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The first thing is to understand the specific needs of your
market. The stores, shops and businesses in the downtown area
advertise to reach all the people, and thus, they're hurting from
the competition of similar stores, shops and businesses in the
neighborhood shopping centers closer to where the people actually
live. Yet, these shopping center stores, shops and businesses
only serve customers living within a certain distance from their
business location!
The second selling point in your distribution or circulation
system. Take a section of your city street map; draw a 5-mile
circle around each shopping center; then take it to your local
quick print shop, and have him give you several printed copies
blown up to twice the original size.
You can begin, and handle all phases of your business operation single-handedly, but after the first couple of editions, you'll make much more money by hiring others to do the selling for you. Simply run an ad in your weekend newspapers, promising big incomes to commission type advertising sales people. Word your ad so that those interested call you on the phone. Once you've explained the marketing philosophy behind your papers, and the money potentials available, you should have all the eager salesmen you care to sign on. Each sales person is assigned 3 different shopping centers. Give him a dummy paper for each of his shopping centers, with the space availabilities marked. Send him out to fill those spaces with paid advertisers. Use the rub-on letters to print or write the masthead or title of each of your shopping center's papers at the top of the graph paper. With your border tape and razor blade, make a U-shaped frame around the page, a half inch in from the outside edge of the paper. Almost all shopping center papers start out as one page circulars printed on both sides, and put together on the "kitchen table" as I've described here. Working alone and trying to start from scratch, you probably won't have all your available space sold when you go to press. If this is the way it works out for you, simply fill in the empty spaces with ads of your own. As your shopping center papers become known, you take on sales people to do the selling for you; when you have more space to handle the requests for advertising space, contact a larger printer who works with web presses and news-print paper. Look around, and you'll find one who'll handle all your typesetting, layout, printing and even bulk delivery to your distribution pick-up points. Expanding to tabloid production will lower your production costs, give you greater efficiency and result in more profits for your business. As mentioned earlier, this is an easy business to organize, requires no special education or training, and will pretty much perpetuate itself once you're beyond the start-up stages. The important thing of course, is the opportunity for at least one such paper in even the smallest communities. The profit potential in even small to medium-sized cities is almost beyond belief... |