So this month we turned in our 1-year report to our first funder, J-Lab.  Since OL tries to practice transparency, we thought we'd share some of the information with our community.

Some of what we learned and then passed on:

1. Google analytics data

Between October 2009 and May 2009, according to Google analytics, we had

• 386,466 visits
• 151,000 unique visitors
• 608,428 page views
• 1.78 pages per visit average
• 1.59 average minutes on site.
• 55% new visitors
• 98% of our traffic is Oakland and surrounding

How do we compare to others with this data?

Basically, we're a small news non-profit with a highly volunteer team, but we have about half the web traffic of the East Bay Express (See compete.com to compare) However, we don't have a third of the traffic of SFGate, always the biggest site in the region (see compete.com data).

2. Social media data

Facebook fans: 3, 278

Twitter followers: 1,626

Flickr account: 1,279 views

Registered users: 783

Scribd: 14,126 views

YouTube: 1,095 views

Why this matters: Social media is not only a huge referral source for OL, it's a way to interact with our community where they are (including on their 'skinny' mobile phone).

3. Partnerships and collaborations

As a small organization, we're about partners, coalitions, collaborations. Oakland Local has made partnerships with 35 local organizations this year. We publish and promotes their news and events.

In the past 8 months, we have provided support and/or online writing and social media training to a number of them, including East Bay Bicycle Coalition, Girls in Rock Camp, East Bay Book Project, The Ella Baker Center, Bay Localize, Clean Energy Alliance, Green Youth Arts and Media Center, Community Rejuvenation Project, EBASE, Urban Habitat, Oakland Rising, and TransformCA.

Media organizations we have partnered with include New America Media, Spot.us, California Watch, The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Center for Media Justice, The Black Hour (Laney College), The Campanile(Mills College), KALW, Shareable, and Newsdesk.org.

We welcome new partners and collaborators.

In addition, we have pointed to, published or promoted content or events from numerous sites including these local faves: Youth Outlook, Media Alliance, Colorlines, Wiretap Magazine, Racialious, SF Bayview, Block Report Radio, Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, Oaklandseen, Living in the O, 38thNotes, Endless Canvas, Oaktown Art, OaklandScene, Favianna.com, and Zennie62.

Many of these have also linked back to OL, thank you.

4. Distribution deals and content sharing

Indexed in Yahoo! news feed
Indexed in Google News
Distributed by SF Gate/SF Chronicle,  In Oakland Blog (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inoakland/index).
Media partner with Bay Citizen (baycitizen.org)
Stories reposted on Shareable, BlogHer, New America Media

5. Budget and grants

Oakland Local has received and spent $27,000 from funders to date: J-Lab and The Harnisch Foundation.

In addition, two of our reporters received funding to write a series of youth sex trafficking in Oakland from the G W Williams Center for Independent Journalism.

We have funding for 2010 from the Renaissance Center for a mobile phone research and development project, and from The California Endowment to do community training around healthy food and food security issues. 

So, what are the lessons here?

They're the same lessons Mr. Davey D talked about when I saw him a few weeks ago--If you want to make something happen and you believe it in, you just keep doing it. But also, you keep doing it with partners, you share and give credit, and you build the team (at least in OL's case).

What's next?

Oakland Local is committed to community empowerment and sharing knowledge; that's a core part of our mission.

We are currently offering (free) small-group trainings for non-profits and community groups working in areas of food security, healthy corner stores, and commmunity gardening--if your group would like some support and mentoring around writing news stories, getting the word out and using the web, let us know (editor@oaklandlocal.com).

If you are an individual, computer literate, who'd like to build writing and communication skills and would like training from OL, get in touch--we will share some training dates with you during the summer

And if you're a local web site, blogger, or non-profit communications manager who would like to talk Google analytics and using social media with us, holla; we'll set up some peer discussions for folks who are interested.