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 Pocket
Fives is the most successful poker forum launched since the poker boom. Well, mostly a forum, it has articles and player
rankings too. Launched in the second half of 2004, more than a year post-Moneymaker, Pocketfives.com first found its niche with
its unique (at the time) online tournament player rankings. While the mass of players couldn't care less, such rankings are
very popular with a niche of players, who happen to like to talk about stuff like rankings, so the pairing with a
forum led to the growth of an in-depth website.
In spring 2007, eGaming Review first reported that Pocketfives.com was being sold to Pokersourceonline.com, although rumor had
it on the market for some time. The domain has quite a lot going for it, and a couple things very much against it. First the
positive... as shown above, Pocket Fives has a solid upward monthly unique visitors graph -- not massive growth, but some
progress over the year without any significant downward spikes. Quantcast.com reports that 2% of the visitors to Pocketfives.com
account for an overly high 51% percent of the site visits. This is not surprising considering, first, that it is a forum and
second, the low-ish but fanatical appeal of the tournament ranking statistics. This level of "addicts" though
obviously means the site has a dedicated core that isn't going anywhere.
An additional strength is, unlike some competitors, the level of forum discourse is relatively mature. People who
talk about poker are more of a target market for advertisers than people who potty-talk, even if they do play poker too.
Other strengths include many literate forum posters, weekly podcasts and a large number of user-contributed articles.
Besides the bloated effect (seen in its Hitwise visitor numbers) caused by the very regular traffic of a small number of
visitors, Pocket Fives' two main weaknesses are an extremely high percentage of visitors from the United States, and poor
search engine traffic. The first of these problems no doubt should have lowered the value of the domain in the eyes of a buyer,
but the latter offers an excellent opportunity to do something more with the domain than has been done. There is quite
a bit there now, but there is potential for much more. On the downside, Poker Source Online has a below average search engine
presence itself, so the main opportunity available with the domain is not an expertise of the buyers. In other words, Pocket
Fives somewhat mirrors both the strengths of Pokersourceonline.com and its weaknesses too. |
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