Old media, new strategy: Sell out to readers

Ok, so maybe the title doesn’t seem so radical. Newspapers have always been sold to readers, right?

Take a look at what the free newspaper Amsterdam Weekly is doing. Facing financial challenges, like most print media businesses do these days, they decided a radical approach: Sell out – to the readers.

So, each page of the forthcoming edition is divided into 204 squares, each with a price tag of 5 €. The first edition is out now, embedded here:

As you can tell from the blank parts, it wasn’t a total sellout; but still rather impressive for a first. Next week’s edition is on sale now (due April 10th), with a current sale of 9 %. Help them out; you’ll not only get your name in the paper, but also lot’s of extra goodies.

I asked Steven McCarron from the newspaper what they had learned so far from the experiment:

We’re now into week two and with technical issues out the way – we only had a couple of weeks to go from no campaign to a live sales system and telling the world – we can finally put more efforts into promotion. So we now have articles in local and national press, some TV bits and growing internet coverage. We just have to keep the momentum going because our campaign isn’t just about getting the money – although it’s certainly needed – but getting the word out there to attract interest and hopefully new investment.

Another issue is that we’re very much a printed paper with only a tiny web footprint, so it’s difficult to flip that around at short notice given the little resources we have. This is why free sites and applications like Issuu can really transform how we communicate online.

I also asked if TheMillionDollarHomepage was an inspiration:

Yes, The Million Dollar Homepage certainly was a jumping point in the beginning. And there was also inspiration from a building in Amsterdam a couple of years ago, which had sold its exterior wall space for advertising in blocks/bricks. So far, I’m not aware of any other publication that’s deliberately went to the trouble of completing a full issue, then gone back and eaten it to make a point. But we have to make a strong statement or we’re suitably doomed.

We have to convey how serious our situation is and show our readers that without their help there will be drastic consequences. If they don’t invest, they may lose out on some content in the short term, with the possibility of losing it all in the future.

I simply love this approach: Do something new and creative in the shadow of impeding doom. Show the world you will fight to get your message across, rather than folding over financial difficulties. It is also one of the most significant cases of reader ownership. In fact, it’s so radical that it makes the new BBC landing page seem almost like a symbolic gesture.

It’s a great story, and that’s what the newspaper business always should be about.

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