Editorial: Ads infinitum

Chris Davis, Chief Bottle Washer, Pincher Creek Voice

YOUR AD HERE
Toni Lucas photo

On July 15, 2011 I relaunched this website, the Pincher Creek Voice.  Since that time, we've published approximately 100 stories, accompanied by about 1000 photos.  Since the relaunch we've had, at the time of this writing, 10, 600 pageviews, for an average of around 235 pageviews a day.  At present we are averaging over 270 pageviews a day, and growing steadily.
I want to thank all of you who have been so supportive of this endeavor, born out of a desire to provide a current, dynamic, modern source of local news to the Pincher Creek area.  I also want to thank the people who have contributed to this effort, with stories, photographs, and tips.  The positive feedback we're getting is very encouraging.

There have been some growing pains along the way, some lessons learned, and there are opportunities every day to improve our content, layout, and policies.
Up until now, the Voice has been funded completely from our pockets.  I want to thank my partner in this endeavour, indeed in this life, Toni Lucas, for believing and working so hard to help make the Voice a reality.
We decided job #1 was to prove to ourselves and to you, our readership, that we could pull this off, and provide a reliable stream of local news daily.  Going forward, content will still be the first priority at the Voice.
We planned from the outset, back about two years ago when we first attempted this venture, to get it to a point where others could believe in it as well before commercializing the venture.  When we relaunched the Voice in July we turned down paid advertising, instead offering trial advertising to a small group of potential customers.
This gave us time to work out the bugs on our own dime.  We set a goal of 200 pageviews a day by the end of August, at which time we would commercialize the venture, if we hit that pageview goal.
We're there now.
We believe we have the audience to justify charging for advertising space.  We can see that audience growing daily, in fact.

Advertising
In response to many requests and inquiries, we are launching www.pinchercreekclassifieds.com.  This site will augment the Pincher Creek Voice site, and navigation between the two has been set up to make the two sites work together as one.  Like the Voice, the classifieds site will be tweaked and adjusted until it works as well as we can make it work, in response to input from advertisers and advertisees.

The right-hand sidebar on the Pincher Creek Voice site, this site, will be offered to commercial advertisers who will pay a monthly fee to have a click-through ad like those you see there now.  We also offer a click-to-internal-page solution for those who have no website to click to, a personalized page within this site.
The Voice grew out of www.comodisc.com, which, among other things, provides website and social marketing solutions that may fit the needs of some commercial advertisers.

Some of our stories may also be "sponsored", where appropriate, with an ad appearing at the end of the story.

We don't intend to have the Voice website be a nightmare of blinking ads, nor do we intend to clutter it with advertising.  However, advertising is the only way this site will make a profit, and we intend to profit.

Policies
We intend the Pincher Creek Voice to be your voice as well.  We encourage submitted information and stories, we encourage the expression of personal points of view, and we reserve the right to decline publication of material that is unnecessarily inflammatory, racist, sexist, or that uses inappropriate language.
There's lots of other places you can swear or defame.  The Voice isn't going to be one of them.  Other than that, please feel free to speak your mind.
If it's relevant to our community, we want to know about it and share it.
We don't intend to try and compete with the larger news networks.  We intend to cover our little slice of the world as well as we possibly can.
We don't intend to print the Voice on paper.  I like that we are not wasting trees, a valuable and dwindling resource.  We don't see a future in print.  We do see a future in staying as current as we can with the changes to this digital medium we are publishing in.

Stats
Approximately 180 individual people visit this site every day, during the week, peaking on Mondays and Fridays.  That number decreases to about 150 on Saturdays and Sundays.  We are seeing a gradual increase in our audience every week.  We can't predict when that will taper off to a more or less regular number.

Browsers
46% of you are using Internet Explorer to get here.  18% are using Firefox.  17% are using Chrome as their browser.  7%  are using Safari.  About 6% of you are using your phones, approximately half of that number are using iPhones and half using some other phone as a browser.  A very small percentage of you, under 1% are using your gaming consoles.  Oh, and 2% of you are using Opera.  I remember Opera fondly myself.

Geographic Location
Unsurprisingly, most of you are from Canada.
Surprisingly, many of you are not.
Stats on our last three days of traffic, as of 10:45, Tuesday, August 30:

• Canada 1,135
• United States 122
• Ukraine 65
• China 49
• Germany 15
• United Kingdom 10
• Philippines 5
• Russia 3
• Latvia 2
• Netherlands 2

Some of that traffic comes from ex-Pincher Creek residents checking on things "back home".  Some of it is from tourists investigating our area, linking from www.mypinchercreek.com, the local Tourist Information website I run on behalf of Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village's Information Centre.  That website also has significant traffic, by the way.  Recently, some of the U.S. traffic has been rodeo related, leading us to speculate that people south of the border were seeing how things went at our local rodeo, checking up on their favourite cowboys, etc. 

Whoever you are, and however you got here, welcome. 

Referring urls

A referring url is a website with a link to our site that people use to get here.  Up until this week, Facebook was by far our top referring url, which means posting links to our stories there is paying off.  This week, www.skicastle.ca has been the undeniable champ.  They linked to a story we did on their Huckleberry Festival, and apparently they have a significant audience that was willing to come check out the Voice.

The aforementioned www.mypinchercreek.com has been very good to us too.  We'll buy us a drink to thank us later.

Google, of course has been very helpful, with many of you Googling "Pincher Creek Voice" to get here.  Google Adwords is stating to pay off as well, bringing in readers from all over southern Alberta.

Other websites under the Comodisc umbrella have also featured into this referral mix.

The overall number one driver of our success so far has been you, our readers.  Every time you have shared a story from here with your friends you have given this website meaning, and we thank you.  We can't afford to buy you drinks right now, having invested heavily in new equipment, gasoline, and various other expenses, but we do promise to throw one heck of a party once we get to the next level.

The next level

Advertising

As the headline of this piece suggests, we are now focusing some of our efforts on actually making this endeavor pay. 

If you are a local business person, consider the Voice for your advertising needs.  We're very flexible, and have a lot of in-house abilities to bring to your advertising campaigns.
If you are a Voice reader with something to sell or promote, consider our advertising options.   

Video

Starting in September, the Voice will be incorporating video where appropriate into our news items.  For the most part the videos will appear after the breaks (after "read more") so that they don't choke out those who are using less than reliable internet in the rural areas.

More content

We expect the amount of content being presented to steadily grow, as it has done.  You can help.  

Send your stories and tips to pinchercreekvoice@gmail.com.  We reserve the right to edit anything that appears here.  

I have a lot more to say, but it can wait for another time. 

Thanks, Toni Lucas, for believing and working so hard with me on this.

Thanks to you too, our readers.   We hope you come back soon.

Sincerely, Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice