Author: Pete Boyle
Original translation: chain bazaar
When I started doing market analysis, I focused on the growth models of Web 2.0 brands. Honestly, Ive never lacked a strategy for analysis. In the Web3 space, the situation is much more difficult as many projects seem to be going"community first"the old way. That might be fine, but a lot of projects dont do that well, and they miss out on some really easy access. Dune Analytics is one of the brands that has really impressed me over the past few years. Ive spoken to people with a decade of experience in the field as well as people just getting in, and they all mentioned Dune.
The amazing thing about Dune is that they didnt take common approaches in Web3 like:
airdrop
“Paid Attention” Community Growth
Use their own token for earning model (they dont have a token)
Theyre drawing on a lot of what I would consider to be traditional PR and brand awareness tactics, which can easily lead to dominance in search engine results pages, and it all stems from the way theyve built their product. This is an incredible tool and one of the first tools that people think of when they talk about blockchain analysis.
So, how did Dunes meteoric rise come about?
What is Dune Analytics?
Dune is a web-based application that allows anyone (with some knowledge of SQL) to query blockchain data and create visualizations like the one below.
Some even take the time to build complete dashboards that give others an overview of a project, series or even a subset of an industry, like this example on CEXs.
This is a puzzling thing. Dune didnt pay people to build these dashboards, but countless new visualizations appear every day and are promoted by the people who make them (Ill explain why they do this later). In my opinion, they get more attention than many other data visualization brands like Nansen.
The question is, how do they do it? Lets take a look.
Dunes Explosive Growth
Dune was founded in 2018. But if you look at the existing analytics tools in the market, the platform wont really take off until around 2021. Organic traffic to SEMRush started to take off in early 2022 (SEMRush has lower numbers and is only considered organic).
At the same time, they start generating backlinks.
This seems to coincide with the brand’s Series A financing in August 2021.
At that time, Dune seemed to suddenly appear on everyones radar. People talk about it, share links, and create visualizations like crazy. For a while, Dune was everywhere.
Interestingly, very little of their traffic comes from Google searches, most of it is direct visits. Im actually surprised that more of that traffic isnt referral traffic (well get to that later).
Very few brands can do this. They have become synonymous with their category (blockchain analytics) and are often the go-to service when someone needs analytical visualizations. As a result, they get a large number of users who dont even need to search. All they have to do is go straight to the website and Ill break down how they do that and explore a few areas where I think they can improve.
Dune helps both the supply and demand sides of blockchain data visualization
Thats the essence of the problem.
Dune’s platform does an excellent job of helping both the supply and demand sides of data visualization.
Dune helps data scientists get noticed and get paid work.
Dune also helps those who need analysis (VCs and content creators) get detailed information across industries.
They position themselves in the middle of these two groups and create products that help both groups of people. As a result, everyone wants to talk about them, so let’s dig into the details.
Need - Provide support to content creators, increase PR and visibility
frankly speaking. The best tools, programs, and products help users achieve their goals. Often, they make the achievement of goals faster, easier or more economical. We are currently in the creator stage. Everyone is producing content, from individuals looking to make a side income to brands looking to reach thousands of new users, and content is the way to do it.
Creation can be through videos, blogs, podcasts, newsletters and even social media accounts, and content production can be huge. And, if Im really being harsh, a lot of it is pretty generic and just noise.
The people who create this content dont have to be experts (at least not yet), theyre just motivated enough to put in the time to keep producing content. Building an audience by providing a similar overview to others is a long and difficult process.
However, if you have a unique insight, perhaps derived from data analysis, you will immediately stand out, the data-backed opinion not only has more weight, but also attracts attention through cool pictures that help explain various elements .
Thats what Dune does.
Before the advent of Dune, analyzing blockchain data was difficult for all but the most professional technicians. But thanks to Dune and some knowledge of SQL, anyone can create simple charts or more detailed analytics dashboards, and the result is that various creators cite Dune in their work.
Brands and influencers use Dune to talk about project growth or interesting changes in the market.
Large publications like Cointelegraph, with millions of readers, use Dune to enhance their coverage.
Dune also appears in the video tutorial on Web3 analysis.
All of these references not only gave Dune exposure to a wider market, but also brought them backlinks that helped with their organic rankings on Google.
According to SEMRush, Dune has approximately 3.5 million backlinks pointing to its website from more than 14,000 domains.
The Dune company has basically created a product that creators need to grow their business and that they must refer to if they use it. The result is huge exposure and backlinks that help brands grow and thrive.
Feed - How Dune Lets Data Scientists Create Visualizations
When I started working on Dune, the first thing I thought was, How do they get these people to create these visualizations? I mean, without the visualizations, Dune wouldnt have gotten the attention and usage in the media.
These guys are actually creating marketing materials for Dune. But why would anyone bother learning how to use Dune?
Again, this comes down to Dune ceding the dominance to allow others to benefit from the product. Data scientist jobs are hard to find. You need a specific skill set and need to demonstrate your abilities to potential employers. Additionally, data scientist positions are highly competitive and relatively well paid. This means that brands that need to hire data scientists only need those who are verified data scientists.
Dune provides newbies with the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in the field and find employment. Dune allows anyone to sign up for an account and start building dashboards for free.
Because its free to build public dashboards, Dune is effectively a data scientists portfolio.
For example, it is equivalent to a data scientists:
For writers its WordPress or Medium (like Mirror.xyz if you like Web3)
YouTube for video editing
Figma for UX designers
Aspiring data scientists can create dashboards that showcase their skills and use it to find jobs.
This is great because if someones viz is featured in a reputable outlet like Cointelegraph, the creator can get a link and thus attract potential customers.
But Dune goes one step further with the Wizard program. Those who are very skilled at Dune can become Dune Wizards and showcase their creations. They have a special category on the main search page.
As more people start seeing Wizards work, more brands are reaching out to them for help building their own dashboards, as mentioned in this Dune Wizard interview.
Dune has also launched a jobs section to help these Wizards apply for and find jobs.
Some of these jobs pay well into six figures, which is pretty good for a beginner who wants to learn about visualizing blockchain data. But again, Dune is not the focus and focus of these people, they let others use their product to pursue their own goals.
Blockchain data supply and demand parties free marriage
The whole Dune approach is about giving others the tools they need to grow and achieve their own goals, and it works really well.
Dune sits at the curious intersection of three needs:
1. Data Scientists – They want to build their portfolio and find a job;
2. Creators – they need data scientists to create more engaging content;
3. Institutions – They need to find reputable data scientists to help them understand their investment or their own development.
Few brands can do this, and most want the detailed data visualizations they create to be behind a paywall and only accessible to customers. Some other brands charge a lot, so starting-up creators don’t have access to these tools. Then there are brands that are very protective of their intellectual property and don’t allow others to share their products.
Dune breaks all of these trends. Anyone can create visualizations for free, and they can be used in any marketing material for free (just provide relevant citations). On the surface, you might think that Dune is just a tool for visualizing massive amounts of blockchain data, but it’s much more than that.
Dune is a matchmaking platform that provides opportunities to people who need data, while also providing valuable data to data scientists. By helping everyone, they are also helping themselves. But if everything is free, how can they help themselves?
How Dune makes money
While you can create dashboards and share Dune’s visualizations for free, they also have paid plans. They know everyone wants (or needs) their data to be open to everyone. Many projects need specific on-chain data analysis to help them understand how to grow as a brand, they need specific analysis for their own internal processes, Dune offers a paid plan.
Institutions can sign up for a paid plan to help them with in-house data analysis. This is very suitable for projects that have a large amount of on-chain data that needs to be sorted out, or venture capital companies that need to understand the development of the project.
What I like about this model is that you basically get a full product demo for free. Anyone considering purchasing a premium plan can visit Dune to see what kind of data results they can produce. If they like data reading, theyre more likely to sign up for a paid plan. If they need help, they can find it directly on the Wizards portal.
Areas I think Dune missed.
Im surprised Dune doesnt get more organic traffic. If they noticed this, they could increase traffic significantly. Their domain name authority is very high. As of this writing, they have a DA of 78, according to Ahrefs. If you dont know, DA is a third-party metric that evaluates the authority of a website. In general, the higher the DA value (on a scale of 100), the higher it will rank in Google. The authority of 78 is very high.
However, organic traffic is very low. SimilarWeb says organic traffic accounts for less than 10% of the sites total traffic. Why?
Many data visualizations are not optimized for Google search. And I dont recommend changing them either. I think theyre pretty good now. So what does Google index for Dune? They tend to index a lot of creator pages.
In fact, I cant imagine how much these pages would show up in search. If I was a consultant for Dune and they wanted to drive traffic, I would try to use the platform to create data outputs related to what people were searching for. Below are some basic Crypto search terms. This is just a small snippet.
There are about 20,000 searches per month here, and competition is relatively low (CMP is on a 0-1 scale, with 1 being the most competitive). With Dunes DA, they were able to create some articles that were updated every month and ranked pretty high in Google.
They have the following advantages:
as a recognized authority;
Have direct access to data;
Have an established audience.
They can easily create articles that target high search volumes and leverage their data to create unique content. In the above case,Care needs to be taken to avoid giving financial advice, but angles to avoid this problem can easily be found. For example, one could create an article titled Most Actively Traded Cryptos Over the Last X Months instead of focusing on Which Long-Term Cryptos to Buy Today. It’s still possible to optimize for the main keywords listed in the image, but avoid making specific investment statements. I imagine they could easily add hundreds of thousands of visitors per month by processing this content. Especially with the current SEO approach to Web3 being relatively weak.
SummaryDune
I think Dunes success really comes down to two key factors:
1. Have a great product that helps multiple groups;
2. Let people use their product for free, thus promoting free public relations.
While not a marketing ploy per se, the way they constructed it made Dune a household name. They built their businesses with the goal of helping others. Instead of putting themselves at the center of everything, they find themselves there thanks to their generosity.
This is a true Web3 approach.
I do think they could do more in terms of traffic, while I hope their monetization model is good enough to keep them alive as they grow.
The original text was written by Pete Boyle, and the Chinese version was compiled by the Chain Market team. The English copyright belongs to the original author. For Chinese reprint, please contact the editor.
