We will start with the good news that our bank account has now been confirmed and is ready. Details of the account will be placed at the end of this article and will also be placed in the ‘Donate’ section of the site.
We understand that many people are willing to donate but would rather use a method other than the Paypal facility. The activation of our bank account now makes that a possibility. We apologise for the delay, but it was important that everything was in place and all legal requirements met.
On the matter of legal requirements:
Newsnet Scotland is aware that the personal data of certain members has been used by an individual to contact the members without authorisation to do so, and as such it appears he is in breach of data protection legislation. Separately we believe he has infringed our database rights.
According to our lawyers the use of Newsnet Scotland member emails appears to have been a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. Newsnet Scotland is currently discussing the matter with our Glasgow based lawyers and will decide what further action is necessary.
Site performance and back to more positive news:
Newsnet Scotland’s previous best visitor month was May of this year, where we managed to reach no fewer than 51,000 unique users. These were individual PC’s who had visited the site at least once in that month.
The number was impressive and was almost certainly helped by the Scottish election held on May 5th. The number had been an increase on the 45,000 unique visitors in April and 38,000 in March, all helped by the election campaign. In the immediate aftermath of the election the trend was, not surprisingly, gently downwards and the challenge was then to try to stem this and consolidate what had been achieved.
We can now reveal that for each of the last three months (August, September and October) Newsnet Scotland has exceeded May’s impressive total. The average for unique monthly visitors for the last three months is an impressive 61,000 with the highest month seeing a staggering 66,000 unique visitors.
To put this into perspective, we are currently attracting 10% of the monthly total that STV’s own news site attracts – STV’s recent figures were revealed on allmediascotland.com to be 600,000 per month. We could bore you with stats – over 3 million page views this month, almost 10 million hits and approaching 200,000 visits.
Type ‘Scottish News’ or ‘News Scotland’ into the Google search engine and we appear on the first result page – sometimes sitting above the Scotsman and the Herald.
Volunteers
All this and not one penny has been paid to any of the current contributors and backend volunteers who continue to give of their time for free. Everything you read, all moderation and all backend site maintenance work is carried out for no payment.
Our strategy has been simple – build on our basics, concentrate on the bread and butter and be as good as we can be. No grand promises, no fanciful boasts – just ambition married to pragmatism.
We believe we have succeeded in growing this site and making it what it now is – a site that is visited by people who want news and opinion written honestly and presented from a different perspective. Some news items won’t be seen in the Scottish media, others are but are presented from our point of view. In short, we are different and we are challenging the accepted norms.
We will continue to be radical and we will grow, but in keeping with our cautious approach we will not overreach. We are currently at an advanced stage in plans to sell Newsnet Scotland merchandise. We are also starting to see a small but significant revenue stream that will allow us to take on our first full time staff.
In time we are sure we can consolidate the brand and expand our content.
Readers
Of course without readers we are nothing – so all of you who visit, read, comment, donate and promote then we say please keep it up.
We are being watched, we know that – but we are also watching and they know that. Newsnet Scotland is a wee flickering candle made all the more visible because of the shadow cast by the Scottish Main Stream media.
So, let’s see if we can’t burn a wee bit brighter. There’s a referendum on the way and we intend to make a difference.
Hop aboard.
The Newsnet Scotland bank account is held at the RBS.
Account number: 00117917
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