In the 4th Quarter 2013 edition of PADI’s Undersea Journal, they bragged about the first year of ScubaEarth (their attempt to mimic what DiveBuddy has been doing for many years). However, the first year of DiveBuddy.com beat every one of the web statistics from PADI’s ScubaEarth.
The following compares DiveBuddy.com’s first year (Jan 2007 - Dec 2007) to the first year of PADI’s ScubaEarth (Aug 2012 - Jul 2013):
Pageviews: DB 3.4 million vs. PADI 3 million
Average Page Views Per Visit: DB 19.5 vs. PADI 7.5
Average Visit Time: DB 7 min 48 sec vs. PADI 5 min 28 sec
Total Users (Unique Visitors): DB 55,754 vs. PADI 50,000
DiveBuddy.com started out as a grass roots, organically grown, social community for scuba divers. PADI has hundreds of thousands of existing members to market to...plus a couple magazines...plus a large sales force...plus they attend every major tradeshow.
And DiveBuddy.com still beat PADI!The only reason I’ve taken this opportunity to brag about DiveBuddy.com is because PADI has not played fairly in the past. If PADI is going to win the respect of business leaders and innovators in our industry, they need to start working together more as opposed to dipping their toes in every facet of the business. PADI is a great training organization, they should stick to what they know.
p.s. DiveBuddy.com is only days away from breaking the
1,000,000 Unique Visitors threshold!
Update: We broke the threshold:
divebuddy.com/blog.aspx?BlogID=11460