printcasting inc 2009
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People-Powered Magazines
The Bakersfield Californian
Independently owned for 140 years. 110 years in one family.
The only paper of its size in Bakersfield (60,000 daily circ., 277,000 readers weekly).
My focus for 5 years. Social networking, user-contributed
content and niche products. Before that: Pure-play online community
products at AOL & Washingtonpost.com.
Knight News Challenge
5-Year, $25 Million grant program for digital open-source projects that support local news and information.Printcasting was one of 17 winners in 2008 with a 2-year, $837,000 grant.Year 3 winners unveiled in June.Learn more at http://newschallenge.org
What is Printcasting?Knight News Challenge project that democratizes print publishing process. Objectives:
Let anyone create a printable magazine.
No software or design skills required. Use your own content, or remix content from others.
Make print advertising easy, fun & affordable.
If you can e-mail or post to a blog, you can place ads that appear in printed magazines.
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Make a magazine like this …
… or this …
… or this!
Print, Online & Mobile
Every Printcast has an automatically generated “Microsite” that’s promoted from the masthead. Mobile version of microsites is coming soon.
Why is this important? Today’s fragmented media world means you
must give people what they want, when they want it, and where they want it.
We can finally give advertisers one, simple way to reach people in the media they prefer. Print, online, mobile are all automagic.
First Partner, & More to Come
Starting now, MediaNews Group’s Targeted Publishing Group will use Printcasting as a niche publication creation engine.
To support this, Printcasting.com now includes city pages that focus on specific markets.
SF Bay Area Los Angeles Denver/Boulder Bakersfield
Interested? We’ll be partnering with more local content organizations.
How Printcasting WorksContent comes from participating bloggers, news sites with RSS feeds.
Choose feeds, layout and frequency. PDF magazines are created automatically and sent to subscribers by e-mail.
Local businesses create and purchase ads online. Prices are affordable due to niche focus. Everyone gets a cut!
Print and distribute publications with promise. May be a publisher, or a print provider or newspaper.
All Participants Share RevenueEvery category has a base ad price which publishers can mark up.Revenue will be shared with every participant.
60% to Printcast publishers.Covers printing costs and helps fund their operations.
30% to content contributors.Proportionate to content use.
10% to the network.To cover our costs and ongoing improvements.
Printcasting is Ideal For …Local thought leaders. Especially local bloggers. If you have an RSS feed, you can make it
available to Publishers in 2 minutes.
Local community organizations. Clubs, schools, neighborhood associations, and even the library.
Local businesses.Realtors, home repair businesses, bike shops, etc. that already position themselves as experts in a field. In this case, the Printcast itself is the ad, but it contains valuable content.
Small businesses that can’t afford standard newspaper ads due to the cost of reaching tens or hundreds of thousands. Now they pay only for a niche audience of a few thousand.
Why Print, and Why Now?For one, it’s a natural way to grow audience and revenue together.
Social Networks Grow Audience. On 8 sites, we have 53,000 user profiles
(20% of market) with 3,618 blogs. Added 100,000 individuals to our
audience who we didn’t reach before 2004! Remember: Bakersfield’s population is only 300,000.
Print ads pay the freight.
Print Still Drives Most RevenueSocial nets with print components are effective, but only the print side generates significant revenues to sustain editorial operations.
Most revenue comes from print ads in magazines that feature user content.
Online-only brands struggle.
Capture the “Long Tail”
Bakersfield Businesses TBC Customer Base
In Bakersfield, 65% of businesses have annual ad budgets under $10,000.
But only 39% of the Californian’s current advertisers have ad budgets under $10,000.
Look at the Base!
Bakersfield Businesses
We need to be here. Self-serve advertising is the only scalable way to reach these businesses.
We are mostly here.
Other ReasonsPrint finds you in physical space Locals pick up printed products when they’re relevant, even if (and
especially if) they also use the Web site. It’s part of your environment.
Print can be relevant if you make it relevant We’ve found that as you increase relevance and choice in print,
people continue to read. The Internet excels at this, but so can print if you rethink it from the ground up. And for people who don’t want print, there’s the microsite and mobile.
Print is now efficient, and eco-friendly Customized niche “printable” content costs less, and is better for
the environment. Digital inkjet technology is making Print on Demand more affordable.
Outreach in BakersfieldWe hired a part-time marketing evangelist in Bakersfield. Reaches out to local bloggers and to show them how to use
Printcasting for their information needs.
“Blogger brunches,” training sessions, booths at events.
Meets with local clubs at college campuses and high schools.
Thanks participants with T-shirts, mouse pads and pens.
Basically all the local grass-roots stuff that only a newspaper would be crazy enough to do!
Some Early AdoptersA local writer is using Printcasts to publicize her poems and short stories. “Weekly Passion Activator”
The Kern County Library Wants to publish book reviews, event calendars and
community information.
Downtown Business Association Will get downtown businesses to blog their event
calendars, then pull them into Printcasts that they hand out from trolleys.
Political Parties Interested in using Printcasts for newsletters that
share regional clubs’ content.
The Opportunity for NewspapersA newspaper, or any company with content and printing expertise, can participate and reap financial rewards thanks to revenue sharing.
Publish: Create Printcasts that use your own content, and you get to keep most of the ad revenue (60-90%).
Lower costs of content : Want to make a niche magazine, but can’t afford to pay a writer or freelancer? Pull from bloggers’ content, and still keep the majority of the ad revenue.
Monetize existing content: Have great niche content that you can’t monetize with your existing products? If another publisher uses it, you get a portion of other publishers’ ad revenue.
What We Do for Partners
We’ll create “city hubs” for partners’ cities For example: http://printcasting.com/denver
Partner creates Printcasts for those cities to seed the market, and registers its content online Partner sets ad rates for its own Printcasts (via a markup) Partner keeps most of the revenue from its Printcasts If citizen publishers use partner content, some of that goes to the
partner -- just like for any citizen publisher.
Partner promotes Printcasting locally By registering its content and encouraging publishing, the partner
helps its community while also helping itself. The more publishers that use the partner’s content, the more revenue it gets.
Questions?Let me know if you have any questions, thoughts or feedback!
Try Printcasting yourself: http://www.printcasting.com
Join our global community! http://community.printcasting.com
Making a Magazine
Creating and Ad