Sunday, March 23, 2008

Free local magazines

On a sunday afernoon, having lots of things to do and doing nothing , was reading local free magazines like mambalam times and pillar talk. The train of thoughts were as follows:

Good Business Model:
Paper is for free. So nobody is gonna tell , i dont want this. ( we tamilians are fond of freebies, i guess the reality is all human beings are fond of freebies). For sure there is assured circulation.

This assured circulation helps in getting ads, which is the source of revenue for the paper.

Even for advertisers it is more of a focused marketing and can be very sure it reaches the right customers, or atleast the customers.

I was also very sure it is a very successful business venture, if not I wont be seeing it week after week.

Good Articles.
It also features good articles, quite hilarious. say the point blank by t r jawahar (trjawahar@vsnl.net), cranks corner by k balakumar (balakumarkb@gmail.com) in pillar talk
No holds barred by m.a sadanand , tamasha varigal by j.s raghavan(rankamala@yahoo.co.in)

Now the question for the good business model is,

Why aren't you online? Why is your magazine not available online?
You could make your magazine available online too.
You could charge your advertisers a fraction of money for being available online too.
apart from your regular advertisers, you could have lots of online ads too

The cost of running a website and the generated revenue from ads could be an extra source of revenue.

The question for the good writers,

Again,Why are these guys not online? i.e i mean on blogs or website( ahem agreed it is not necessary that all should have a website or write blogs, still why shouldnt they ? the technology is within the reach and is available for them.

Blogs or online media is just another way of reaching out to people, or just another ego trip mentioned by jawahar in this week's point blank column.

Guys, online media has arrived and is here to stay. The day is not faraway it could be a main stream media. at least for now, you should supplement your main stream media with this online media.
p.s
I ended up with this blog post, thinking to write a blog post about tamil writers and their blog posts. Hope that will follow through shortly :)

Update:
jawahar's and balakumar's column are available @ http://newstodaynet.com/ and J.S raghavan's column @ http://70.87.196.226/annanagartimes/

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