The story of PeterboroughBusiness.co.uk – now it can be told

IN late-2008 I created the business news and information website PeterboroughBusiness.co.uk.

I had recently left a big publishing company where I had worked for more than 20 years as a writer, editor and, briefly, publisher. PeterboroughBusiness.co.uk was one of the many projects I started to work on as a freelance.

When I launched PB I imagined that there would be enough financial support from the business community to provide a small revenue from the site. Seven years ago the site was getting 1200 page views a month and had a mailing list of 600 local businesses and growing.

But I was a bit naive and the local business community wasn't very sophisticated. My rates for banner ads (£70 a month or £600 a year) compared unfavourably with Google and Google was getting smarter at serving up localised results. I got lots of enquiries but not many takers and the banners you see are favours for friends or old contra-deals that have probably long run their course.

Now, I think the site is doing less than 300 page views a month and I'm only putting up a couple of stories a month.

What I didn't expect was how powerful the site would be at promoting my other services. I'm still a writer, editor, photographer and film-maker and lots of my work has come via Peterboroughbusiness.co.uk. I use it to promote these services and sometimes write about clients' projects on there.

Local businesses still value the site and I get many requests to post stories and press releases on the site. This is how I find out what's going on in the city and connect with people. If a marketing director sends me a story about staff and it has a particularly bad photo with it, if I have time I will offer to go and re-shoot the picture for free, tell them my modest day rate and leave a card. It has worked time and again.

So that's the story of Peterboroughbusiness.co.uk. An accountant wanted to buy the site and domain but we couldn't agree on a price. The local development agency has also expressed an interest but while it continues to generate leads for me at minimal effort, I'm inclined to hang on.