A few months ago we had a reader wonder, in response to a post about Northgate Mall, “is this a paid advertisement?”
Mai Ling responded, “absolutely not.” And she is absolutely correct.
Although Maple Leaf Life is published online, both of us have old-line journalism values and ethics. We don’t trade news coverage for advertising. Ever.
We also don’t accept gifts of any kind from people or businesses involved in our news coverage.
That said, we do need advertisers – they are what pays the bills. We want them to advertise with us as a trusted local business because we’re a good value for them. And we believe readers would want to support our advertisers.
With our one-year anniversary just behind us, traffic at Maple Leaf Life is approaching a thousand page views every day (we attracted 25,000 page views in December, from over 8,000 unique users). And well over a thousand people follow us on social media — we have right at 500 Facebook users, and 650 followers on Twitter.
The North Seattle network of sites that we’re a part of — Next Door Media — draws 1.2 million page views per month, from 236,000 unique users.
This month we’ll be sending local businesses an offer to advertise with us (pdf) including, for no additional charge, online discount coupons through North Seattle Guide that are promoted through social media.The big selling point there is the money stays with our local businesses and customers, unlike mega-sites like Groupon that take as much as 50 percent. More details about advertising can be found here, and there’s a coupon FAQ here.
