Business At A Glance
Startup Costs: $2,000 – $10,000
Home Based: Can be operated from home.
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.
Online Operation? Yes
Business Overview
Writing, publishing, and distributing yourown community newsletter is a great way to earn extra money and havesome fun at the same time. To keep your start-up, equipment andprinting costs to a minimum use 11-by-17-inch paper folded in half, asis your newspaper. This will give you four pages on which to featurecontent and advertisements.
Featured content can be whatever you thinkwill be beneficial to the community’-entertainment, sports, realestate, the arts, senior issues, business news or just games andtrivia. The paper is supported financially by local businessadvertisers and, based on the 11-by-17-inch format, you can fit up to24 business-card-sized ads in each issue, while still leaving lots ofroom for content.
Charging $150 per month for each ad space willgenerate revenues of $3,600, of which approximately 20 percent will beneeded to cover paper, printing and distribution. The weekly newspaperscan be delivered free of charge to community gathering places such asrestaurants, community centers, coffee shops, fitness clubs and pubs,for clients to read on location and/or take home. To get up and runningyou will need a computer, software such as Adobe PageMaker, a printercapable of using 11-by-17-inch paper, and reliable transportation todeliver the papers. Once you have typeset in the content and ads, youcan print one copy of the paper and use a local copy shop to completethe run for pennies apiece.