News / 1,000,000 visitors
SHETLAND News has just registered its millionth visitor this year, almost twice as early as last year.
Now the daily online news service is on target to have more than two million “unique users” by the end of 2010, almost double its readership in 2009.
Since its re-launch in March 2003 Shetland News has been gradually expanding its reader and advertising base. It is one of only a handful of news websites to finance itself from online advertising, rather than being subsidised through the sale of a printed newspaper.
Shetland News is run from three remote offices in Vidlin, Hillswick and Lerwick by journalists Hans J Marter, Pete Bevington and webmaster Graeme Storey.
Mr Marter said: “We continue to be astonished with the massive and positive response we receive for our work.
“One million visitors in just 25 weeks amounts to 40,000 unique users per week, an extraordinary number when you consider there are just 22,000 people living in the islands.
“One unique user represents one computer server, which means a lot more people than that are actually reading our website every day.
“This year so far has been packed with local news, which has helped increase our readership beyond our wildest expectations. What is interesting though is that once people have started reading Shetland News, they have stayed with us.”
Mr Bevington said he was proud to be able to earn his living while working in a small village 35 miles away from the Shetland capital.
“In this age of centralisation it is great to be able to carry on working in Hillswick where jobs do not grow on trees, not that there are many of those either,” he said.
“I would like to think that Shetland News is blazing a trail for remote working, which in an age of rising fuel costs and shrinking carbon footprints looks like the future for more and more people.”
Shetland News has always been ahead of the times. Mr Storey helped launch the website’s initial incarnation in 1995, when it was one of the first online news providers in the world.
“When the Shetland News was first launched online, many people didn’t even have a computer and encouraging businesses to build and use websites was a very new concept.
“However the ex-pat Shetland community showed immediate interest in having daily news delivered to them from back home, something that clearly continues as the number of hits from almost every country in the world keeps on rising.
“With the internet finally coming of age in the last three or four years it is now being valued as the primary place to be seen in business.”
Mr Marter added: “We would like to thank everybody who regularly visits our website to keep up to date with local developments, and also our many advertisers. Without their support Shetland News wouldn’t be here.”
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