucial writes "Jakob Nielsen of usability fame has a new article up about the perhaps-unexpected power of tiny websites: 'Considering that the Web as a whole will have about 4 trillion page views this year, the [low-traffic] sites might seem irrelevant with their pitiful millions of page views. But within their niche they dominate.'" (In particular, Nielsen is talking about weblogs.)

9 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. "tiny sites"? by SHEENmaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The majority of blogs are on Blog sites or fourth level entries with a port number tagging along.

    The "tiny" weblog won't be prevalent for long as the larget ones get advertising and the smaller ones are drowned out by "free blog" sites.

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
  2. Re:oh great by blincoln · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You have to have a niche to play to.

    Back in the mid-90s, I had a website with a low hitcount too. It stayed low because I didn't have much that people were after. Now I run a niche site for fans of the deleted bits from the Legacy of Kain series, and I'm up to 659906 total page requests (11865510 total requests) and 73435 distinct hosts served since October.

    I don't post the link here because I don't need the excess casual traffic - I'm already close to my bandwidth limit for this month.

    --
    "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
  3. Haven't thought about that before. by Mmm+coffee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I started running I was having some serious pains. I started doing some research and decided that running barefoot might do me some good. It worked wonders and I ended up starting a blog to

    (a) Document my beginnings as a runner, going from out of shape geek to slightly in shape geek over time.
    (b) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running.
    (c) Allow other people to look at my experiences and learn from them when they start running *gasp* barefoot!

    Will you find that info on about.com or running.com? Hell no, they have entire sections devoted to shoes and you rarely get to read a diary of someone who's just starting out. 95% of the info I find online is either a small site or something of the sort. Why? Because you can have all the professionally written pages on the net, but in the end the experiences of another person is always invaluable.

    BTW, if anyone's interested here's my blog.

  4. Within their niche they dominate by rifftide · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This reminds me of Jack Welch's directive in the 1980's that every division at GE had to be #1 or #2 in its market, or risk being shutdown or sold off. What happened was predictable: GE's managers redefined their markets, so that instead of being in "home appliances" they were in a collection of smaller markets including "space-efficient microwave ovens", etc.

    So Nielson has the #1 usability site by his reckoning. But what advertisers are targeting that niche? Maybe Addison-Wesley and certain trade shows. The size of the market should be something that makes sense to advertisers, customers, and suppliers.

  5. Yes, the obvious is too dull of a topic!!!! by yintercept · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article is actually about the distribution of traffic in different niches and how there is similar patterns in different niches. Although it may be tough for an individual to compete with Yahoo for the position of number 1 in the global portal market, it is still possible to make a splash in a niche market.

    Hmmm, it is even possible for people to make a decent living by figuring out the needs of these different markets and developing sites that serve the markets. Ad values in niche markets are higher than the global market. Gosh, there are places in this great big internet of ours where an individual can have an impact.

    The article suggests that both the niche and the most popular sites still have exponential growth curves--indicating that the media really isn't completely overrun by the three biggest sites as we find news articles hinting at. Instead there appears to be a layering of niche markets. This touches on important political debates about internet regulation.

    Considering that a large number of people who frequent /. are interested in traffic patterns, the growth of the Internet. There was probably a naive /. editor who thought that the article would be a good topic of conversation.

    Of course, neither the /. editor who thought this might be an interesting topic of conversation nor the author of the article is even close to your level of intelligence. So they deserve to be insulted. I mean, the obvious is fodder for weak minds. True genius seeks out the counter intuitive, the obscure and the contradictory.

    The net is filled with these tiny minded people who actually work to build sites on truly mundane issues like corn growing in Iowa. BORING!!!!!

    Let's ignore the fact that it is petty minds working on the obvious that grow the food we eat, and build houses we live in. It may be necessary to have a bunch of petty minds working on the obvious to make the internet work...but please, we don't need to hear any of this in our idle chit chat on slashdot. This forum should be about truly important questions such as the different smells that come from a priori, a posteriori and synthetic farts.

    1. Re:Yes, the obvious is too dull of a topic!!!! by davebarz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Look, I am very interested in traffic patterns and the growth of the internet. I do web design and hosting. And I read the entire article before posting, expecting to find something insightful, an interesting deduction based on what the author was saying, something of the like. But I found that the entire article consisted of obvious observations that anyone who has used the internet for any length of time (most /.ers fall into this category) would have made on their own. So, perhaps this article would indeed appeal to a niche market, but do I not have a right to declare that I am not in that market?

      --
      barzelay.net
    2. Re:Yes, the obvious is too dull of a topic!!!! by yintercept · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree, the article wasn't well written. I was disappointed by the lack of depth, and I thought the author was a bit full of himself.

      The topic, however, is extremely interesting. I find the distribution of web traffic to be fascinating topic. While Wall Street concentrates on just the biggest sites, IMHO, the real meat of the net is all the small independent sites, and the interaction between these sites.

      I've actually spent a fair amount of time trying to help to build awareness of independent web sites in small towns, and trying to help towns build a topology of links that can attract more traffic into their independent niches. Although the article was poorly written, it starts to address the important issue that small sites need to know: They need to know how to identify their niche and to understand the flow of traffic in their niche.

      IMHO, the topology of the independent web is much more interesting that the Media Metrix 50. Figuring out how to define and build these markets is a major challenge. I wish the article went further in that direction.

      I was snippy in my post because the study of traffic begins with the obvious. Webmasters get their biggest jumps in traffic by answering obvious questions like: who is my audience? Who are my competitors? How is the traffic distributed among my competitors? What are the keywords that attract my audience?

      I read the entire article before posting, expecting to find something insightful, an interesting deduction based on what the author was saying, something of the like.

      The fault of the article was that it didn't present its ideas very clearly...not that it dwelt the obvious. Personally, I think the introduction of terms is more important than wrapping up with a conclusion...the net seems to change too fast for conclusions.

      The article made interesting allusions to the patterns of traffic in large markets being similar to small markets. It is an obvious way to state things, but a worthwhile observation.

  6. Re:They dominate... by Jerf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They dominate... and make no money.... almost no small sites make any money....

    Have you ever noticed that he rarely points to sites outside of useit.com and he often is selling his usability reports?

    And you aren't the slightest bit interested in the opinions of a person who is running one of the "small sites" and is in all probability making money with it? Think he might just understand a bit?

    It sounds to me like you wouldn't be happy no matter what.

    Incidentally, figuring out the "blame" for the failure of micropayments is a non-trivial operation; the multi-year stagnation in the browser market (thanks to Netscape's effective disappearence and Microsoft's well-known tendency to not bother with its precious "innovation" unless there's competition) at the same time that the routing market has held a virtual monopoly (ensuring no protocol-level support for micropayments could make any headway), both market conditions and not truly technological conditions, probably had a lot to do with. Despite the fact I'm not holding my breath, they would still solve an awful lot of problems.

  7. Re:oh great by Suppafly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Great. My counter's currently on 2137, and that's after a year. I'm off to hang myself.

    People tend to avoid free hosts like geocities because the content is generally poor, and there are usually annoying popups and ads.. get better hosting and have some content, you'll get that many hits a month.