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Citizen journalism venture Allvoices is seeking a further $5 million in investment amidst reports of strong traffic growth for its website.

According to stats released by Allvoices to Journalism.co.uk, the website attracted 7.5 million unique users in August and generated more than 31 million page views, a record for the site. In January the site said it had 275,000 reporters and recorded 5 million unique users a month.

Allvoices claims it now has more than 410,000 registered contributors, who vary in experience and number of stories submitted from the beginners "stringers" category to "reporters" and "anchors". On average, each "stringer" contributed 9.3 stories in August, while "reporters" added 15.7 and "anchors" 47.13 over the month, according to the site's own stats.

The site carries reports on local and international issues from stories on sport and entertainment to politics, business and health. Last year the site added new features to help verify and link out to relevant multimedia material and social media content , such as tweets, for mainstream news stories submitted.

The site's own figures suggest a year-on-year growth rate of 403 per cent from August 2008 to August 2010. Page views on the site have increased by 618 per cent year-on-year over the same period.

"We've demonstrated massive scale and engagement while maintaining very low costs, and we've been able to do this with $7.5m in venture investment raised during the turbulent economic environment, and at a time in the industry when the word 'news' is considered a bad category for investment.  Allvoices is now raising an additional five million dollars to help it scale, build a brand and focus on monetization," says Amra Tareen, Allvoices' founder and CEO, in a statement.

In June the site also introduced a healthcare plan for its contributors and late last year it launched a syndication scheme , from which contributors can earn extra money for images and video picked up by paying partners.

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Written by

Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver
Laura Oliver is a freelance journalist, a contributor to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, co-founder of The Society of Freelance Journalists and the former editor of Journalism.co.uk (prior to it becoming JournalismUK)

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