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Your newspaper has been brought into one of the fiercest turf battles out there. It is under attack from multiple angles. Your readership is falling; along with it, your advertisers are dropping like flies.

Is this the end of the newspaper industry as you know it? Will print editions succumb to the web? Is there nothing to be done about it?

Before you hammer in the last nail to that coffin, here are ways your newspaper can embrace the web. Use it, profit from it and expand your readership and advertising revenue further than you ever thought possible.

The problems that newspapers throughout the United States are facing are very real, but not lost battles unless you go about the issue from a "print only" point of view. If publishers and editors face the problem of declining readership, loss of ad revenue and turf wars on the Internet head on by embracing the new medium, they can accomplish bigger circulations and ad revenue than ever thought possible right within their own markets.

The first thing that needs to be done is to consider your website as another edition (no less important than any other edition) of your newspaper. This edition of your newspaper can and should carry the most up-to-date news available to your readers. Breaking news, entertainment news, sports and more can be at your readers fingertips at any given moment.

This type of up-to-date news will get your readers coming back often and build a loyal readership to your publication.

The second front in the turf war is to have your website be an extension of your print edition. Are printing costs making the daily TV guide section a money pit? Put them online. There are no printing costs associated with your website.

Do you want to offer interactive reporting to your readers? Let them post news, articles and pictures online. This will also build a strong following.

And a strong following leads to bigger readership. Bigger readership leads to more traffic on your site. More traffic to your site means a better place for businesses to advertise. More business advertisers, the more revenue it can produce.

But it doesn't end there.

Rethink your circulation numbers.

If you could get as much money for an online subscription to your website as you could from someone buying your newspaper at a local market, wouldn't it be cost effective to embrace this idea? Online subscriptions can be delivered to people's e-mail box or downloaded from the site. There are no printing costs associated with this type of circulation. Furthermore, there are no circulation costs at all: no delivery fee, no staff fee ...

These numbers can build quickly and painlessly. Think about how you want people to subscribe to your newspaper and website. You can have paid archives or paid subscriptions, or both. The choice is yours.

Your website also is a goldmine to attract new readers. At your fingertips now is the ability to advertise at no cost in your print edition. This extends online. Websites have things that can be built into them to attract a wide range of new readers. This process is called search engine optimization.

Built into our newspaper websites are tags, forms and features that will give you an edge against the competition. A series of search engine tools have made our clients appear near the top of all the major search engines, stamping out the competition online.

You can fight back against your competition by embracing this medium to work for you. The possibilities are limitless. We are here to help bring your newspaper to the forefront of technology. Whether your website has just been an afterthought or your do not even have one yet, let the professional development team at Maine Web FX help your newspaper not only survive, but be victorious on the world wide web.