News Leader Expands Service

Effective immediately Princeton’s only locally owned and operated weekly newspaper has expanded it’s Internet presence.

“It’s been something I’ve been looking at for the past year,” says Similkameen News Leader Owner/Publisher George Elliott.

“The website (www.thenewsleader.ca) took a huge jump in visitor numbers in the past six months reaching an average of 900 plus unique visitors per day. Basically what that means is on any given day there’s somewhere between 700 and 1,100 different visitors to our website. Our stats show that the majority of them are from the United States and they are looking over just about anything on our website.”

The original News Leader website was a single page of information related to the newspaper. The current website, built three years ago includes weekly news, sports, court news, editorials, online classified ads, weather and road conditions plus archive files – all of which are updated regularly.

“With the numbers we’ve been getting at our site I determined we had to add some more services to enhance the News Leader website experience.”

Elliott says he found what he considers a perfect fit through two different programs.

“First off we have added an online shopping site where you visit www.bengelonlinestore.com and you can access brand name sites such as e-bay, amazon.com, Home Depot and Wal-Mart, with more to come. The second part is a home-based business program offered through the Global Cash Flow Network located at www.bengelonlinebusiness.com which teaches the basics of starting your own business. So we’re adding some shopping and a little education.”

While many News Leader readers may take advantage of both sites, especially the online store leading into Christmas, Elliott says the programs are being marketed outside the Similkameen Valley.

“We are currently advertising both the online store site and the home-based business site in a variety of internet formats in various locations around the world with a particular target of the United States.”

Elliott says both sites will have more elements added to them within the next month as he continues to explore options available to him.

“It’s a huge market we are already reaching, so a lot of the hard work is done. Traffic is what makes or breaks a website and we already have the traffic, now we need to start directing where the traffic will go and what we will give the traffic to do as it passes through. The online store and online home-based business programs will enhance what we are already offering.”

Bengel Publishing Inc. is the name of Elliott’s company, which produces the Similkameen News Leader, the Ghost Towns and Princeton Posse DVD projects and now the Bengel Online Store and Bengel Online Business projects.

“I always imagined we’d have more than one product available when I formed Bengel in December 2003, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to increase our catalogue as I didn’t want to expand too quickly.”

In addition to the recent expansion, Elliott is currently training to become a Certified Media Placement Specialist.