I operate my neighborhood news site as a business -- right now CapitolHillSeattle.com is my main source of contribution to the Justinc family coffers. Like any good start-up, Instivate (the maker of Neighborlogs!) is about equity and the long-term. But I also utilize my site as a test bed of neighborhood blogging and online journalism.
Recently, I started an experiment that is kind of crazy given the trials and tribulations currently striking the print journalism landscape. Every Sunday, I produce a print edition of my neighborhood blog.
I use the FeedJournal service to automatically convert my RSS feed into an 8-page PDF newspaper complete with a masthead, banner headlines, pictures and, thanks to one of Neighborlogs' cooler features, advertisements. On the plus side, it's mostly auto-magical -- I simply point the service at my feed, click and get the PDF. The service automatically selects a layout -- even automatically picking a lead story which sometimes deserves the slot, sometimes does not -- and churns out the neighborhood blog as newspaper. I call it reverse printing because, I guess, the process represents the reverse of the traditional content flow from offline to online.
One neat byproduct of how FeedJournal and Neighborlogs play together are the way the service displays advertisements from the RSS feed. The ad service built into Neighborlogs is one of the few blogging options around that let you monetize your RSS feed without using some wonky third-party solution. We let you show the same kind of relevant, from-the-neighborhood ads in your RSS feed as appear on your site. FeedJournal picks up these ad graphics and automatically inserts them in the print edition.
On the downside, I shell out $60 a month for the premium version of the FeedJournal service which lets me show my own masthead and have more control over the look and feel of the edition. And all sorts of goofy little things happen as a result of the automation ranging from photo selection, to layout juxtapositions to code debris from the RSS feed.
The result of all this: about 5% of users download the print edition each week. That number has grown a 1/4 point each week. And advertisers are starting to take note and ask how to appear in the 'paper.' It's ironic but I've had more ask me about how to appear in print than how to appear in our RSS feed. So it goes. But maybe they are right to be more interested. When I print my weekly copy, I read it then leave it behind in a neighborhood coffee shop for somebody else to pick up. I also find myself poring back through content I've already read (and often written myself!) in a slower, more thorough way. I don't, yet, know how to price for that premium. In the meantime, the experiment continues. Maybe next weekend I'll make my first multiple copy print run and the weekend after, deploy a recycled Seattle PI newspaper box.
