During the last 10 years Mataf was my playground. I worked with search engine optimization, online marketing, community management, creating orginal content… I think Mataf was unique in the forex space, most of the trading tools were done before for my personal trading. I developed content I didn’t find somewhere else. And it worked very well, last year I welcomed almost 1 million unique visitors per month in january and march.

The number of visitors was enough strong to take a risk without endangering the future of the site. I decided to build a brand, as the domain name mataf.com was not for sale I completely changed the brand name for ForexTicket. I was aware that this change could drop the number of visitors.

And the number of visitors dropped by 30%. But, thanks Internet’s God, the fall was stabilized and 2012 started -very- well.

Forexticket is a worldwide website. Europe represents more than 50% of the whole visits but Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India…) become more important every week.

The mobile version of Forexticket is growing very fast. In december more than 6% of visits are from a smartphone or a tablet and I could reach 7 or 8 percent in january.

So, today we have a new brand, the website should recover all its visitors in the following months. We are strong on mobile and web.

And tomorrow we will be better on mobile and I will try to enhance the brand. We have one distinct website per country, ready to be compliant with all the regulations… And to become an independant broker! … okay, it’s probably a joke, I didn’t plan to transform ForexTicket as a forex broker, I lack some skills and motivation to do that.

• How EURUSD moves during the US session?
• How USD index moves on Monday?

I didn’t find the answer, then I developed the tool. Now I know that EURUSD is moving up during the US session and down in the European night.

That’s cool isn’t it? You can test here: Forex Session

Lifestyle Startups: Work to Live their Passion
On the California coast where I live, we see lifestyle entrepreneurs like surfers and divers who own small surf or dive shop or teach surfing and diving lessons to pay the bills so they can surf and dive some more.  A lifestyle entrepreneur is living the life they love, works for no one but themselves, while pursuing their personal passion. In Silicon Valley the equivalent is the journeyman coder or web designer who loves the technology, and takes coding and U/I jobs because it’s a passion.

A great article about startup and entrepreneurs. I define myself as “Lifestyle Startup“

I keep in mind the acquisition of Boursorama by Fimatex (Société Générale) in France at the beginning of 2002. The price was very high : 44 millions Euro (x36 price-earnings – to compare with x32 for EuroInvestor).  This acquisition has helped Fimatex to grow faster (108’000 account in 2001 vs 677’000 account in 2010) and to become the leader in trading online in France.

After my short experience with Synthesis Bank (now Saxo Switzerland) in 2006 I was not far to change the business model of Mataf.net. I thought about the opportunity to become a forex broker. I had a strong forex portal and the skills to optimize the website to collect leads. The choice between forex broker and portal was not easy but I think I made the better choice a the right time… My motivation is to build something, not to make a ton of money.

Today I see 5 differents business in the forex market:

• Social Networks (including forum). There are a lot of discussion about trading strategy, brokers… A serious broker has to hear the traders to know what they want and he has to work hard to offer them exactly what they want.
• Forex Portals. This is the biggest crossroads for traders. They can find news, tools, charts, informations, formations…
• Managed account. Most of them are IB.
• Brokers. I think they are too much for the forex market.
• Banks. They will acquire forex brokers because the forex market is ripe for biggest company.

If I had no limit my strategy would be:

• recruite a team to discuss with traders in social networks. I would contact the owner of forums and networks to work with them (and not against them as many brokers do).
• Turn my forex portal to a big news and tools provider. And I would optimize the conversion funnel to download my platform and to open account.
• Offer the best and simplest trading platform.

This is a complete strategy: You perfectly know the forex traders, you can offer them what they want, you have a source of leads, and you have a good trading platform.
OK it’s not enought to be a broker… but it a very good start.

I think, and I hope, that Saxo will follow this line with the acquisition of EuroInvestor.

If I had enough money I would certainly acquire a broker to do the same thing

Ready for the Wow effect? Go to Mataf Mobile (it’s better with an iPhone or an Android… I didn’t test on WP7).

It’s the occasion to tell that FXCM and Mataf have renewed our exclusive partnership until the beginning of 2013…

Last week I met Andrey Duka (from Dukascopy) at the Geneva Forex Event. I was very pleased to learn that M. Duka knows and really appreciates Mataf. It was enought for a succesful evening.

This is the first step of the most important move since Mataf exists.

And today, after weeks and weeks of work, I have pushed a version of Mataf in 51 languages. I have several motivations in this project:

• The first motivation is the technical challenge. Mataf.net was designed for 6 languages. It was hard coded. I re-wrote most of the functions and files to accept an illimited number of languages. And Yes, I’m very happy because it works!
• I also wanted to open Mataf to the Asian market. I know that most of traders in Asia speaks english but I also know that most of people prefers to read in their mother tongue. I think I can have more visitors from Asia than Europe. I was conforted in that idea when I read the interview of Drew Niv (CEO of FXCM)

Well, traditionally FXCM has been very strong in Asian countries. Actually our Asian business is bigger than our North American business; over 45% of our clients come from Asia. We have a hugh presence in Asia

• Saxo Bank seems to have an important number of clients in Russia, Arabia and Greece… And now, I offer those languages!

• I have to found a new leverage to increase the number of visitors on Mataf.

My target is to double the number of visitors on Mataf in one year. Last month, which was an excellent month, I had 1.430M visits, 4.475 M pageviews and 0.93 M unique visitors. In May 2011 I expect arround 3M visits, 10M pageviews and 2M unique visitors. This is my impossible challenge

The translation is not perfect but I will improve that point in the next months…

Mataf has a new homepage since few minutes. It’s shorter, clearer and designed for my tools and analysis. And… This page is the same for all the languages. Now Mataf is ready to receive new translation.

This is the first step of the most important move since Mataf exists.

Mataf.net an other forex site on the web

This is my first post here. I’m Arnaud Jeulin, the owner of Mataf.net. I live in France.

I don’t think I will publish more than one or two post per month. I won’t speak about trading here, only about forex industry and my technical and administrative work on Mataf.net.