Over at Australian Anthill is a list of finalists for their Cool Company Awards 2008 – RedBubble, an online community and marketplace for creative works, caught my eye as I’ve been following their progress since they launched in Australia early last year. Visits to RedBubble have climbed steadily, increasing in market share by 97.8% comparing week ending 13 September 2008 against the same week last year. RedBubble ranked as the 2nd most visited website in the Hitwise Entertainment - Arts category for the week ending 13 September 2008, following the much longer established deviantART.

While Google Australia remains the key traffic driver to RedBubble, accounting for 27.8% in upstream visits for the week ending 13 September 2008, Google Australia Image Search has more than tripled its referrals to RedBubble in the past four weeks - the surge in visits to RedBubble week ending 6 September 2008 in the chart above was pushed by Google Australia Image Search referrals. Google Australia Image Search also sent a high percentage of repeat visits to RedBubble, with 98% of its referrals comprised of returning visitors. This stresses the importance of vertical search for sustaining interest in niche content websites.

Commercialising an Online Art Community

Membership to RedBubble is free, where artists retain their copyright, set their own prices and choose which products they want to sell. RedBubble charges a base production cost and handles manufacturing, shipping and payment for the artists. The website features tools that support social commerce including user comments, groups and 'favourite feeds'; as well as allowing artists to track their sales. Against retail websites, RedBubble is faring strongly, climbing from a ranking of #54 in the Hitwise - Shopping & Classifieds industry week ending 13 September 2008, compared to a ranking of #113 the same time last year.

Given RedBubble's increasing visibility amongst Australian users, it has a massive opportunity to leverage sales on its 'unique' products leading up to the Christmas shopping period. Hitwise Lifestyle Demographics data indicates the RedBubble attracts a high representation of visits from households in Mosaic Group, "Learners and Earners" - Students and professionals living in high density, lower cost suburbs. The challenge for RedBubble for successfully monetising the community will be to widen its audience base to groups with high discretionary spend, while maintaining the cultural identity of the website.

Sandra Hanchard

Sandra Hanchard is a Research Analyst for Hitwise Asia Pacific covering online industry trends in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. This piece was originally posted on Hitwise blog here.

Image by Shaun Johnston