Mostly, today is planning the bizcard sheet. I’ll generally avoid the extreme financial details, but one issue per week is not likely to make the grade. The average gross ($25 x 28 ads) revenue is $700 per issue and you can’t run a business on that. Then, I am not the sales rep or distributor. The target area (Wilmington) still has more mom and pops than franchises, which I take to mean there won’t be many objections to placing the finished sheets.
The good news is we could unquestionably produce a superior product. Today’s graphic is part of the recent sample (note rounded corners). The staunchly conservative community of Camp Wilmie is not above allowing ads for booze and hookers. But instead, you should be noticing the ads are black and white. The stock color is thus not so important. If you can pick out the words “Monkey Junction”, that is the crossroads south of town where you turn off Main Street to go visiting.I had Wallace glance over the sheet for his reaction. He noticed the blandness of the both the bizcards and the articles. Horoscopes and tide tables are too obviously lifted from some Almanac. Or those movie listings, which amount to more advertising. Same goes for schedules of local events. The one exception was a recipe for Kitty Litter Box Cake. It is served in a new kitty litter box with a new scoop, and the ingredients include half-melted Tootsie Rolls and cookie crumbs mixed with vanilla pudding. Yum! Dig in.
This begs the question, “Is content important?” Maybe not, but the tiniest improvement would probably be welcomed. Any rag should have some intellectual appeal. Biggest advertisers are other shops (40%) followed by restaurants (32%) and drinking establishments (18%). The area is spread out, probably too widely for one issue to cover the entire city while also putting a brake on how far one is willing distribute the flyers. The 910 area code is huge, with two issues per week appearing ever more realistic if such could be sold. That is not my department.
The ads would change; the same filler would suffice providing it has general attraction, a county-wide charm one might say. That is, one set of filler, many different issues. Yeah, yeah, if that is so, why limit ourselves to just two issues? Because, she is working alone, that’s why. I would design a template, meaning Theresa could plug in any local variances. As long as she proofreads each issue and the copy is knowledgeably written, I don’t see a problem. I have never seen her work.
Now, just where do you suppose we are going to find a professional, skilled, articulate author capable of consistently generating such excellent material on time in the quantity desired? Think, dammit, think!
I’m going to price out the printer and see what can be done about the 24 cent copy fee, although I already know that has to come down to around 6 or 7 cents per sheet. It is unrealistic to think somebody will do that for us, so the copier goes in-house. (But, but, Boss--that house is in North Carolina.) Experience says to operate reliably, she will need two copiers. Mercifully, the printer can be here, where the ink and maintenance isn’t such a headache. All Theresa needs is that final copy three days in advance, and for now the USPS is plenty fast enough. Preliminary analysis complete.
Now let us see if I can come up with some trivia that is worth publishing. Who likes to duck into an air-conditioned movie theater when the afternoon gets too hot? Somebody figured that out back in 1919 just shortly after A/C was invented. Hence, the draw of early movies was as much the air-conditioned buildings as the movies. More trivia. Gold mines are nothing new, but did you know back around 2,500 BC the Egyptians had 100 of them in operation?
&nb[Author's note 2015-11-10: this is an interesting read concerning the amount of work I had done on the "flyer" idea. Why? Because later, Theresa was to state that I had "done nothing". That she sat around for three months waiting for me to do my part. She failed to explain what else I could possibly have done, except maybe give her lots of money and a free place to stay while she treated her cats better than she treated other people.]
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