This year the e-Justice Blog ranked 50 of what they called the "best environmental law blogs." The WIMS eNewsUSA Blog was ranked number 14 overall and was categorized as an environmental news blog. This was not something that WIMS applied for, or was nominated for. It was completely initiated and controlled by e-Justice. Access the e-Justice ranking article (click here).

The WIMS EcoBizPort.com website continues to maintain its Internet status as the number one result on all major search engines when users search Environmental Business Portal. A search for environmental business portal on all major search engines -- Yahoo, Google, Bing -- returns EcoBizPort as the first listing.

 

WIMS redesigned the EcoBizPort.com homepage to eliminate much of the clutter and allow users quicker, more direct access to the various resources on the website. We are planning further improvements and updates during 2010.

WIMS-EcoBizPort and three associated blogs continue to provide a high level of exposure of sponsor ads. On average, the combined network produces 8,750 individual users and 17,800 page views per month. Page views account for an individual user opening additional links or pages on the website or blog. we have now exceeded a new milestone of over 100,000 users per year.

2009 Individual Users & Page Views Per Month
EcoBizPort + Blogs 

                                USERS

EcoBizPort Avg.     5,000 per month

eNewsUSA            2,400 per month

eNAppealsCt          1,000 per month

Glakes                      350 per month

Total.....................8,750 per month

 

                                PAGE VIEWS

EcoBizPort Avg.     12,800 per month

eNewsUSA              3,100 per month

eNAppealsCt           1,400 per month

Glakes                      500 per month

Total.....................17,800 per month

WIMS eNewsUSA Blog

In August 2006, WIMS initiated a Blog -- eNewsUSA. This has been one of our most significant developments in recent years. The blog increases traffic to the website and has allowed us to continually increase the exposure of sponsor advertising and the "WIMS presence" to vast numbers of new users.

 

The eNewsUSA blog is now an established result for any search for a current environmental topic. Many of the postings show up on the regular Internet search (Google, for example) -- not just on blog searches. On blog searches, our postings are very often within the top 5 results for various searches.

 

On the Blog we post one top-level article each day from the pages of eNewsUSA and WIMS Daily. The Blog provides an excellent marketing opportunity for our sponsors, WIMS and our EcoBizPort.com website. By integrating the Blog with the EcoBizPort.com website, and vice versa, we are able to increase the exposure of the website through various linked information. The Blog contains links to all major components of the website and links directly to Corporate Sponsor websites, which increases the opportunities for users to link to our Sponsors.

 

The Blog includes automatic feeds to various blog search engines and the ability for users to receive RSS [real simple syndication] feeds of the daily postings.

 

The Blog is returning the desired benefits of increasing exposure of the website, WIMS and our Corporate Sponsors. Top blog search engines, like BlogPulse, Google's BlogSearch, Technorati, Bloglines, and BlogCatalog are regularly picking up our top articles within minutes after they are posted. Regular search engines like Google also return our posted articles from the blog.

Because of the success of the first blog and its impact on marketing the WIMS brand and providing added exposure for our Corporate Sponsors, we have launched, and are test marketing three additional blogs -- Environmental -Appeals Court; Great Lakes Environment; and REGTrak -- the daily Environmental Federal Register.

 

The Environmental - Appeals Court blog, which posts a summary of all environmental decisions from all U.S. Courts of Appeal creates an organized "Special Report" to archive the decisions.  We think this could develop into a valuable research resource over time. The blog is now achieving approximately 1,000 users per month; almost double from a year ago.

 

The Great Lakes Environment blog is testing the concept of converting our "Special Reports" to blogs. The Special Reports, which have been a part of our website for several years, are popular and attract many visitors. However, when converted to blogs they get much more exposure, as postings are immediately released to multiple locations as RSS feeds and the individual postings are indexed and searchable on the Internet by all major regular and blog search engines. The Great Lakes Environment blog combines two Special Reports dealing with Great Lakes Water Management and Great Lakes Restoration. Over the past year this blog has remained fairly stable at about 350 users per month.

In an additional marketing effort, WIMS has established a Twitter account (click here) and makes daily postings. We post the eNewsUSA blog post headline and direct link to the complete article posted on the eNewsUSA blog. The postings also appear on the EcoBizPort homepage. The Twitter account provides an additional marketing outlet to a new audience and links those users back to our blog postings, corporate sponsor ads and links to the EcoBizPort website. Our postings and links also show up on all Twitter searches for various environmental topics and issues.

Interestingly, two significant websites which could be considered competitor-type websites -- Capitol Reports.com and Environmental Professional HP -- have been discontinued. Likewise, another competitor-type site, Environmental LawNet, has not been updated in well over a year.

 

At the same time, EcoBizPort.com ranks well against some of the leading private and grant-funded environmental portal websites. Our longevity, perseverance and networking between the website and blogs is proving to be an important factor.

 

We note, however, that the number of information outlets, particularly in the blogosphere is expanding explosively. The ability of users to obtain more narrowly focused information via RSS feeds, blogs and Facebook and Twitter links is amazing. We believe we are on the verge of a transformational change and are assessing various options to readjust our business model.

We believe we have established a firm foundation of stability and longevity, combined with high quality content and user satisfaction from which to launch significant new developments; however, we are also cognizant of the incredible information explosion that is taking place on the Internet. Many major newspapers have been forced to deal with this explosion of information and have had to adjust to the rapidly changing times.

 

The EcoBizPort.com website and future developments are entirely dependent upon the continued support of our Corporate Sponsors. We cannot adequately express our gratitude for your support as we have brought this site from concept to its current growing status on the Internet and its recognition as a valuable resource for environmental professionals.

 

We encourage and welcome your input and feedback. As a progressive, environmental professional company, you are on the frontline of the issues and in a unique position to assess your information needs and those of your colleagues. We need your ideas, feedback or suggestions regarding the daily publications, the EcoBizPort.com website, or other opportunities that may exist -- please let us know what you're thinking. Feel free to communicate your thoughts at any time.

 

Finally, if you have ideas as to how we can increase the value of your Corporate Sponsorship, please let us know. We are anxious to hear your thoughts.