Forbes reports 63% annual rise in web traffic from Europe

Traffic growth at Forbes.com continues to accelerate as the website yesterday announced 26.2 million unique monthly visitors in March, a worldwide annual increase of 50 per cent, up from 42 per cent in January.

In regional terms, growth is even more rapid as Europe saw an annual increase of 63 percent, to 3.5 million, with Asia recording a 90 per cent year-on-year increase to 3 million visitors. Forbes attributes the growth to a continuing a trend that began with the reinvention of its digital publishing platform in June 2010.

"In terms of what's happening internationally, we're seeing similar kind of growth patterns that the US saw when they first started implementing the model," Charles Yardley, Forbes Media managing director of international and publisher of ForbesLife magazine, told Journalism.co.uk.

"That is a carefully thought out, methodical, strategic process. We had a lot of fantastic momentum and success in the US and we're replicating that internationally."

The new model, which emphasises the social aspect of content distribution and pays contributors as well as staff writers for content creation, has driven a 117 per cent increase in unique monthly visitors since its introduction in June 2010, according to Forbes.

Not all contributors are paid, as some choose not to commit to the terms which require a set number of articles a month in return for payment. There are around 1,000 people who write for the site worldwide.

In November we reported that Forbes was actively seeking contributors in the UK and Europe.

"From a contributor's stand point it's in fairly embryonic stages," said Yardley. "We are only just starting to mirror what's happened in the US but the target is to have 25 contributors in UK/Europe by the end of April and the same for Asia by the end of May."

In February, Forbes' chief product officer, Lewis D'Vorkin, who is spearheading the initiative, told Journalism.co.uk that the established publishing models are "broken" and that a model like Forbes.com's is necessary in the changing world of digital publishing and social media.

"The quality content our reporters and contributors produce, combined with the sophisticated Forbes.com platform and our social strategy is helping drive record-setting traffic," said Yardley in a statement accompanying the figures, which also indicated that worldwide traffic grew by 11 per cent from February to March while traffic in Europe increased by 14 per cent.

More information about Forbes.com's new digital publishing platform is available on Journalism.co.uk here.

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