Newspaper Needs Ideas

[joer80]

I got a job as the webmaster for our local texas newspaper. ( www.texarkanagazette.com ) I just finished a redesign and now want to try to get the online advertising up to where it should be. A lot of our ad spots are empty or paying little to nothing but we get a boat load of traffic. Only problem is our area isnt very technology centered. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can enter the national market for advertising? I am open to anything.

(Traffic is about 20-29k page loads a day according to statcounter. There is no in house stats.)

Thanks!

[Chris]

yes, this is in the correct forum.

[TrafficProducer]

Only problem is our area isnt very technology centered.
~~~

Ads page ref: Texarkana Gazette

One idea is to have an on-line form for people to enter advert details.

Tell users on this page what they will get for their money, and how much.

Local seaching maybe another idea. Ads for Local businesses.

Good Luck

[EPageBrad]

I bet you can make more from Classifieds than from display advertising if you do it right. Follow the usual model of giving it free to the general public and charging for business ads. Cars, garage sales, and stuff like that can be free, but ads for services, jobs, and real estate can have reasonable fees. Link online ads to the print ads and you can add in upsells (bold, pictures, etc.) for both.

You don't have to be in an advanced technology area to have people who can use computers to place basic ads. Anyone with a Web site who would want to advertise (restaurants, real estate agents, local businesses) should have the ability to create a basic display ad, and you can even make ads for them (for a nominal fee) if they can't. You can start out with a form submission to get contact info and follow up manually, but if you can automate the whole process it will work much better. Let them contact you if they have trouble. But for those who can fill out forms and browse their hard drives for images, let them get an ad placed right away.

Both online ads and classifieds are an instant gratification business where customers like to get it done quickly and see their results.

[cvos]

I agree with ebrad - thnk about classifieds. you have a highly valuable local market.

try using a mashup combining classifieds from multiple sources. you can combine craigslist, oddle, cars, and other listings to give you a huge boost.

I do this and can help you if needed.

[Bruce Williams]

Suggestions would be to profile your local demographics. The benefit sell to your potential advertisers is that the following readers have used the advertisers products.
Get stories from your readers (prise works well) of how they read the ad, used the services (a causal link between ads and sales). The header car ad is a good starter. Big ticket item.

Look at the national demograhics (hits on your national stories links give you a feel for what is of interest). Approach the national companies with this hit rate.

[computergenius]

Originally Posted by cvos

try using a mashup combining classifieds from multiple sources.

Are you talking about scraping from the other sites? And isn't there a copyright issue here?
Or would you just link to a search that should bring up the relevant ads?


On another point, when I did something similar for a local newspaper, I wrote a script that would output all the classifieds, so that the office did not need to type them in again. They gave a small discount if you entered your ad using the webpage, as it saved them a lot of work.


But you must have a form, especially as you appear to be saying that your visitors are not very internet savvy - as an aside, most visitors aren't, on most sites! Your email link will work fine if the visitor is using outlook, and is on their own computer, but otherwise, it often doesn't work. Also, your email address is clearly available to spambots. You really need a form...


And on yet another point, how do you input the data to the news pages, etc? Is it being output from data going to the printers for the paper version?

[waleg]

joer80,

The first thing I believe you should do is to upgrade your statcounter account, get 'in house stat' or open an account with Google Analytics.
The traffic you mentioned may not be accurate 100% ... thats why your current conversion of used ad space is not doing well (You are not getting boat of traffic as you mentioned .. )

My suggestion to you is to change the color of the current google ads that you are using and put one under the article (keep the one next to the scroll bar and change the placement of the one just next to the article and put it under it); these changes might do well for you and increase your payout.

CPM and CPL is not your best choice now.

Good luck

Ziad
Editor
WALEG.com

[joer80]

"And on yet another point, how do you input the data to the news pages, etc? Is it being output from data going to the printers for the paper version?"

News pages are parsed from text files and inserted into a database. this is the same text files that is put into the print version.

[joer80]

Good idea about placing an ad under the news story. I will give that a try. We have display ads there but they just are not sold. Might as well put the big G up there.

[joer80]

I started capturing employment leads in the classifieds section under the employment category. I have had a great response so far with about 70 or so in the past week. I have plans to find a temp agency that is interested in the leads for extra income.

[joer80]

I also installed istats for now and it is reading about the same, a little bit lower than statcounter but comparable. One is like 20,000 a day and one is like 29,000 a day.

Thanks for your help so far.

[joer80]

With the recent changes, my adsense went up about $15 extra a day. Not bad for adding one ad.. I am still working on figuring out how to tackle the local business. I cant give to much classifeds away because it takes away from the local paper's value. I am not sure how to do it in a way that doesnt steal their revenue.

Thanks for the help so far.

[perry321]

I didn't read the entire thread, so excuse me if it has already been mentioned.

The site gets less than 40,000 monthly hits, so is that enough to get the kind of advertisers you want?

[joer80]

"The site gets less than 40,000 monthly hits, so is that enough to get the kind of advertisers you want?"

That is "20-29k page loads a day according to statcounter." Not a month.

Thanks!

[john@kapoo]

"Does anyone have any ideas on how I can enter the national market for advertising?" As you say, it is a local paper, so 'breaking' in to national advertising I do not see working, unless maybe there are national companies that have something specific to sell to your area in question?

Classifieds does sound like a great idea as stated by someone already (to be used in addition to your current advertising methods) . Mainly because you are giving locals an extra way to advertise on your site, plus of course, it is another way of gaining returning traffic to the site.