Printcasting Paid Ads and Revenue Sharing are Here!

Good news! We just reached a big milestone on Printcasting with a feature that we think will redefine how publishers perceive and use Printcasting.

Starting now, all ads placed with the Printcasting self-serve advertising tool cost $10, an amount that publishers can mark up per publication. In addition, 60% of every ad dollar is shared with publishers through their Paypal accounts, and 30% of every dollar is set aside to share with participating content providers in the future in proportion to how often their content has been used in Printcasts.

We've also made it easier for advertisers to place ads in each magazine by adding a "Place an Ad" button on the microsite pages. Click that, and you'll see that your publication is automatically selected as a target (see an example here). This allows a business to advertise in publications they like by simply typing in the URL from the PDF printout (possibly in a sample copy that a publisher gives to them), click that button, pay and be done.

All of this is important for several reasons:

• First, we can finally tell publishers and content providers that they can use Printcasting not only to meet the information needs of their communities, but also to help pay the freight for reporting, content creation, printing and distribution. Like our fellow Knight News Challenge project Spot.us, we're helping answer the question of how to pay for quality journalism.
• It creates a very compelling new way for local businesses to place affordable ads that they know will be seen locally. This is especially helpful for so-called "long tail" advertisers, that majority of businesses in every town that have very little time or money (and these days less money than ever before), but still need to market their services to stay open. These are businesses like nail salons, home contractors, local book stores, ice cream shops and the like.
• For newspapers, like The Bakersfield Californian and partners such as MediaNews Group, it creates a new way to reach those long-tail advertisers. One of the biggest problems newspapers are coping with right now is that most of their revenue comes from very large businesses. When two of them merge, or one ceases operation, it starts a snowball effect that these days leads to things like cost-cutting, layoffs and a corresponding loss of quality. For this reason, everyone who likes getting local news from newspapers has a vested interest in newspapers' ability to diversify their revenue sources. Expanding their revenue to small businesses is one critical part of that.
• And finally, it completes the feature set we laid out 18 months ago when we entered the Knight News Challenge. From this point onward, everything we do will build upon and improve the core features in response to the feedback and usage patterns of users and partners.

Many thanks to The Commerce Guys and our lead developer Ron Robinson for getting this launched. You guys rock!

I'll be posting additional information over the coming weeks about how to make use of paid advertising as a publisher, and how to get paid as a content contributor. But there are two things every publisher and contributor can do now to make sure they can get paid in the future.

1). Download a W-9, fill it out and send it back to us. The IRS won't allow us to pay anyone more than $400 in a year without a W-9 on file. You can find information about how to do that by clicking "W-9 and Payapl" link in the My Account tab after signing in. Or, go here: http://bit.ly/ZKDoc.

2). Get a Paypal account (if you don't have one already) and enter the account's e-mail address into your user profile. You can sign up for a Paypal account at http://www.paypal.com. Once you have verified that it is linked to your bank account, log in at Printcasting.com, go to the My Account tab, and click Edit Profile. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and enter your Paypal ID into the two "Paypal Account" forms.

We will enable your account to receive revenue shares after receipt of your W-9 and validation of your Paypal ID. Note that because we're charged a fee every time we send or receive funds, we need to limit the number of transactions on our side. For that reason, we won't send you a payment until you have at least $25 coming to you. For more information about how revenue is processed and shared, please see the revised Printcasting Terms of Service.

Thanks again for using Printcasting.com and for all your help and feedback.