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Inserts & Classified Ads
Inserts and classified ads are other sources of income for
newspapers. They can come in handy, but they won't pay any
bills, unless you are running a shopper, and then you'd better make sure
they do pay your bills.
Inserts are usually easy money. You do
have to stuff the papers with them (or hire a youngster or two to do it)
but otherwise, they are just income.
Just be sure the inserts won't add too much weight
to the papers you'll be mailing. Postage can hit you hard, and
it can take away all your profit, more than making up for the little income
you thought to gain by the inserts.
Don't be afraid to try. As a rule, inserts are nice things.
You can price them according to size (8 1/2 x 11 or 11 x 17, etc),
according to weight or the number of pages, for sales papers, and so on.
You may offer a discount for repeated insertions.
One thing to remember is that you're saving
the advertiser money. If he doesn't insert his material in your
paper, he must use the Post Office (very expensive, by comparison) or
another, usually larger (and therefore more expensive, newspaper.
Not all businesses will be attracted to your
paper for inserts. Some will want a much greater coverage of your
community or region than you care to offer. But many will like the
coverage your paper has. And you can help them out while you make
a little more money.
Classified ads are a world in themselves.
Some shoppers (papers that only have ads of all kinds) make a lot of
their money on classified type ads. take the time to see what's
not being done, or not being done adequately in your market.
You may not even want to charge anything for
classifieds. But I believe that even a small, insignificant charge
for classified ads is better than nothing. Don't ever give the
impression that your paper, no matter how small it may be, is worthless
or "cheap" in some way. Always produce a clean, first-class
publication, and always let people pay you for what they want.
Make sure businesses pay a commercial rate
for their classified ads. You don't want every advertiser trying
to use classified ads just to save a buck. There will be times and
certain circumstances when you should give a free ad or free coverage of
a commercial event. For example, you may give a free classified ad
to every display ad buyer.
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