I'm starting up an advertising newsletter. I'll print up like 100 or so copies and hand them out around my town. My intentions are getting local businesses to advertise in my newsletter. What are some ideas to get a local company to pay to advertise in my newsletter?

Jeff,

I'd like to make a few honest points about your question..

As a business owner, if someone came up to me asking to advertise in a newsletter, I'd want answers to a few important questions:

1) How much does the ad cost?
2) What kind of people/businesses get this newsletter?
3) How many people are going to see it?

We'll set question #1 aside for a moment, but let's take your answers to the other two questions.

#2 answer would be, "I hand it out around town"
#3 answer would be, "About a hundred or so people"

As a business it would be obvious to me that you're not really sure who's getting this thing and reading it. It's also pretty evident that it's going out to a tiny number of people compared to a newspaper ad. Although you might be a little cheaper than a newspaper ad, a newspaper can at least reach 8,000+ people on a small circulation.

It seems that the newsletter has no advantage unless it's ridiculously cheap to advertise in, and in that case you may not be able to generate enough advertising to justify the production cost of the newsletter.

You need some way to set this newsletter apart from other cheaper and better ways to advertise. Do people subscribe to this newsletter, or are you sticking it on car windows? Are you standing on a street corner passing these things out to whoever walks by?

If you have a list of people that receive this newsletter in the mail then you're getting on the right track. As a database designer I've built plenty of statistical databases that track information for advertising purposes. Business will love advertising if you can tell them that your circulation is X number of people, 20% are college students, 50% are located on the West side of town, 40% have used coupons from the newsletter before, 70% of the readers fall between the ages of 18 and 34, etc.

What those statistics do for my own clients is simply validate to potential advertisers exactly who their message can get to. This cuts out some of the risk of, "I just hand it out around town" which really doesn't mean a thing to a business. Just a few statistics and you can get worthwhile justification for your prices, and make businesses see that their message can reach their own target market.

Do a little research, collect some info, and try to see if there's a way in your town that you can get this newsletter to a steady number of people to at least give yourself a base to work from. Demographic information is gold when appealing to businesses because they'll know who gets their message before spending a dime.

Would you advertise on a website that, "maybe a hundred people will see?" Personally, I'd rather advertise on a website that gets a steady amount of users, 40 or 50% of which are interested in my specific product or service.

Good luck, and if you have any questions about collecting some statistics, just drop me a line and I'll be happy to help however I can.

David Badurina
http://www.davidbase.com
Custom Database Design and Expert On Demand

I dont think 100 newsletters is enough to attract any advertising.

We receive a newsletter every month over here, it's not really a newsletter, it's a little book with something like 20 - 30 pages. Local shops advertise in it. The magazine's name is "city (<- name of your city) lives" and they print information in it of what's happening in our city, you know like upcoming events. Every house / family gets the magazine for free. It's very popular.

and there're approximately 5000 people living here, so that's let's say 1500 - 2000 magazines.

Jeff - what is the topic of your newsletter? What
is the content that you are going to provide to
attract readers to your newsletter and keep them
looking for more?

Yes, as others have mentioned, the size of your
distribution matters - but so does the subject
area, and richness of content. If you have
information that nobody else has aimed at a very
niche market - then yes, you could start charging
for advertising. But if it's a generally focused
newsletter, then you are probably going to have
to wait until you have thousands of subscribers
before you will be able to bring in revenues from
advertising.

Depending on your subject area, why not create an
online newsletter? You can then draw advertisers
from all over the internet - depending again on
your subject area.

Cheers...

Jeff
Yes, You Really CAN Create your Own Hot Selling Information Product To Sell Online.
http://www.infoproductcreator.com

What were you planning on charging? What do you need to make over and above your expenses to make this worth your while?

From an advertisers perspective... even if you charged them only $20 (20� per piece), they could almost send a postcard themselves to 100 people for that much. Unless you have a very valuable and respected newsletter, you will probably have to find a way to charge advertisers much less per piece than they could do their own mailing. For example, if they would send a sales letter, it would cost them at least 40� per piece. To make this company want to advertise in your newsletter, you would have to charge around 5, 10, or maybe 15� per piece. This would not give you much profit on 100 pieces. You might want to try increasing your distribution to 500, 1,000, or more people. Printing costs are considerably less per piece the more volume you do.

Good Luck,
Mike
Norco Marketing
www.norcomarketing.com