Advertisements

[Becky the Evil Flower]

Hey guys. My high school offers seniors the chance to spend a month doing stuff interning at a business, school or doing a creative project instead of going to classes. I am going to make a zine.

It is very exciting, but copies cost money and it's going to be long. So to finance it I want to sell advertisement space. But I have never done this before. I would consult my copy of Stolen Sharpie Revolution but I sent it to a friend. To all of you who have had advertisments in your zines before I ask you:

1. How do you find advertisers? Are they other zinesters or local businesses?

2. How do you figure out how much you are going to charge?

3. How does payment work? Do they pay you after the zine is printed or up front?

 

Any little bit of info helps. Thanks!

[Brian V]

Talk to local businesses, and don't aim too high price-wise. If you aim too high they'll debate whether or not your zine is worth advertising with. Aim too low and you're ripping yourself off. The perfect price is one where you're earning enough to print however many you need and where the advertiser feels they're either reaching their target audience or simply can't lose because they're not paying alot for advertising.

[James N. Dawson]

Advertisers can be business, non-profits, zinesters, anybody.

If you have a copy of Zine World, see what they charge.  Also, check out local adsheets, the kind they give out for free at supermarkets.  That'd give you an idea.  If this is your first zine, I don't think you're in much of a position to ask for too much.  Your advertisers would have to know what your print run and circulation are, and of course, your content.  If you're content is controversial, that might scare off a lot of advertisers, but that's par for the course in zines. You might try places like tattoo and headshops, local rock bands, co-ops, etc.

I confess here, I don't know that much about it, since I only *trade* ads with zinesters and papernetters, and it's pretty informal.  Often, I'll just print ads and hope other zinesters will reciprocate.  My ads draw very little response, but I'm used to that.

Hope you'll get some advice from a zinester with more business savvy than I have.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dan 10things]

"How do you find advertisers? Are they other zinesters or local businesses?"

Local small businesses and look whose advertising in other zines. If you are genre specific, like say doing a music oriented zine, you can contact businesses that might be interested in the genre.

 

"How do you figure out how much you are going to charge?"

Size of your print run and size of the ad are big factors. Since this is your first issue and you have no proven track record, I'd say make 'em cheap. Especially if you are going to have a small print run. Think of it from the advertiser's perspective, will they be getting their money's worth. They might say pay $5-$10 for a half page ad in a small print run new zine, but they won't pay $50.

 

"How does payment work? Do they pay you after the zine is printed or up front?"

I always have made advertisers pay up front with zines. We didn't when I did a magazine and that didn't work out to well. We were owed tens of thousands of dollars in the end when we folded by advertisers that didn't pay for their ads.

I should point out that you will have a really hard time finding ads before publishing your first issue. The first issue of 10 Things I paid for myself to print and only started looking at getting a few ads when I was on my second or third issue.