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Basics of Successful Adsheet Publishing.

Make Money at Home with a Professional-Looking Ad Sales Paper

The country is in bad shape, economically speaking. While there are lots of get-rich-quick schemes out there, not so many people are applying good common sense to advertising and home-income opportunities. These facts work together to give you a very real opportunity to make a decent income helping local, maybe even regional, businesses stay in business.

Big newspapers are struggling to stay afloat. Decades of price-gouging has left the market in bad shape. Many businesses today simply can't afford to pay huge prices for ads that will be in the trash tomorrow.

Local adsheets and coupon flyers are becoming more popular, as people begin to realize they can use their own computer and printer for something worthwhile, a service that will actually help neighbors and local businesses to get by in these difficult times. Anyone can run a few ads, go out and distribute those ads to homes or businesses, or both, and make a few dollars. With a little planning & know-how, you may even make a very decent income off of a newsletter-sized publication. You may even grow your adsheet into a small newspaper that will continue for many generations in the area you serve. (If that happens, visit www.Newspaper-Info.com for free helpful information on starting and running a local newspaper.)

What do you need to be a successful adsheet publisher? Mainly, you need the desire, some determination to see it through, and little skill that anyone can gain by experience. If you have a creative flair, that will help. If you really enjoy talking with other business owners, that will also help. If you keep very careful records, pay your taxes properly, and maintain a professional attitude toward your new business, you will almost certainly be successful in anything you choose to do. Here are some of the basic things you should know about how to make money in the adsheet business.

How Big is the Successful Home-Published Adsheet or Coupon Flyer?

An adsheet is not a newspaper. The smallest typical newspaper in the United States is tabloid-sized, with a single page somewhere in the range of 11 x 17 inches. This smallest newspaper is often published weekly or monthly. Even small tabloid newspapers have plenty of room for local news, comics and other special features (puzzles, health and family advice columns, etc.), calendars, TV schedules, school sports scores, and so on, in addition to ads from local businesses and national corporations.

On the other hand, the typical ad sheet page size is only letter-sized: 8.5 x 11 inches. Fortunately, that's also the standard size for most home printers and copiers used in the United States. This tiny page-size is big enough to include quite a few ads, if that's all you publish.

It's also handy for stacking on a sales counter, and very cost-effective for mailing. Ad sheets that will be mailed can be simply folded in half or tri-folded just like a letter. They can even be sealed in a regular #10 envelope, if you want, although that's rarely done. In most cases, there is no mailing at all, just regular free distribution via participating businesses.

The Good & Bad of Being Small

Ad sizes in an adsheet are greatly reduced in size from those typically appearing in newspapers. Instead of the typical ad being several inches high and several inches wide, it's more likely to be an inch or two high by a couple of inches wide.

Obviously, then, the price per inch or per column inch must reflect the difference in page size. But since the ad sheet is usually more local, the number of copies produced is often fairly small. This can help to keep your costs down and therefore makes it possible for you to be very reasonable in your rates to advertisers. While there is no real competition in ad sheet rates with what you might be offer if you published at least a tabloid-sized paper, you can still provide a very real service, and make money as a result.

How Do I Price the Ads?

Before you can determine a working price for advertising in your ad sheet, you must make a few decisions.

How many pages do you want to publish, on a regular basis?

How much will you need to pay for printing/copying your adsheet?

How much will distribution cost you?

Why these decisions must be made first: According to one method used for adsheets, a quick way to estimate the pricing for ads is to take the costs for printing and distribution, and then price your ads so that these costs are fully covered (to at least a break-even point) on the front page of your ad sheet.  You can then take whatever you earn on remaining pages as profit.  It's only a rule of thumb, and only works when publishing 2 to 4 pages. And it may not quite work even then.

If you only publish a two-page adsheet (a single sheet of paper, 8.5 x 11 inches, printed on two sides), you must make all your profit from one side of that sheet. As you can see, this pricing guideline is over-simplified, but it's something to keep in mind when figuring your prices. The basic idea does hold that you will need to at least double your actual costs in order to make the work worth your while.

The actual profit margin will likely vary according to the number of pages you fill with ads. I would advise you not to seriously consider publishing an ad sheet if you can't fill at least 4 pages with ads. (Four pages will result in an 11x17 inch sheet folded once, or two 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, stapled together.)

More details on ad pricing will be shown on the next page.

What About Printing/Copying the Ad Sheet?

An ad sheet can be produced at home, run from your own printer (not a great idea), copied on your own copier (a better idea), or professionally printed/copied by any small print shop or copy shop. The latter option is almost always the best way to go, but may not be financially possible at the very beginning.

If you decide to go to a print shop or copy shop for production, you'll need to get the best possible pricing from local suppliers, and then balance that with the quality and production-time offered by each one. Price is by no means the only thing to consider when producing any publication or product. If the service, quality of paper, quality of printing, or time-frame is going to hinder your reputation and ability to sell a great service to the community, then a low price becomes too costly.

An Important Business Point to Remember

If you leave too big a gap between what you provide for a given price and what someone else can do for the same or slightly more (or maybe even less), then you invite unwanted competition. If you create an opportunity for competition, they will come. If your competitor happens to be better at this business than you are, you have just cut off your own source of income by trying to be too cheap (too low in quality) or too expensive, pricing your service too high.

Again, being "cheap" in business, doesn't mean that you sell your product or service for a lot less. It means that you fail to give what the market really needs, in an effort to make a better profit. In business, "cheap" never means economical. Economical means real value for a good price. To be truly economical, something something must work economically. Losing to a competitor for any reason does not work economically for you. Try to be fair, good in quality, reasonable in price.

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