South African gay lifestyle site Mambaonline.com says it has grown its traffic by 30% in the past six months, to over 1.2 million page impressions a month. A year ago, the site was reporting around 93 000 page views a month.
One of three major gay lifestyle portals in SA, mambaonline.com now claims around 40 000 unique visitors a month, each of whom spends an average of 21 minutes on the site.
Site editor Luiz DeBarros says the site`s revenue stream is also growing - mainly through online advertising. Site publisher Underdog Entertainment is looking at expanding the brand across other platforms, such as a magazine, and could begin charging for advanced services on its "Meet Market".
The site`s Meet Market online dating service claimed to be SA`s first exclusively gay online dating service at its launch a year ago. DeBarros says the service, which is currently free, now has over 4 000 subscribers.
DeBarros notes that studies in the US have shown that gay men and lesbians are more likely to use the Internet more frequently and to shop online in comparison to non-gay users.
"As a niche site, we can never compare our traffic to mainstream Web sites, but we have robust growth among a discerning and trend-setting market," he says.
Mambaonline.com offers features, polls, competitions, news, reviews and a "what`s on" calendar.
DeBarros says much of the growth has been fuelled by below-the-line marketing and by polls such as its Sexiest Man of the Year.
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