A hyperlocal news website set up last year has opened a full time newsdesk in the town it reports on.
Wrexham.com was launched by a former journalist on the Evening Leader together with two friends who felt there was a gap in the market. for local news.
Monthly page views have already topped 100,000 and the site plans to start taking advertising next month.
It has also decided to a town centre office in Yorke Street with ex-Leader journalist Liam Randall working full-time as a reporter there.
Co-owner Rob Taylor, who has a background in web development, said: “It is very useful to be here because if something happens, we can get out and have a look.”
The team claim to have had success in getting disputed parking tickets at ASDA cancelled for residents and have also live blogged from stories including an armed standoff and a bomb scare.
The site runs a crowd-sourced fuel price monitor which tweets the best prices twice a day and even have their own local weather station, which provides updates to the site every 10 minutes.
Rob added: “We have been pretty amazed with the readership of the website and even speaking to people in the town, the feedback has been universally positive.”
Wrexham once housed the main offices of the Evening Leader while the North Wales Daily Post also had an office there.
The Leader still has a presence in the town but moved its main offices to Mold in the 1990s.
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
“Monthly page views have already topped 100,000 and the site plans to start taking advertising next month”
Are these people independently wealthy? This is not a business venture, it’s a hobby. Good luck to them but it’s only an answer if the web adverts can support the salaries.
Report this comment
It’s a brave new world right enough but still difficult to see how the income will be derived and sustained for more than one wage.
Report this comment
Perhaps this is the future we have all been waiting for? Before long, they will think – wouldn’t it be good to have a printed version of our news on the counter so that people can stay in town and read it instantly and easily instead of going home or squinting at their smartphones? And then – oooh – local businesses and recruiters could take advertising space in them, so that people could see their ads at once and pop straight round to see them!
I’m not being sarcastic. A town centre news office again. It’s absolutely brilliant! When a giant tree dies and falls, light reaches the ground beneath where it used to be, allowing new seedlings to sprout…
Report this comment
Dear Dan, Ash, young Ray, et management al – Have you read this? Spark a few fireworks among the old brain cells, does it? For here we have three Heroes Of Our Media Time who have gone on the attack, rather than beating the merge/cut/close retreat that you lot have been sounding so gloomily of late. The Wrexham wunderkind have got it EXACTLY right, and I’m sure even they are aware of the greater, untapped, potential of what they have on their hands. The hand-held keypad, and not the pen, is now mightier than the sword, and the sooner our media barons realise that the screen is green, that printed matter is fading fast, the better off we’ll all be. Forget newspapers, think news-screen, and simply install a superfast photocopier in reception to run off the day’s stories for the “readership” who still want to see things on paper. ‘Nuff said?
Report this comment
Hi,
Thanks for the comments – just to pick up one one its certainly not just a hobby its being built as a sustainable business.
We are scooping local newspapers and providing more than ‘just’ a news service.
Due to the low cost nature of doing things this way we dont have a high bar in terms of revenue required to keep it going.
We want to be around for years to come
Cheers
Rob
Report this comment
Don’t get me wrong, your initiative is brilliant. But where’s the revenue? How can you afford to rent your premises. You say you are only now thinking about advertising.
Report this comment
Freddie’s right, it’s a hobby! 100,000 monthly page views? From my experience, that means at best you’re looking at around 15,000 monthly unique users looking at an average of 6.7 pages each. There are plenty of news sites which get that sort of traffic ten times over and more, yet still don’t make money. The fact is that websites will never make money out of display advertising alone. When you look at how much bigger websites charge for display ads, they would have to sell an incredible number for it to pay the two owners and reporter a reasonable salary – let alone any costs!
Report this comment
@Rob, Wrexham
I’ve found it for you: click the link below. Phew! I hate to think that people are struggling by without vital keys on their boards.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/apostrophesforsale
Report this comment
Hi Rob, Best of luck but you would still need to bring in about £100,000 of advertising revenue on your site per year to make it pay for the journalists, sales people and overheads at basic levels, surely?
Report this comment
@freddie There has always been a plan for revenues, it is impossible to be sustainable otherwise.
@oliver last rolling 30days is 149,000 at the moment, other ratios a little off. Stats can be very site specific in terms of those. To be frank if you know of sites with 1.4 million page views a month not making money then they are doing something seriously wrong. Likewise, you presume site owners have to make money 😉
@observer £100k does seem a very large amount based on our figures.
The key thing is its a lightweight operation in terms of cost base to run, thus the bar is low in terms of what is required.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/why-local-news-site-wrexham-com-is-quietly-confident-for-the-future/s2/a549594/ is another recent article on us which gives abit more info.
Report this comment
Believe me, I want this to work, but I think people are tempted by the idea of a news website because it’s cheap and easy, but they don’t make money – anywhere. All I’m hearing here is rental of premises, salaries (plural) and a ‘plan for revenues’ based on starting advertising in the future. So you have the three people who started it up, plus the full time reporter, plus the rental of the premises (and all the other costs – IT, phones, petrol etc etc). Where’s the money?
Report this comment