Growing Revenue in Tough Times

Growing revenue is a constant challenge for community newspapers, and these economic times call for even more creativity.

In the course of our conversations and visits with partner and non-partner community newspapers, we’ve uncovered some proven ideas that add value, generate revenue, and some that also help build community goodwill.

The ideas selected had to be proven, they could not be time intensive, and they had to be easily implemented with limited staff resources. Here’s a sampling of the proven ideas:

The Venice (FL) Gondolier Sun developed an effective way to sell advertising in the entertainment section to small restaurants. The advertising staff sold a 12-week program of one-by-two-inch ads at a discounted rate. Once during the 12 weeks, each participating advertiser got editorial coverage of their restaurant. Not only was the idea easy to sell and implement, it was popular with readers and generated an additional $10,000 per year.

The Eagle Times, in Claremont, NH, implemented a multi-week reader contest tied to NASCAR’s Winston Cup series. Readers completed an entry form, predicting their NASCAR winners, and turned in their entry form to the newspaper office or advertiser locations. Two sponsors paid for the 34-week promotion that drove single copy sales and retail traffic. The NASCAR Picks Contest generated $17,000 for the Eagle Times.

The advertising and news staff of the Tri-County News, in Cottonwood, MN, worked with teachers to create Kid’s Chronicle, a special section written and designed by local sixth graders. Ads for the section were sold to local businesses and designed by the students. The section was printed as a tabloid and inserted into the Tri-County News. Forty ads were sold for the special section that generated $2,000. Not only did small businesses support the section, multiple copies were sold to parents, grandparents and other relatives.

The Times Post, in Houston, MS, produced a 12-month community calendar featuring sporting events, school and government meetings and area celebrations. Sponsor ads were sold and surrounded each month on the calendar. The calendar was inserted in the newspaper and overruns were printed and distributed to participating advertisers to pass out to customers. The Times Post generated $5,400 from the calendar and delivered a community service.

While newspapers typically provide limited obits at no charge, the Times-Tribune, in Corbin, KY, offers expanded obit content (photo, work history, community service, etc.) for a fee. Newspaper staff informs the community of the offer by notifying funeral directors and placing a notice on the obit page. The paper averages seven paid obits per week at $50 per obit for a total of $18,200 per year.

The Daily Record, in Lebanon, MO, implemented a campaign to promote the redesign of the paper and the addition of American Profile magazine. Rack cards were used to drive single copy sales and front-page skybox art and a teaser column promoted stories in the current week’s issue. As a publishing partner of American Profile, the paper received all the promotional artwork and copy from Publishing Group of America. As a result, single copy sales of Sunday’s paper increased by 35 percent.

Steve Young, syoung@americanprofile.com, is senior vice president of sales and Jerry Lyles, jlyles@americanprofile.com, is vice president of publisher relations, both for American Profile. This story originally appeared in Publishers’ Auxiliary.