SETTING UP ADVERTISING COMPANY?Any ideas how much who will be able to help me design my first copy?

Question

I want to set up a local food guide. I have experience of selling but could do with ideas of what things i need to take into account such as how much distribution would cost

Answer 1

Hi,

Great post.  It's not easy to open a small business.  Most small business fail (statistically).  I lost a lot of money trying to open a website.

I was really down about losing my money when a friend introduced me to a really cool way to get started on the web.  There's a company that matches companies selling products with people that want to promote the products (the name of the company is Keep Clicking).  I joined for free (actualy, they paid me $10, but I didn't get that until I had $50 in my account which took me about a month).

Most of the products I promote are free trial offers (it's kind of like magazines where the person can try a month free).  The products usually ship for $4, and I get about $17!  So I have no inventory, and I made over $1,200 last month.

Anyway, it's the best way to make money that I've seen, and it's free.

Best of luck to you!

http://www.keep-clicking-at-home.info

Answer 2

Speak to your local Business Link for lots of free help and information on setting up your business.  They'll give you assistance with creating your business plan that helps you work out everything that's involved, including finance, who your target market is and how you'll reach them.

You've two target markets, really - those who will be in the guide and those who are going to read the guide.  It's a bit chicken and egg because the advertisers, who will pay for your guide, won't advertise unless they feel the guide is going to reach their potential customers and people who use the guide won't do so unless they know that it has the information in it that they want.

Printed guides cost a lot to produce, if they're going to look good.  If you only have a small run to test the concept you could be looking at £6 per copy.  The price comes down the bigger the run but do you want a stock of 1000 guides, that you've paid £3 each for if no-one wants them?

Is it worth thinking about doing the guide on-line initially?  Your costs would be cheaper and you could be up and running more quickly.  You could offer advertisers their first month free so that you can populate the guide and have something worthwhile for your readership.  It cuts out distribution costs, although these shouldn't be high if you're keeping it local.

In terms of designing your guide, benchmark other guides.  Look at the ones that are most popular and how they're set out.  As a general rule - keep it simple: no more than 3 different fonts on a page; give your readers the information that they want; break up the text with graphics and/or pictures but make sure they're relevant to the page content.

Good luck!