Quite often I have to do research on the internet on how I am actually doing with my articles and Raptorsandrockets.com I need to know what sort of reach the stuff I do have. When I say that Raptorsandrockets.com is the most popular motorcycle site on the internet it's a big statement. Huge as a matter of fact. It's not that Raptorsandrockets.com generates more unique visitors every day than let's say Motorcyclenews.com. We do certain days like today and a whopping 20.000 sites more popular at that, but popularity in this sense comes through influence and the amount of people reading the articles and watching the pictures from Raptorsandrockets.com. You can read my articles (that I know of) in English, German, French, Chinese, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish and Russian. Not every article always in all the languages, but pretty much always in big languages such as English, French and Chinese. We're talking syndication here and every big newspaper does it for instance. So let's take the current article I am doing about the 2007 Triumph Tiger 1050. It's free choice for each editor that I work with whether to use it or not, but the potential that often comes through is this. The internet is probably my biggest playground, or anyone's for that matter, so I'm starting there. First of all the articles are published as excerpts on Raptorsandrockets.com. But at the same time or before I syndicate the article with images to my partners around the world. They are then translated or used as they are depending on which country. I am not going to be specific about which sites, but they can be found with a little googling using my name for instance. One of these sites have more unique visitors day in, day out, year in, year out than a site such as Shell.com. In other words it's huge, not only on motorcycles, but on a global site scale. We're not quite at google.com level as google.com is usually ranked as site number 1, 2. 3 or 4 of all sites on the internet. Raptorsandrockets.com is ranked as the number 60.000 in the world based on a three month average (25.000 today). This other site that publish my articles and images are ranked as number 3.000 in the world whilst Shell.com is twice as small at 7.700. I used to work for Shell Information Technology International some time in the past so it's a interesting comparison for me to do and everyone knows that site is big. That's just to illustrate that that one site alone generates more traffic to one article than all other motorcycle sites in the world. It's not English speaking so might not be good for you. The English sites aim at readers in the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa + everywhere else. Each of those sites are roughly the same size as or bigger than Raptorsandrockets.com in terms of traffic and they each do their own editorial in addition so never the same. The same goes for the French, Norwegian, Italian and German sites. I am also present on both Google video, Myspace.com and Youtube with video's and other less serious stuff. Then add all the thousands of forums owned by enthusiasts on the Internet that link up to the articles that have been published either on Raptorsandrockets.com or any of the other sites and you get the full picture. Then you have got the magazines. They have not got a chance in hell to get this sort of readership and the numbers are going down each year. The most popular US motorcycle magazine might get a couple of hundred thousand copies sold each month. The most popular British magazine around 60.000, the most popular Australian magazine around 20.000 which is fairly representative for many European magazines too. Advertisers in the motorcycling industry are littered with old men in suits that are still using their full budgets on the magazines. But the trend is turning rapidly and one day I am going to cash out and so will my other Internet publishing friends. In the US they have come much further with online advertising and understanding for globalisation. That is also where most of the advertising interest is from for us. Where the advertising cash is that's where I have to be too. So I'm in the magazines all over the world, or I would be starving. So please keep buying the magazines even though a motorcycle test is best on the net! By Tor Sagen
