TheBusinessDesk.com passes 50,000 milestone

BUSINESS news provider TheBusinessDesk.com has reached a readership milestone with more than 50,000 registered subscribers across its three regional hubs.

In August, the free-to-use service sent more than 1.1 million news emails to its readers, and it is continuing to grow its registered user base at a rate of around 8% every month. 

The site, founded in 2007 by award-winning journalist David Parkin and backed by private entrepreneurs opened in the North West in 2008, recruiting former Manchester Evening News Business Editor Chris Barry to lead the operation in the region.

The third site came this year when the West Midlands was launched.

Chris Barry said: “Our growth and continued progress underlines the demand for our core service, namely free quality regional business news and information, delivered through the web, email, our iPhone app or via mobile devices.

“We now have very favourable readership and growth levels that outstrip our main competitors with our audience growing by over 33% per cent in the last quarter, and, crucially revenues are up by more than 100% on the same period last year.

The business has a staff of 18 including 12 journalists across the three offices. Its three websites are visited by more than 250,000 business people every month and readers viewed around half a million pages in the past month.

Mr Barry added: “We continue to expand the breadth and depth of our content and have some exciting plans for a new major business awards event for the region.”

Last month TheBusinessDesk.com added live share price and markets data, and two new channels dedicated to news from the creative and manufacturing sectors.

This week it launched its innovative online supplements channel with a NatWest-sponsored series on the North West firms that feature in this year’s Legal 500 list.

As of September 1, 2010, registered user numbers for its three sites stood at 33,690 in Yorkshire; 23,583 in the North West, boosted dramatically in June by the closure of respected competitor publication and website Crain’s Manchester Business. 

The West Midlands site, which launched in February, already has 7,740 registered users

 

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