Another Money-making Writing Project

Some of the writing projects in my book, Portable Writing, require that writers sell advertising to finance their project, but let’s face it, we all have to sell ourselves throughout our lives. Change jobs—sell your skills to a new boss. Try to get someone to see your point of view on a topic—sell your idea. So selling ads isn’t any harder than selling your point of view except that you might have to approach a stranger? And you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how happy a lot of business people are to support a local entrepreneur/writer.

One of the easiest projects I’ve done is a little trivia newsletter that you can write, sell advertisements for, then distribute to local restaurants or other places of businesses where people spend time sitting and waiting for service. I know you’ve probably seen these small flyers in restaurants—most often in local family-style eateries.

To get started, think of some interesting trivia and history about your local area. People traveling through as well as locals will love reading about the history of the area as well as about colorful characters from the past, jokes and short, funny stories. Don’t make the articles long. Funny stories and jokes (non-copyrighted) can be used as fillers. Your written material need not fill more than about 30 percent of the total space, and can even be as small as 20 percent. By dividing your pages into columns, then planning which space will be used as ads and which for editorial space, you can come up with the total number of ads you will need to sell.

Layout a small newsletter (2 pages of 8-1/2 x 13” folded in half will work). This size will be small enough that it won’t take up too much space on a dining table. Be sure to leave space for ads—business card size ads will probably sell best. Once you have a dummy made up with your ad spaces shown as blank rectangles, then approach some local restaurants about distributing them. Find out approximately how many copies each eatery will need, add them up, and that will be your total printing number. The higher your distribution number, the more advertisers you can attract.

Once you have your distribution number, get prices on printing the newsletter. Remember, your newsletter doesn’t have to look special and it doesn’t have to use color or photos. Plain black ink on white or colored paper will work fine. Once you’ve figured out how much printing and distribution will cost, you’re ready to come up with ad costs and start selling ads.

Count the number of ads you’ve left space for, then divide them into the total printing and distribution costs. Add your profit before coming up with total costs per advertiser, then start marketing the ads. You might plan prices for a couple of half-page or quarter-page ads in case a business wants to buy that size—which may mean that you have to juggle some space when you layout the final project. Some business owners want large ads.

You’ll want to plan for replacement costs if restaurants run out before your next issue. Plan quarterly, twice-yearly or yearly issues, although the more often you print up new ones and sell ads, the more timely your product will be. Readers can get put off if they see an ad for a local business, then find out it has gone out of business.

This is a project that you control from the beginning. It’s your original work which is supported by ads you sell, and you have final say about how it looks. It’s a win-win-win situation for the advertisers, for consumers who welcome reading the newsletters, and for you, the writer.