UK Gadget News Site Pocket Lint Expands To New York

These days, you’re more likely to read of news sites cutting back or shutting down entirely than expanding overseas. No such caution from Stuart Miles, owner and editor of UK gadget review and tech news site Pocket Lint, who is moving to New York from June — initially for six months — to expand the company’s coverage.

The site may look to hire someone permanently to cover New York news. As Miles told me: “It seems it’s all very well the Americans coming over here, but you never see it happening the other way around. While it’s possible to cover the US market from the UK I felt it was important to have a man on the ground.” Miles claims his site, which launched six years ago and will soon have five full-time staff, is the first independent UK tech site to expand to the States.

It’s not exactly a case of taking on the likes Engadget and Wired on their own turf but more about increasing Pocket Lint’s US tech news for its growing UK following. The site attracts about 800,000 UK unique users a month, 80 percent of which are from the UK. “We’ve always focused on the UK because that’s what we can monetise, and there’s no point trying to build traffic you can’t monetise,” says Miles. E-marketing site E-consultancy is also opening in the Big Apple.

The site’s sales were run by the London-based ad network Monetise, which became part of vertical ad network Glam Media after being bought out last summer. Miles says things are going well on the ad front — before Christmas the site’s inventory was sold out — but he admits there has been a decrease in revenue in the last quarter.

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