Bootstrapping your newspaper startup-backwards (Part 2)

Filed in archive Bootstrapping Opportunities on February 4, 2008

Continued from yesterday's post February 3, 2008

So to continue our two part post on bootstrapping a newspaper, once you've created an on line site with a targeted area of coverage and begun bringing in revenue both through free ad services like Adsense and from your community, the next step is to improve the quality of your site and prepare to bootstrap into a print edition.

• Begin adding more original content. Cover some local meetings, get some news and photos, do a few of your own interviews in the community to post on your website. Some video and audio might not hurt either and can usually be done pretty cheaply at first.
• Add freelance or full-time staff. Many newspapers today operate with a surprisingly small editorial staff. Start with perhaps one editor to write the majority of the content and dole the rest out to freelancers. You can also add advertising representatives as your income improves. Build your content and advertising muscle before you ever tackle the cost of printing and distributing a paper product.
• Look for opportunities with print on demand. Services like Lulu.com offer a variety of formats, but so far most periodical selections remain more like magazines than newspapers. However, on demand publishers like NewspaperDirect.com which is building its business on offering established newspapers the opportunity for out-of-market sales may soon be willing to take on Internet only clients too.
• Go big time. Depending on your revenue and the number of original articles you are now able to generate, you may want to offer home delivery in the area you serve. The easiest though potentially most expensive way to do this is by zip code through the U.S. post office. Another method might be to build up a local subcontractor pool to offer home delivery to coverage areas. You could advertise for small entrepreneurs interested in doing home delivery on your website and take advantage of lower bulk printing costs from a dependable local newspaper printing service.

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