Business Idea Center:
Community Newsletter

Business Overview

Writing, publishing, and distributing your own community newsletter is a great way to earn extra money and have some fun at the same time. To keep your start-up, equipment and printing costs to a minimum use 11-by-17-inch paper folded in half, as is your newspaper. This will give you four pages on which to feature content and advertisements. Featured content can be whatever you think will be beneficial to the community—-entertainment, sports, real estate, the arts, senior issues, business news or just games and trivia. The paper is supported financially by local business advertisers and, based on the 11-by-17-inch format, you can fit up to 24 business-card-sized ads in each issue, while still leaving lots of room for content. Charging $150 per month for each ad space will generate revenues of $3,600, of which approximately 20 percent will be needed to cover paper, printing and distribution. The weekly newspapers can be delivered free of charge to community gathering places such as restaurants, community centers, coffee shops, fitness clubs and pubs, for clients to read on location and/or take home. To get up and running you will need a computer, software such as Adobe PageMaker, a printer capable of using 11-by-17-inch paper, and reliable transportation to deliver the papers. Once you have typeset in the content and ads, you can print one copy of the paper and use a local copy shop to complete the run for pennies apiece.