50,000th user signs up to TheBusinessDesk.com
THEBUSINESSDESK.COM has signed up 50,000 registered users across its websites in Yorkshire, the North West and the West Midlands.
The regional business news website has reached the landmark number following continued and rapid growth in all three of its operations, including more than 33,500 registered users signing up for its Yorkshire operation.
The website opened offices in Manchester in 2008 and expanded to Birmingham, under the editorship of former Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves, this year following the success of its original Yorkshire site that launched in November 2007.
TheBusinessDesk.com’s founder David Parkin said: “This is a phenomenal rate of growth that clearly demonstrates that the future of regional media is digital. We continue to see hundreds of users signing up to our service every week, providing a compelling argument to advertisers to work with us to reach a very valuable business-focussed audience.”
In August, the service sent more than 1.1m news emails to its readers in the three regions, and it is continuing to grow its registered user base at a rate of around 8% every month.
In August, the website 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 Yorkshire firms that feature in this year’s Legal 500 list.
Mr Parkin added: “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% in the last quarter, and, crucially revenues are up by more than 100% on the same period last year.
“Our move to target the West Midlands region in the first quarter of this year is really paying dividends and we now have a proven business model that is working in multiple locations.”
The business has a staff of 18 including 12 journalists reporting breaking business stories in its Yorkshire, North West and West Midlands 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.
“With a cornerstone position as the leading business media in the industrial heartlands of the Midlands and the North, we feel we have a great platform from which to grow our business. We have recently launched contract publishing and corporate events that have also seen early success,” added Mr Parkin.
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