From my print days.
I’ve thought about this before, but the logistics seem daunting. You can print and distribute blog posts as a newspaper. Print is dying in the West, but it is still pretty powerful in the developing world. Internet is still non-competitive in the Third World because not enough people have access. Print media can still travel to more poor, rural people and reach more eyeballs. This article discusses an interesting bridge between the two – republishing blog posts in print media and distributing on the ground.
The Printed Blog, a Chicago start-up, plans to reprint blog posts on regular paper, surrounded by local ads, and distribute the publications free in big cities.
“We are trying to be the first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content,†he said. “There were so many techniques that I’ve seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry.â€
The Printed Blog will publish blog posts alongside other Weblike content, like user-submitted photographs and readers’ comments. The paper will be printed on three or four 11-by-17-inch sheets of white paper and laid out like a blog instead of in columns.
Advertising remains print’s one great advantage over Web publications: advertisers will pay much more for print ads than for online ones. Mr. Karp aims to sell 200 ads an issue. The Printed Blog will charge $5 to $10 for classifieds and $15 to $25 for business ads that reach 1,000 readers.
Mr. Karp expects that each issue, to be distributed twice a day to 1,000 people, will eventually have enough ads to earn a profit of $750 to $1,500 a week. (In comparison, Mr. Cohen said that a typical weekly edition of one of the free Silicon Valley papers that reached about 20,000 people would cost about $10,000 to produce, with an operating profit margin of 11 percent to 15 percent.)
Of course, JPG Magazine was based on a similar user-generated model and it recently failed.
In my experience it’s distribution and not cost that makes or breaks any magazine. So, time will tell. In Sri Lanka I think the best upscale distribution is what Harpo’s has been doing, distributing mags with pizzas. Outstation the best distribution is for Kit and other prepaid cards, but people make real money on those. I’ve also heard that Lion Beer has an impressive network.
Sounds good.
How about like a Syndicate thing, where mainstream newspapers can buy content from. Good stuff go to the syndicate, The likes of DM can buy, syndicate-guy gets a cut, the blogger gets a cut. But I guess the pay wouldn’t be that great.
Or a free distribution of our own magazine to start off with. a ‘kottu’ mag or whatever . If it picks up pace in the market we can eventually charge a nominal amount with the main objective of funding being sourcing of advertising. we could have our own editor and collaters and construct it in any which way.
If we could find a publishing house and sell them the concept, they may be willing to give it a go. That’ll take care of design, publishing, promotion, distribution etc.
plus the main objective should be to spread the germ and get the message out. ithink people will be more than happy tosee their stuff published for free if proper credit is given to their blogs. I think this is quite a neat concept!
Ummm good idea but could be a great idea if you put more thought into it.
You are missing a terribly important element and that is content – who are you going to get to blog? Content is king. Also what is the payback model for contributors? how do you want to localise an issue – the good bloggers tend to write about what they find interesting and not specifically local. Mind you most of us are drawn to Kotthu or Achcharu to troll thru what others with a common nationality are blogging about…another issue is periodicity – how often do you print?
This is however a great idea – but it needs some very serious thought in to making it practical. Google recently bailed on their Print ads (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/20/google-bails-on-print-ads-and-newspapers/) and this could be a solution to their problems (also in gaining traction in emerging markets beyond the web). Work on this idea and I think you may be on to something with some real traction here…
There are two alternate models:
1. Syndication Within Existing Print Media
That is, give or sell content to the newspapers and magazines. The papers steal already and I syndicate stuff in Montage. This is easy, could just negotiate with the various Life/Mirror Mag type sections. Issue is payment (if at all) they pay jack shit for one, and micropayments aren’t feasible. They could pay to one source and then that body divies it out, ie Kottu.
2. New Newspaper
This has significant overhead and I think would fail. Whackster says ‘If we could find a publishing house and sell them the concept, they may be willing to give it a go. That’ll take care of design, publishing, promotion, distribution etc.’ but I know from experience it doesn’t work like that. The publishing houses here aren’t very mature and they won’t take care of anything at all, they’ll just fund it. I have tried this model multiple times and failed.
However, it gives much more freedom. The issue is distribution. However, I think a small print run distributed free with Pizza or Room Service stuff might have a small Colombo impact. Dunno.