SmartCompany, Australia’s leading website for small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs, has celebrated its third birthday by posting record traffic and subscriber numbers for 2009.
The site, which launched in February 2007, attracted 1.4 million unique viewers in 2009 and over seven million page views, compared with 930,000 uniques in 2008 and just over four million pageviews.
SmartCompany’s daily email bulletin is sent to almost 18,000 entrepreneurs and business owners every day.
Publisher and founder Amanda Gome says the three year milestone is a particularly significant milestone for any entrepreneur.
“We know from all the research we do that the first two years are the hardest in any start up, so it’s a great achievement to get to our third birthday.”
“We now have a strong and rapidly growing business that is clearly the leading site for SMEs and entrepreneurs in Australia.”
Gome says the strength of SmartCompany is underpinned by a loyal community of business owners and managers who are passionate about taking their business to the next level.
“Australia’s SME community is disparate and in the early days we were asked how we would bring together the start ups, small suburban companies, online businesses and the larger private companies. But there is one thing that entrepreneurs are passionate about – growth.”
Connecting with this community now takes many forms, including a thriving online events division (SmartCompany ran 37 webinars last year), eBooks (there are 17 free eBooks in SmartCompany’s library) and physical events.
Gome says she particularly looks forwards to SmartCompany’s annual awards, including the Smart 50 awards which recognise Australia’s fastest-growing SMEs, the SmartCompany Business Start up Awards and the SmartCompany Web Awards.
“It’s hard work building up a small business, so it’s very important to recognise the contribution these entrepreneurs make to the Australian economy. But what we really love is hearing the stories behind these businesses and sharing the secrets of success – it’s extremely inspirational.”
As a special birthday gift for our community, SmartCompany would like to present the very first eBook from our famous business bitch, Aunty B. To access this free eBook, click here. You’ll need to log into the site as a registered user, which will allow you to access the special eBooks tab on the menu whenever you want. If you’re not registered for our site, click here – it only takes a second.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
