It is no secert that Newspaper sales across the country are down and newspapers are having a hard time adapting to new technology and customer trends. In this post I am going to use Fargo’s local newspaper The Forum as an example for my Newspaper Marketing Ideas.

The Forum has been around a very long time and because of that it has seen the twilight years of journalism come and now go. Some of its most prized sources of revenue are drying up and even disappearing completely. I can’t blame the people who are shifting their advertising dollars away from newspapers into other sources. When you get better value elsewhere, it’s only natural to pursue it.

Issues facing newspapers

One of the newspaper’s bread and butter sections is the classified section. The problem is some guy named Craig came up with an idea of a free online classified website. It took a while but now people are using it, a lot, even in small towns.

My girlfriend runs a dog running business in Fargo and is a former employee of The Forum. In an attempt to drum up business and clients, she took out a classified ad in the paper and waited for the clients to roll in. It cost her $140 for a one-inch by one-inch ad. Nothing happened. People just don’t look through the paper for certain information anymore.

The natural progression was to post a free listing on Craigslist about her new service. Sure enough, she got multiple calls, emails and clients from this free website. Can you see a problem here?

This is a problem for all the newspapers that make money off classifieds and ads.

The good news for newspapers sales is that most are small and pretty local. This is a great opportunity from them to mimic the actions of Craigslist and others and get people to their own website by offering a similar service.

But how will they make money by offering this for free? Simply, they won’t, other than through paid ad placements on those listings. For example, businesses might be interested in newspaper advertising where related companies have posted free listings. A little competition, perhaps.

At the top of its site, The Forum boasts having 9,308,484 “pages” for November 2009. All of North Dakota has approximately 641,000 citizens, by the way. All that web traffic is great for The Forum, except anyone going to its web site for the first time is greeted with a wall garden (login form). If you’re not a member, you must become one in order to read the article. I simply hit the back button. What a shame.

I bet that out of those 9 million “pages” viewed on The Forum, the number one page is its login page. How can that possibly help generate revenue? It doesn’t. One time I visited drudgereport.com and noticed an article about an Ozzy Osbourne concert in Fargo and how the local police used the concert to nab wanted criminals by offering them free concert tickets.

Drudge Report gets over 600 million hits a month! So, all of those people reading Drudge clicked to see The Forum’s story about Ozzy and instead they were greeted with a login screen! Epic FAIL! How many of those people do you think registered to read the article? I bet 1% did.

In fact, if you do manage to register, you were automatically re-directed back to the home page, requiring you to go back and find the original link to the article you wanted (I believed this has been fixed now). Most people aren’t that patient.

Newspapers’ sales are losing ground to other services that are free and widely available. This means that much more time and emphasis have been placed on newspaper marketing ideas. What we forget is where all of the newspaper customers originated from. Their rock solid demographic has changed dramatically. I can’t remember the last time I looked a phone number up in a phone book, and the same goes with newspapers. We rely on the Internet for all our information.

Newspapers once had the ability to call each and every one of the residents in their town through Newspaper Telemarketing. But as more and more people ditch their landlines for unlisted cell phone numbers, this has made it even more difficult for newspapers to reach the younger demographic.

I can think of a few ideas that would help newspapers to be able to compete and continue in the coming century:

Charge much more for printed copies of the paper.

Let’s face it. Newspapers have extremely high overhead with paper, gas, electricity to print, a big building and distribution centers to heat/cool. I would charge appropriately for the honor of having a printed version of the paper. As people quit paying the higher prices for the printed version, scale back the overhead to match.

Capitalize on the brand of the newspaper by focusing on local/regional news only.

The best thing newspapers have going for them is their local brand and recognition. They should leverage that by only providing local, relevant news that people in the surrounding area will highly appreciate. Local and hyperlocal blogs have been springing up in every town across the country for the simple fact that people love their local sports, travel, news, dining, nightlife and the like.

Why waste time with national or even regional news at all? Make the paper completely local with news no one else offers. Ditch the world news section.

Imagine the savings each paper would have by not paying the Associated Press and other sources for the use of articles from outside the area. I believe The Forum pays roughly 2-3 million a year for the honor of republishing AP articles in its daily newspaper. How many jobs and overhead could be eliminated by focusing on local news only?

People have the Internet and TV/Satellite for national and world news. It’s a fallacy that local newspapers have to republish national and world news. I can’t recall a national article I read in The Forum that I had not already heard two days before on Twitter and the day before on Drudge Report.

Open up the classified section

Make the classified section of your website open and free to the public like craigslist.com. Your newspaper already has the traffic and trust and most newspapers are in smaller towns and communities that don’t yet have a functioning Craigslist page. Right now, people in small towns have to look to the nearest mid to large city if they want to use Craigslist.

Allow people to post for free for x number of days and then charge them to post for longer periods of time or with featured preference like ebay.com listings. This way people with a coffee table can get rid of their goods and those who want more permanent exposure can have it at a cost. Locals and outsiders will use your brand to facilitate their transactions and bring traffic, recommendations and so on.

Open up contributions

People love to be heard and share their ideas with the world. Give them the ability to do so. Employ an editor to read over submitted pieces and publish them to the rest of the community. This will add more content to be searched by more people to increase overall exposure, relationships, drama and just about everything else you can name.

This process can be made easy by auto filters for submitted articles. Filter for correct content type, foul language, formatting and so on. Article submission sites use this software all the time to ensure a uniform format to articles and content being submitted. Then once the articles pass auto checking, a person reviews and either approves/rejects for correction.

This process allows for a community to have hundreds or thousands of extra articles written for their site every year. Meanwhile, you collect revenue from the ad placements, gain extra traffic, links, etc.

Employ successful local content producers

One of the smartest things AOL has done in the last couple years was to buy up and enable further already successful blog sites. It simply looked at sites that were already successful and poured in resources to help expand those sites’ growth and revenue. This can and should be done on a local level.

There are bloggers in the area of every newspaper who are operating a successful blog about any subject you can imagine. Pay these bloggers to do what they do under your umbrella. You gain their readers support, interaction, favor and can possibly send them much more traffic, increasing their/your revenue, traffic and the circle continues.

Pick up the top 10 bloggers and their sites in the area along with their readers and now your local papers is attracting attention from all over the world. Here is where local pays on the world stage.

Triple the opinion section

Another newspaper marketing idea would be to expand the treasure trove of free content and participation known as the opinion section. People love to voice their opinions, and people like to hear others complain. Why not publish every letter to the editor and every editorial that comes in rather than picking and choosing? There’s nothing unique to a community quite like the opinion section of its newspaper.

Newspaper marketing

Newspaper circulation has been in decline for the past two decades, and signs for the future are not looking good. In order to increase newspaper circulation, more emphasis should be placed on marketing. Newspaper marketing jobs might be the only newspaper jobs available! Still, other newspapers outsource their marketing to a newspaper marketing agency. Either way, newspapers need to make big changes.

Conclusion

Eyeballs matter. Get the eyeballs and you’ll have newspaper advertising dollars. Newspapers used to be the only source of news for an area, but that has changed. Newspaper sales show how much the industry has changed.

Newspapers now have to fight for their readers now against everyone nationally, locally and worldwide. Focus on what you know best – your local community – and you can’t go wrong. When you have a solid base, expand into other areas. Tap the local talent because those are the people who matter the most to you. Can your newspaper compete against Drudge Report for world/national news online? No, so compete where you can win and focus all your energy there.

It would serve newspapers wisely move to a method of advertising control and brokering verses relying solely on subscribers. If newspapers combined marketing magazines, billboards, and local niche website such as blogs all the way through mega sites like Facebook. They would better serve their advertising base, by increasing exposure and managing advertising dollars across all local platforms.

Journalism isn’t dead. Journalism has more opportunities than ever before, but the energy has to be focused where it can make the most impact. That’s survival!

*top image from http://andygreenhaw.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/newspapers1.jpg

I had the pleasure of talking with Gary Vaynerchuk last week about his new book “Crush It! Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion.” I received a copy of the book a couple of days before and was able to read through it in short order (about 2.5 hours). I highly recommend you get a copy. Below is the video I put together for your viewing pleasure (with the help of Brian Matson, Mr. FargoMoorhead).

The biggest takeaway from the book and talking with Gary was the focus on branding and how to pursue branding to the ends of the earth. In the end, everyone has their own brand and if you aren’t managing and interacting with others, your brand will be determined for you. So as Gary would say, jump in the trenches and get dirty.

All of this brand management and social interaction comes at a great cost of time and participation. It doesn’t take a lot of money or talent to set up a Twitter account and start talking to people. But the currency of the day is sweat, not dollar according to Gary. The more you spend doing what you love and building your relationships with others, the more successful you’ll be. The reality is this works for everyone and everything. That is why Gary’s message is priceless. Here is the video he references in the interview, The 80/20 Business Rule.

I mentioned the other day on Aylln Hane’s Video Blog that it really boils down to what you want, your goal. Without knowing your end goal or desire it doesn’t matter who you get your information from: Vic, Griz, Problogger, Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Warren Buffett or whoever. You have to know what your goal is, find the person who best fits your personality and style to model, then spend every waking moment (minus family and work) pursuing that goal. And guess what? You’ll reach it.

Reading Gary’s book “Crush It!” is one way to help you reach your goal. I said before I highly recommend you pick up a copy and get fired up. This book with help you tremendously in organizing and prioritizing your work to reach your goal the Gary Vaynerchuk way. If you don’t want to go the same route as Gary to reach your goal(s) then use the book as inspiration to get fired up about your goal and dominating everyone else in your niche.

I give the book two thumbs up and will reference and recommend it to just about everyone. It’s your choice in how you pull information from the book and apply it to your life. For $13 or so, it is more inspirational and packed with solid info than any other e-book. Most of the information presented in the book can be found on GaryVaynerchuk.com and if you started at the very first post you’ll gain a lot and save the $13 and reading time. Knock yourself out and Crush It in one way or another!

I would never advocate you try to become and do something that you are not. But if you’re so excited about your goal or a subject that you can’t sleep and want to connect to every single person on earth about it, Gary and Crush It has the formula for you. Care more about everyone you come across in life and business and you’ll win.

This is a guest post by Dalirin is a blogger that likes blogging about how to make money online. He has also written about his number 1 way to make money online.

If you are interesting is submitting a guest post, please visit my guest poster page to find out more info. Now on to the the good stuff.

If you are in the make money niche, your aim is to make as much money as you can. A make money blogger can make money on his blog by selling a product, being a consultant, doing paid review, affiliate marketing or putting ads on the blog. Apart from putting ads on a blog, the other means of making money is not easy for a new blog. Only if the owner is an experienced SEO blogger, he would find it hard to rank his blog for his keywords.

I said that the other means of making money from a blog is difficult for a new blog is because almost all new blogs has little or no traffic. With the little amount of traffic it gets, I doubt if it would sell any product or make money from affiliate sells. If there is a sale, it is pure luck (luck also exist in blogging). But with ads on the site, the blog owner is able to generate some income.

When is Ads Recommended on a New Blog?

I would recommend it as soon as your first post is live. This is good so that your readers gets accustomed to the ads. Then it is there choice if they want to become ads-blinded or not. Having ads early would tell your reader why you are blogging. I have seen websites that changed their design to include more ads and their readers were complaining. But before the site became popular, no one complained about the ads.

Will You Lose Readers?

I would say No. This is because the reader is reading your blog for your content. He wants to get more information about something. He is not reading your blog to increase your monthly views.  You would lose readers when the ads interfere with their readings such as forcing them to take an affiliate survey before they can access your content. This is your fault. There are other bloggers they can read or get the information from.

What type of Ad should be Used?

Use CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression) such as adsense on the new blog. You can also use affiliate banners as an Ad. This would enable you to make some few money. Trust me, it is small, but when you receive your first click, you would be motivated to work harder. With affiliate banners, you may be lucky that a reader was looking for a service or a product. Then the person decide to buy from your affiliate link.

I don’t recommend paid text link because you would not be able to see an advertiser. No advertiser would want to advertise on a blog that has little traffic. The advertiser might feel that them advertising on the site is the same as the advertiser going to get a new site and linking to their site.