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MenuAre there any best practices for estimating web traffic based on an estimated user base?
I'm building an online marketplace, and I'm trying to estimate server costs. I have an idea of how many users I want and by when, but I have no idea how much traffic that will entail.
Answers
I personally have had success with the Google Keyword Finder. This is part of the Google Adwords program for estimating keyword traffic and since Google has statistics on everyone's surfing and search habits, this is your best bet.
My advice to you is that before you try estimating server traffic for your marketplace, select 5 to 10 short and long tail keywords that you want to target and then use Google's Keyword Finder to look at the search traffic.
I hope this helps.
Bruce
One of the machines where I host client sites has been receiving 250,000+ uniques/hour every day for months.
Monthly lease on this machine is <$200 USD/month.
It's more how well your LAMP Stack is tuned, rather than your hardware.
LAMP Stack - Linux + Apache + MariaDB (working MySQL) + PHP + Openssl + CMS (like WordPress) + theme + plugins.
Well tuned + cheap hardware performs far better than poorly tuned hardware with unnecessary bolt ons - CDNs + NGINX + Varnish + Load Balancers (to name a few).
Hire a competent site designer (someone who understands end-to-end site design + LAMP tuning) + likely you're server hardware will be run of the mill.
I personally use OVH for my provisioning. They provide hardware + terminal server interface (for crash recovery) + nothing else. No OS. Nothing else.
A good site designer can turn OVH raw hardware into blazing fast sites.
Here is some step, by following these steps u can easily measure the website traffic.
Step 1:
Sign up for a website traffic-measuring service. Google Analytics is a popular free service that tracks and measures a website's performance in traffic.
Step 2:
Add the service's tracking code to your webpages. Your traffic-measuring service may provide code for you to copy and paste into the code of your webpages.
Log in to your account if necessary. Follow the service's instructions to find your tracking code, which may be located through your account profile.
If you used a template to build your site, you may only need to paste the tracking code 1 time into the template's file to apply the code to all your webpages.
Try adding the code right before the closing "head" tag, marked by a slash (/) before the word "head." You may need to add the code just before the closing "body" tag of a web page's HTML code instead.
Check that you added all of the tracking code correctly to your webpage(s).
Step 3:
Look at a report(s) for your website's traffic. The report(s) may be known as website metrics report(s). You may need to wait a day or so for the code to gather data for the report(s) from tracking those who visit your site and their associated information and activity on your site.
Log into your tracking service's account if necessary. Access your report(s) as directed by the service website.
Examine the statistics that your report(s) measure. These may include the number of unique visitors you have had, what links your site's visitors clicked on, and what page they landed on from a search engine.
Step 4:
Use a website traffic counter as an alternative. A website traffic-measuring site such as StatCounter may offer a counter for people to display on their sites.
Register for an account at the counter's website if necessary.
Copy and paste code for the counter in the website's code.
If offered, choose which statistic to display in your counter. Examples could be the number of times the counter's webpage is viewed (page load or page views) or how many unique visitors your site is receiving.
Customize your counter if applicable. You may be able to choose how many digits your counter can show, what color or font the counter is displayed in, etc.
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Related Questions
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What is the best pricing (business model) to apply to a marketplace?
I like to separate your question into 2 sub-questions: #1 How do we determine which side to charge? #2 How much is the right amount to charge? On #1, my answer is that you can charge the side(s) for whom you add the most value. In your examples, Uber really solves a big problem for drivers, it's that they sit idle for a good part of the day, so are willing to pay a lot for new leads. (their alternative is no work) Consumers are charged more for the convenience of a private car but they are probably not so much willing to pay more for a taxi, even if they can hail one from their phones. For AirBnB, it's a mix, it's a way for landlords to monetize idle capacity which they are willing to pay for, but it's also a way for a renter to pay less than they would normally pay for a hotel. On #2 (how much), I like to triangulate a number of factors: - What's the maximum amount I can charge one side, while still being a good deal for them. - How much do I need to charge so that I can become profitable? (the economics are quite different if you charge 3% vs. 12%) - What are comparable services charging for substitutes/competitive offerings? I will just add that there is no formulaic way to determine pricing strategies (curated vs. open), and it's a lot more about what's the comparable and what the value delivered is. That's how I approached the question while deciding the business model at ProBueno.com (my startup)MR
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When creating a marketplace, does it make more sense to focus on stimulating demand first or supply?
Focus on the more difficult side of the marketplace. For instance, if you think it'll be easier to get suppliers, then focus first on getting buyers - always be working on your toughest problem (aka your biggest risk). You'll find some great blogging on Marketplace and Platform topics here http://platformed.info (read the ebook too!)CM
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What is the most effective method to building a two-sided marketplace?
For four years, I was the marketing manager at Axial, a two sided marketplace that matches investors with companies looking to sell their businesses. We figured out the chicken and egg problem, then figured out how to market and sell each side in a way that scaled. When you think about building a two-sided marketplace it seems daunting, as your question reflects. It feels like you need to get everyone active all at once in order to create any value for anyone. But the truth is that you really only need to get one side engaged. The way I think about two-sided marketplaces is like a grocery store. A grocery store is one of the original two sided marketplaces: there’s a customer who needs fruit or milk or something else and there is a farmer who needs to sell fruit or milk. The grocery is the conduit between them, the two sided marketplace. If the farmer (or other vendor) can’t consistently sell their goods at the store, they’ll sell somewhere else. If the shopper doesn’t find the fruit or bread or other products they’re looking for on a regular basis, they’ll go somewhere else. The value of thinking about a two-sided marketplace like a grocery store is that it’s obvious who needs the product now and who is willing to wait awhile. The shopper has a very time limited window to buy the product - they’re going to be in the store for a half hour then they leave. If the product isn’t on the shelf, they’re not waiting for it. If the fruit is bad, they’re not buying it. The product on the shelf, on the other hand, can wait around. But each product does have a shelf life - some products, like canned foods, might last years while others, like fresh fruit or bread, might last only a couple of days. So, while the times need to match up, each side has different time requirements. In hacking a two-sided marketplace it helps tremendously to figure out which side of your market is the shopper and which side is the product. It’s not always obvious though. Sometimes what is being “bought” on your marketplace is actually the shopper. In the case of Axial, we were helping investors buy companies. It seems like the shopper is the investor. But it’s not - they’re actually the ones willing to wait around for the right company to come to them. The company being sold actually has a very short time frame to find the right buyer - usually a two week window in a well run sale process. On our marketplace, the two underlying assets were investor profiles and company profiles (to simplify everything). The investor profiles actually became our product on the shelf while the companies became the shoppers - even though it was the investors buying the companies. The investors were more willing to wait for the right company rather than the other way around. That insight helped us understand how to hack the marketplace to success. The side that is willing to wait around longer is almost always the easier side to collect. If you’re starting a grocery store, it’s always better to go talk to all the vendors and fill your store with product before you open it to shoppers. Leading shoppers through an empty store doesn’t meet their immediate need of needing to make dinner tonight. Talking to a farmer about the neighborhood customers you’ll have as soon as you open is a lot easier. And the farmer is more willing to have low sales at first in order to secure his spot on your shelves so his competitors don’t get the prime space he’s going to want later. If you think about Uber, which is clearly creating a two-sided marketplace of drivers and riders, they operate exactly the same way. In Uber’s case, the driver is the product on the shelf. The rider is the shopper. The drivers are willing to drive around for hours looking for rides. A rider will open the app, see if they can get a ride quickly, and if not will go to an alternative like Lyft, a taxi or the train/subway. That’s why Uber is spending so much money to acquire new drivers. They’ll pay drivers thousands to join, even buying them cars in some cases. They’ll sign limo drivers up as Uber Black drivers, convincing them that they’ll make as much or more than they are in the limo business. Then, when there is only UberX riders around and not enough drivers, Uber will eat the cost of paying an Uber Black driver to drive an UberX ride. Uber realizes that riders (shoppers) only use Uber (visit the store) if they’re confident good rides available when they want them (products they want are in stock and fresh). So Uber is hacking the product and letting it sit on the shelf (drivers driving around looking for rides) because that’s the only way to make sure they don’t lose to taxis or Lyft. I hope that gives you a framework to use as you think about growing or starting your two-sided marketplace. If you’d like to chat with me as you think through your marketplace, I’m available as an expert here on Clarity. I’m happy to make specific suggestions for how you can structure and grow your business. Good luck.CB
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How to solve a chicken and egg problems for a marketplace like Uber? What is the best way to acquire demand side?
The best way to solve chicken and egg problems for marketplaces is to prove market need on each side independently first with a low-cost MVP-type test. Once you've proven the market on both sides with metrics it is much easier to leg in supply and demand with a strategic or enough funding to match a market on a local or niche level to ensure liquidity. For a deeper analysis, here is a post on medium that I wrote... http://bit.ly/1k2vYbY Also, feel free to schedule a call with me if you'd like to dig deeper.DK
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How to attract users to both sides of a double-sided marketplace (legal Q & A)?
You could try a "widget" on the lawyer's site which facilitates getting generic questions answered for free. The idea being that in each practice area, there might be a handful of questions that they get asked frequently, and would commit to answering one-time. It could be used to qualify the web visitor (always a good thing) while satisfying the visitor by providing them an answer. Of course, the challenge here is that most lawyers might only be comfortable providing such watered-down generic advice, that the answers themselves wouldn't be very useful. But this way, you could provide value to lawyers somewhat comfortable with online discourse, while building up content. With enough lawyers and content, you could then expand the service to build towards your larger vision. But as John has mentioned, many entrepreneurs have and are actively trying to win with this type of idea and have often struggled. CaseText is a recent YC grad that is doing some interesting work in this area. Happy to talk through your product implementation.TW
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