We’ve tallied up our numbers for 2010, and it’s safe to say that Next Door Media is one of the fastest-growing news organizations in the Northwest. Our network of North Seattle neighborhood blogs grew 37%, serving up 13.3 million page views for the year. Every site grew in the double digits, and Queen Anne View jumped 57% last year alone! Next Door Media sites now reach 200,000 unduplicated unique users every month.

Over the last year, PhinneyWood.com won a national journalism award for deadline reporting, and QueenAnneView.com broke a story that spurred a city-wide investigation. We added four new neighborhood sites, launched NorthSeattleGuide.com, partnered with the UW’s The Daily, teamed up with MyGreenLake.com and inked an advertising deal with KING TV and the Seattle Times.

We have our readers and advertisers to thank for your amazing support. And we can’t say enough good things about our team of neighborhood editors, who have worked hard at providing community coverage around the clock — stories that you can’t find anywhere else in a difficult economic climate.

On the revenue front, we made terrific progress, serving ads for well over 100 local businesses, both large and small. Our clients are thrilled with the ability to target their customers by neighborhood with low-cost, high-exposure ads. And our free deals service is a big hit, too, letting merchants set their own terms while reaching just the North Seattle area. And it all stays local — the money we generate from advertising supports our neighborhood editors, who live here, too.

We’re particularly proud that Next Door Media has grown in such a grassroots fashion. We’re a Ballard company without the luxury of millions (or even thousands) of dollars in investment or donations. We’re not getting rich by any stretch, but we’re having fun (well, except when we hear sirens at midnight.)

Our heartfelt thanks to all of you, our editors and our partners for your support as we move into 2011!