Fast growing MakeItBetter.net became metropolitan Chicago’s largest information and community networking source catering to suburban women Friday with the purchase of NorthShore Magazine’s assets, a 32-year-old publishing mainstay.
The purchase from Sun-Times Media comes six months after MakeItBetter.net launched a magazine companion to its 3-year-old popular Internet site. The website had over 35,000 unique readers in the first three months of 2010. The magazine—before this acquisition—was sent to more than 52,000 selected homes every month.
New content is added daily to the website and 13,000 web subscribers receive a weekly email newsletter called the “Better Letter” with links to timely recommendations, articles, tips, guides, steals & deals and easy ways to make a difference.
“I am delighted by this opportunity,” says MakeItBetter.net founder Susan B. Noyes, “because MakeItBetter.net grew from a column I wrote for NorthShore magazine and from guidance we received from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, also a treasured North Shore institution.
“The synergies here will work to the benefit of our audience, our advertising partners and for our staff.”
MakeItBetter.net is the most trusted, easiest-to-use community resource that helps suburban women make their lives, and the lives of others, better. It provides its audience with timely information about family, fashion, food, fun, education, health exercise, shopping and home. And it provides quick and easy ways to make a difference at home and in the world beyond.
The media company also lives its mission by partnering with not-for-profit organizations and providing them with an auction site with 100% of the proceeds raised going directly to the sponsoring organization. New subscribers to its weekly e-newsletter can also choose a charity to receive a $5 donation from MakeItBetter.net.
To date MakeItBetter.net has helped to raise $333,215 for local charities and helped to make 20,214 lives better.
The addition of NorthShore magazines subscribers will provide advertisers with a cost effective opportunity to reach more affluent suburban households than any other targeted web and print product in the metropolitan Chicago marketplace.
The publishing company is headquartered in Wilmette, Illinois in the heart of many of the suburbs it serves. It is women owned and staffed primarily by women. A cadre of “community connecters” also help advise the publishing group.
The company was cofounded by a group of women who call themselves the “kitchen cabinet.”
