The guide to buying repossessed property was a surprise hit in this week’s email. As always when we launch a new guide we’ve little idea of how popular it’ll be – and neither have the sites we include in it.

Most can’t quite believe the sheer weight of traffic that comes from something popular in the weekly email; the website propertyearth got a taste of it this week.

We got an email from the people there saying in a nutshell:

“The site had so many visitors yesterday- it crashed!”

Certainly a lot more pleasant than our own DDOS attack a couple of years ago…

Comment and discuss

This week was a momentous one for the site, due to a subtle change. It marks a new stage in its development and it all revolves around the Travel Money Maximiser.

While it’s been on the site for eighteen months, we’ve just supercharged it with more providers and facilities, like a buy back comparison. Yet more revolutionary (for the site) is it now has a website all of its own: www.travelmoneymax.com.

What’s the difference?

Last year we started giving some of our tools their own URL e.g, www.premiumbondcalculator.com and www.megashopbot.com, yet they’re still included within the main MSE frame. Take a look at the TMM and you’ll see that my ugly mugshot isn’t at the top, and nor is the MSE.com logo, it simply has a ‘brought to you by MoneySavingExpert.com’ stamp on it.

Effectively it is an entirely new website focused purely on travel money (though the underlying URL when you click on it is still travelmoney.moneysavingexpert.com).

Why bother?

It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. As the main MSE site and forums have got bigger, it’s easy for users and journalists writing about these issue to forget our tools and they therefore don’t get used as often as they should – especially as most of them are totally unique and unreplicated elsewhere.

The first step was to give each its own identity URL so when they’re written about or people want to link, instead of a long name, they can quickly type in directly what they want.

Now for the major tools we’re going to give each one its own designed identity, so that newbies coming to use the tool don’t wonder why it seems to have a double header. It also helps give each tool a personality of its own, so it’s easier to remember, and hopefully more people will link to it.

Of course the hope is that they will come along and use the rest of the great things the MSE main site and forum have to offer too. Watch this space for more MSE sites, and a few very sexy new tools…

Comment and Discuss

Having just been away in the sun for a few days, I’ve discovered MoneySavingExpert.com has a bespoke new service for nerds, which even I hadn’t been told about. Quite remarkably, the site can now predict British Weather.

I first noticed the phenomena a couple of weeks ago, when between 1,200 and 1,700 people joined the email over the weekend, by far the lowest for any weekend this year. Now I decided this couldn’t be to do with the fact it was my wedding weekend, but instead to do with the hot weather.

After that we nipped away for a few days in the sun, yet first Thur then more so on Friday the number of sign-ups was much higher than the prior week, so without checking I sent the following nerdy email to my team:

“I thought I would try to predict that the weather yesterday was dreary and today is poor.

How? The only information i’m using is the number of sign-ups to the email list, which has been quite a bit higher the end part of this week than last week. While some is probably down to the great Tesco code in the Right Hand Side bar – I suspect the weather plays a big part.”

And indeed the rather disconsolate message came back that after the prior weekend’s sun, it was indeed now peeing it down.

So it seems, for obvious reasons, there’s a direct correlation between the number of people joining the distribution list for the weekly e-mail and the weather. If you’d like to use this new service you can see the number so far each day yourself in the stats section, bottom left of the home page. Then again, you may find this link even more useful.

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just grabbed the stats below from the system, to see which the most popular forum boards are. This is done on page views not people, so perhaps a better explanation would be the boards people view again and again and again and keep updating.

No surprise that Grabbit is top, so I’ve used it as a base for the rest showing it as a 100 (it’s many millions of page views) and the rest are all based on it. I was slightly surprised to see Competitions Time up there, as it’s a relatively new board – I think eighteen months or so old – but it’s grown at speed (Correction: it’s actually four years old now – time flies!).

This experiment has been slightly unfair to some of the newer boards like ‘food shopping’, which was only born in the last few weeks of the measured period, yet even so it managed to make the top fifty. Good to see Debt-Free Wannabe and Old-Style still doing so well too.

Discuss this blog

One MoneySaver, Chris, sent me an e-mail. He was doing a survey via Home Of research for a bank (he did say which he thought it was, but, as he wasn’t 100%, I won’t include it). It was about things it could do to increase customer satisfaction, and improve itself from a customer perspective. One option was using, what I can only assume is me, to train its employees.

Here’s a screen grab he sent:

Now the first thing I noticed was the name was Martyn Lewis, not Martin Lewis, so of course there’s a chance it’s about the former newsreader, but that does seem ridiculously unlikely.

I must admit, if I were asked to help train bank staff I’d be in two minds. I’ve done corporate speeches for financial services companies in the past, mainly along the slightly wry title of “you’re the enemy and we’re going to get you”, which is an explanation of my view about the adversarial relationship between consumers and companies. So being involved in training is an interesting concept.

Yet the truth is I’ve never believed any bank is good or bad, only their products, so to be right you’d want someone in Barclays saying “Alliance & Leicester’s account gives a 0% overdraft” or someone in Alliance & Leicester saying “Barclays cash ISA pays much more than ours”, and somehow I’m not sure the bank bosses would want this kind of training.

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just been contacted by a newspaper running a story based on Hitwise’s (the web monitoring specialists) press release, which says in Q4 2008, I was the most searched personality in the UK, unbelievably beating Barack Obama by 11%! The story is here – Hitwise blogs.

It’s a bit of a challenge to know how to comment on it. There are a mass of different issues involved (including the fact they’ve used the Valentine’s logo…). I thought it would be useful to write down my feelings and mullings; both for me to read over in years to come when I’m long forgotten, and to try and straighten out my thoughts on it.

How do you do proud without doing arrogant?

First of all, I know that unlike the real celebrities on the list people are searching for my info not my ‘good looks and sparkling wit’, so I shan’t get arrogant about it. Many people use my name as a short cut to get to the articles, e.g. put “balance transfers martin lewis” in Google and you jump straight to that article – it’s quicker than typing MoneySavingExpert.

Furthermore, like most Brits I’ve absolutely no idea how you handle a compliment. Is there a right way? Crow about it and you look like a smug git, pass it off you look ungrateful and caring. Of course, inside I smiled when I heard the news. I smiled again when asked about being an “overnight success”: it’s taken ten years of 70+ hour working weeks, spreadsheets, and hardcore, debilitating stress to become one!

Yet a note like this makes you realise you’ve reached outside your box. I don’t know quite how to get that across (it’s not the same as writing here, to people who know the site). I have to say it does also in truth make me feel a little bit like not wanting to leave the house or work – it’s strange to think when you go outside so many people know who you are.

The upsurge has a sad undercurrent.

I’ve always said MoneySaving is more of a movement than anything else. And while I’m cock-a-hoop to see more MoneySavers on the site, we all know this upsurge is primarily due to the fact the economy has fallen off a cliff & many people are searching because they NEED to, rather than WANT to. While I’m glad that this site and its community has built up a level of trust that makes it the go-to place, I wish it wasn’t caused by such a negative and depressing overall economic picture.

It’s a bit like the constant “you’re the one man benefiting from the credit crunch” line I hear all the time, which makes me want to tear my hair out. Actually I’m hating the recession. We get emails from people who are struggling and in terrible situations, and my media appearances always seem to be responding to crisis fire fighting. In short, much of the fun’s disappeared (I can hardly believe I once did Money comedy characters).

Plus, it’s so much more difficult to find the right solutions, and certainty about them; we have to constantly ask “will the company still survive?” or “will the bank go bust?” – questions which leave potential cracks in the foundations of any info.

As for me work-wise, last year I could fill my week five times over. This year it’s seven times, yet that doesn’t actually make that much difference. I’ve deliberately cut back so I only really do my regulars, far fewer ad hoc appearances.

As for the site, traffic is huge, we’ve nearly 8m users a month (960m hits) and 3.1m getting the weekly e-mail; while we’ve always had similar growth levels, what’s incredible is they’re continuing even at this size. Yet while the site’s traffic is up, the site’s revenue, while highly ethical, comes downstream of people whose revenue comes from advertising; and as everyone know’s that’s been hugely hit (See how this site is financed guide for a full explanation of how it works). The site is still very strong, yet where in the past recruiting new team members and investing in our big tools is something I’ve been able to do without question, this year things are different.

Yet being higher than Obama is amazing

Having said all that, who wouldn’t be awestruck upon seeing their own name’s been searched more than the President of the United States’? Especially one with so much hope, talent, good feeling and expectation behind him? It’s mind numbing! Now excuse me while I go print out the results and put them on my wall – the grandchildren may laugh at it one day.

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just come back from a lunch meeting to discover we cracked a new landmark. There are now 3,000,000 people being sent the weekly email. It’s a staggering number, not far from 1 in 10 working adults in the UK. As always I’m very proud of the site, my MSE team, and what we’ve achieved, and huge thanks to all the contributing forumites and those who tell friends about the site.

The last 500,000 has been done in less than 4 months, a staggering rate, and sadly indicative of current climes. Over the last 12 months, nearly 1,300,000 have added themselves to the email list. Plus I suspect for the first time, this January we will have over 7,000,000 unique users.

For my fellow MoneySaving stats nerds here’s the progress chart for the weekly e-mail (it includes links to the waybackmachine. Sometimes images go missing from old versions of the site, so to help improve that we may be a few days off).

August 2002… Home Page. I launched the site as a personal home page…. See what it looked like

22 Feb 2003… The Site’s Birth. I had the site developed into the first version of what it is today… See what it looked like

25 April 2003…. 10,000 on email list. See what it looked like

11 January 2004… 50,000 on email list. See what it looked like

30 July 2004… 100,000 on email list. See what it looked like

28 April 2005… 250,000 on email list. See what it looked like

3 March 2006… 500,000 on email list. See what it looked like

24 Feb 2007…. 1,000,000 on email list. See what it looked like

20 April 2008… 2,000,000 on email list. See what it looked like

19 September 2008…. 2,500,000 on email list! (not available yet)

15 January 2009… 3,000,000 on the email list.

I wrote in the 2,500,000 email announcement about what the growth of the site has meant. And the continued growth increases all of that. I do start to question “how big can it get?” At what level do we hit market maturity, when everyone who can get the email or will get the email has?

Comment and Discuss.

The following Telegraph guide to top search terms on Google has just been pinged to me by a friend. I was quite surprised when I read it that both the website and I make different Google top ten search terms.

Here’s the two key categories:

Fastest-rising searches for people

1.) The Ting Tings
2.) Barack Obama
3.) Cheryl Cole
4.) Heath Ledger
5.) Alexander Graham Bell
6.) Chris Brown
7.) Martin Lewis
8.) Hannah Montana
9.) Perez Hilton
10.) Chuck Norris

Financial search terms that were more popular in 2008 than 2007

This is an interesting one, and it’s great to be in there as its about increased popularity. As MSE was already the biggest money site in the UK by quite a long way in 2007, the fact we’ve still increased enough to make the top ten is great.

1.) Icesave
2.) Hot UK Deals
3.) Natwest
4.) HMRC
5.) HboS
6.) Money Saving Expert
7.) Halifax
8.) Barclays
9.) RBS
10.) Lloyds TSB.

Enough of growth, how about actual traffic?

Having read this, I couldn’t resist playing with a few wee comparisons. As you know I’m a nerd, so what interested me was the above stats are based on growth as opposed to actual numbers.

Therefore I went onto the Google Trends traffic mapping tool which allows you to measure both search and web traffic through goodle to see how the actual numbers stack up.

Thought I would share a bit of my playing with you…

1. MoneySavingExpert, Hot UK Deals, NatWest and HMRC. WEB TRAFFIC

This is an interesting one, to see how the site stacks up against some of the others in the list in terms of actual traffic. As you’ll see in this Google Trends graphs, NatWest is by far the biggest. Not surprising really as its internet banking service is a must-use tool for all its customers.

2. Martin Lewis v Robert Peston. SEARCH TERMS

I was trying to think of someone else in money to provide a search barometer. Robert’s a hugely influential journalist, and his blog is very popular, so I thought I would see how the searches measure up.

And I was slightly surprised by the result… Martin Lewis v Robert Peston. Of course, I have the not-insubstantial advantage that people type in my name when they want to come to the site, which I think makes this contest a little unfair on Robert.

3. Cheryl Cole, Hannah Montana, Obama, and me. SEARCH TERMS

Taking on Robert Peston’s one thing, but testing the might of Hannah Montana, now that’s saying something… check this Google Trends graph (for the UK) out.

The Google Trends tool is fascinating. If you’re going to have a play yourself, do ensure you comma separate the terms, and select UK to filter out international traffic. You can compare both search ranking and actual traffic to sites.

If you do any interesting comparisons, do post the in the discussion below.

Comment and Discuss.

HOORAH! At 18:28 today, the 2,500,000 person joined this site’s weekly tips email. That’s 1,027,000 more than at the same time 365 days ago.

It feels like it should be a special number with its own name… like a quarter of a Tenmillion. This landmark means MoneySavingExpert.com’s now at a scale similar to the big boys of the publishing world, out-reaching a good few national newspapers.

I’m very proud of the site, my MSE team, and what we’ve achieved, and huge thanks to all the contributing forumites and those who tell friends about the site.

For my fellow MoneySaving stats nerds here’s the progress chart for the weekly e-mail (it includes links to the waybackmachine, sometimes some images will be missing from the old versions of the site… to help improve that we may be a few days off).

August 2002… Home Page. I launched the site as a personal home page…. See what it looked like

22 Feb 2003… The Site’s Birth. I had the site developed into the first version of what it is today… See what it looked like

25 April 2003…. 10,000 on email list. See what it looked like

11 January 2004… 50,000 on email list. See what it looked like

30 July 2004… 100,000 on email list. See what it looked like

28 April 2005… 250,000 on email list. See what it looked like

3 March 2006… 500,000 on email list. See what it looked like

24 Feb 2007…. 1,000,000 on email list. See what it looked like

20 April 2008… 2,000,000 on email list. See what it looked like!

19 September 2008…. 2,500,000 on email list!

To turn what was a small home page into what perhaps can now be seen as an institution in just over five years is a phenomena. More importantly the size and strength means the information we can now provide is honed and updated. I thought this was an appropriate moment to give a couple of examples of what happens behind the scenes…

• Cutting edge research team.

  As I seem to spend more time delivering the info, it’s crucial to have a fantastic team who know their stuff to ensure the site is still correct and on the nose. Today as I whizzed from filming an urgent ITV programme to radio 2 on the back of a motorbike, I called up MSE Dan as he’d been examining the new savings safety institutional link between Lloyds and Halifax.

  It’s funny for me to think that Dan was the first outside recruit (Brendan I knew from other jobs and Andrea was a site user) back in December 2004. He replied to an ad for an office junior at the local job centre, yet when he came with a CV noting a degree in maths from Imperial uni, I hired him on the spot.

  Having worked with me for a long time and with a maths brain, he’s a great example of how the team’s maturing skills and experience has changed things, with each member having a solid and trusted expertise of their own.

  Alongside MSE Archna (another originally raw graduate recruit now turned into senior team member with honed skills) he leads the site editorial team, and has responsibility for ensuring all the hardcore money stuff is up to date.

• Deals are now updated every day

  Every time I look at the prominent Daily Updated Vouchers, Codes and Deals block on the home page, I smile.

  The site’s strength means that since June we’ve been able to afford a full time team member, MSE Deborah, to keep that area updated and it’s been a fantastic revelation to see its popularity.

  For me this is a joy. To know I can turn something like that into a professional task, used by millions, and knowing it helps people to maintain a good lifestyle at low cost in these tough times.

As this shows, the growth of the site has meant it’s now a team not a one-man band job. I could write a glowing report about every element of the site and its team; each of whom shows dedication & speciality, and is deserving of praise…

… from my hard put-upon but creative techies and designers, to the dependability of and organization of the admin team and the talented editorial team each of whom is developing niches and specialities.

As I’ve said before when I started the site on my own, as a place to support my broadcast work (read about the site’s history) little could I perceive that around 6,000,000 people in the UK would access it each month and a team of people would be supporting them; let alone the fact the site would be able to support its own charity (see MSE Charity Fund)

Comment and Discuss

Many wee websites claim 100,000s hits, even though a hit means nothing. If you really want to see how big a website is, the rather clever Google Trends will now allow you to map the popularity of sites against each other.

What Google Trends usually does

Google Trends is a free tool for people with websites to see which terms are searched more.

For example when writing an article on breakdown cover, we check which more people search for: breakdown cover or roadside recovery. This then helps decide what we call it (as you want people to find what they’re looking for).

It’s fascinating and lets you see such arcane triviality as who’s searched more: Jade Goody or Paris Hilton (both worldwide and UK only).

The new website popularity measure

Now once you put in an initial term search (use commas to separate values), the next pages allow you to search websites for traffic. Here, by comma separating web addresses, you can see what’s more popular in any given country.

Here’s an example: I’ve pitted this site against Lastminute.com and Friendsreunited.com in the UK and it maps Google’s data on visitor numbers.

While you can have fun with this, it is also a good indicator (though not foolproof) of a website’s legitimacy. If it’s got big traiffic it’s more likely to be legit. I’ve previously suggested other tools to search for web accuracy (see my journalists stop quoting hits past blog) but this new Google tool’s likely to be much more accurate.

Comment and discuss