The Printed Blog

The Printed Blog has gotten some incredible press coverage since launching in January of this year. (As I write this post a reporter from Japan is interviewing our founder Josh here in the office).

The big question everyone from the media to people on the street are asking though is this one: “How do you make money?” The short answer: Advertising. The long answer? Much more interesting.

The Printed Blog is unlike any other paper currently being produced. We are techinically a newspaper yet look and read like a high-end luxury magazine. Our content is created by big media bloggers and unknown individual bloggers that happen to write interesting, engaging blogs that deserve to be heard. Our advertising is going to be the same.

The term I am using to describe what we offer to our advertisers is “Socially Engaged Advertising”. Socially Engaged Advertising (or SEA) is possible because of the nature of TPB: We come out once per week and are therefore timely like a newspaper- but we are much more hyper local than any MSM (mainstream media) publication can be. Our twitter stream aready has 2600+ followers and grows daily. Our staff blog is starting to attract followers as well.

Because of what we are and what we are doing, not only can we present an advertisement to our reading public (currently over 80,000 people/month in Chicago alone) we can engage readers of TPB with our adveritsers. Let me explain this better through examples:

A condo owner trying to sell his unit contacted me recently to find out the price of running an ad to sell his place. (TPB ad prices are affordable enough for ANYONE to advertise… our ad rates are seriously effective too!) As he and I talked, I told him why not have an open house as well? And not a traditional open house– a socially engaged open house. Thanks to tools like twitter (and our upcoming social network) we can reach out to our readers in a way the Chicago Tribune or New York Times can only dream about.

We can tweet everyone on a Friday with a message: “The Printed Blog tweet-up tonight at Tom’s condo: 123 Main Street. 8 p.m.”

In the above example, not only will we run his ad but we’ll have a meet-up at his place. We’ll meet some fans of TPB, and Tom can show off his condo. Even if no one at the tweet-up is looking to buy, they may know someone that is and tell their friends a few days later about the sweet place they were at that also happens to be for sale. And Tom might make new friends. SEA at work!

We are currently printing in NYC, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. We are also going to be having all sorts of meet-ups, tweet-ups and every other kind of networking you can imagine. This allows us to meet our readers, find new bloggers, and let our crowd know about the companies that find TPB to be as exciting as our readers think it is. Bloggers (and those that read them) tend to be more intelligent and socially engaged than the typical Joe or Jane Q. Public on the street and they support the brands that support their passions. (I once bought Degree brand deodorant because they support a show I love on the Sci-Fi channel called Eureka).
We can do for major media brands what we can do for local advertisers in each city we publish in. Say a wine bar in San Francisco (I love wine bars in San Francisco) wants to purchase advertising in TPB S.F. edition. A wine bar sounds like a great place for a tweet-up to me. Because we care about our readers AND our advertisers, we can always schedule a tweet-up at the wine bar on their slowest night of business– so in return for a small ad buy they are suddenly discovered by wine drinking readers of the TPB and increase revenue as a result.

The major media brands? The same. You can bet we are going to let our loyal readers know what we think of who we partner with. TPB is not in the business of just taking money from any major advertiser that wants in. We are being inundated with calls and are being a little choosy about who we do business with. We want our readers to know that our big guns (in terms of advertising) are companies we personally would do business with. And since we really like them, when we engage with our readers we will happily let them know why we support the brands we do and why they support us. Call it a mutual admiration society between our brand, their brand, and our audience. SEA is going to evolve in new and exciting ways- and The Printed Blog is going to lead the way.

Not only are we going to be the newspaper for the next 100 years, we are going to be THE place for advertisers for the next 100 years as well.