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Hi John-your email reminded me that I've not paid my dues!!! I usually catch up at the flea market but since I wasnt there this year...yeah, well its the best excuse I could come up with on short notice anyway -as to your question, Tidewater Region uses advertising to pay the bills and thats the number one objective. It shouldnt cost more to print the extra pages than what you bring it in revenue. There must be a positive cash flow on it. When I was on the Publications Committee we always looked at advertising as a positive thing provided it was tasteful, appropriate for the old car hobby if possible, and didnt exceed about 25% of the publication. Our region has a varied charge - members can run a business card sized ad for $50 per year. We can put those anywhere in the magazine where there is room, although advertisers like to see their ads in the usual place. Can't recall off hand what the specific charges are but the most expensive is a full page ad and I think thats around $400 per year. There are also less expensive half page and quarter page ads. Lots of ways to do it. Hope this helps - as for my dues, check's in the mail!

Terry

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Guest leadfoot

The first thing that Chesapeake Region needs to do is determine the purpose of their newsletter. Is it a monthly club information piece in which any advertising revenue is incidental, or is it a publication that sells advertising in order to cover a major portion of newsletter costs? It's the classic issue - content or revenue. I presume that your question relates to commercial ads and not classified ads for club members.

An advertising breakeven analysis for a small circulation newsletter seems a bit overblown because the club's newsletter probably has a signature format - 4, 8, or 12 pages (or more) that need to be filled each month with content (or ads). So what you have is a fixed cost for printing and postage based on the signature.

If club members can sell enough ads to fill one or more pages each month, then you have to determine how much to charge. Businesses will be willing to pay based on the number of potential customers reached and the amount of business generated by the ads. By the way, two or three business card size ads at $35 to $50 per year isn't much of a revenue opportunity for any club.

However, if one or more pages of the newsletter are filled each month with the same space ads that no one reads, how has the club membership benefited, except for a couple of hundred dollars in the club treasury?

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  • 1 month later...

John

One additional idea on ads is that we occassionally take a one-issue only ad for $25 per issue for a business card size ad. I usually make it something to the order of "this issue's sponsor of the trivia column". It works out to be more expensive if they continue that way for an entire year (we publish bimonthly-would cost $150 for a year paying every other month as opposed to the $75/yearly in advance), so we try to make it an incentive to go for the yearly ad. But a business just getting off the ground doesn't have a whole lot of cash to spare & may want to try out only one issue before taking a plunge.

Dawn

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Hey John-

Most publications will charge more for one or two listings as opposed to multiple listings.

If you start getting too many asking for a one-time-only ad, you may want to put a limit on the amount of listings per newsletter.

I told our gang of three who take care of acquiring ads for the newsletter that we can do an occasional one time ad, but if we are to get any more, I will have to insist on extra pages for club news. The last two ads they got would cover the extra printing & mailing costs. I really don't think we need any more than we have presently.

Dawn

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