[I was browsing the Alexa rankings today. (Go to www.Alexa.com). I was stunned to see how well AfricanCrisis is doing compared to other Zimbabwean related websites.

I was remarking to a friend that this guy with his new crime website… which never materialised… must be careful. Lots of publicity on the web does not mean survival. Survival on the internet is a tenacious thing. You need to battle your way up through the rankings. There is no such thing as instant momentum and off you go.

Of course, African Crisis does not compare to the truly massive websites… but if one compares against general Zimbabwean news websites (which I thought had LOTS of popular appeal)… and given the highly controversial nature of my postings on my site, and the views expressed here… I am stunned to see that African Crisis is starting to chase, and beat, MOST of the Zimbabwean websites on the web. (Colonialism is gaining ground!!!)

I’m not going to mention numbers, because I don’t want to run anyone down. But go to Alexa and do some rankings of your own. It cannot, obviously compare to proper commercial websites with newspapers like the Daily Mail & Guardian, IOL or News24. But… the site does amazingly well when compared against Zimbabwean websites who touch on the same news items.

I am shocked at how some Zimbabwean websites are literally DYING… even the really big ones. Some that I thought were ENORMOUS, are actually much lower in the rankings than African Crisis.

In fact, I think as a general comment, Zimbabwean websites are slowly dying… Robert Mugabe… is winning…

What I did notice… is that CONSERVATIVE Websites in the USA, like WorldNetDaily and FreeRepublic are BLASTING their way forward. They are now among the top ranking websites in the world. They are in the top 2,000 – can you believe that? They are slaughtering everything in their path. I think non-Conservative websites may be losing ground slowly…

In terms of traffic, it seems AfricanCrisis is, these days neck and neck with ZWNEWS.COM – which in prior times I’d also figured was way out of my reach.

Given how hard hitting, and completely against-the-grain my website is – I am actually delighted with the results. In a sense, I’m my own worst enemy, and yet, I’m gaining ground on the ones who appeal to the middle-of-the-road crowd.

There is another side to being TOTALLY DIFFERENT as my website is… and that is, in the long term… BRANDING… because there is nothing out there, in any way closely even like it… so it could end up in a niche where it has virtually no competition.

The only other website I can think of inside SA with an almost similar theme is www.Praag.co.za – and… they don’t even come close… In fact, I can’t even find any of the other Boer or anti-ANC websites anywhere on the rankings.

So, AfricanCrisis is not doing badly at all…

A website I very much wanted to model it on was FreeRepublic.com. Free Republic is now ranked 2,225 in the world. It is ENORMOUS… and it pumps… I doubt you’ll find a bigger website anywhere. People post on that thing at a pace like I have never seen in my life. I know, that one year I saw them raising, FROM THEIR MEMBERS, $40,000 – to pay to their software developers to make changes to the site. I was stunned.

AfricanCrisis is definitely in a niche of its own, with a brand of its own. Now to build on it… and see how I can include volunteers. But for now, it is largely a one-man show – sadly. Jan]