Ad sales?

Future Prediction

When Tim in Bovey sees this he will have the answer.

Tim is indeed the guy who's had success in ad sales.

I took the approach of sponsorship - businesses would sponsor particlar shows for a month and there were announcements at the beginning and middle of the hour indicating that.

My next venture will be ad sales.

TY all.

Well this is where I am starting.

It seems I'm the only member running a 24 hour a day station as a business.

I have some advantages over the typical Part 15'er.  I've lived here for over 30 years and I've been the morning show host on the commercial AM station 8 miles away for those 30 years. Everyone knows me, and most know I run a small low power station as a hobby business.  I know most all of the business people in the area, so it's easy for me to pitch them to support my tiny station.

I provide ads to businesses in my listening area (which includes Bovey and the adjacent town of Coleraine -- they are listerally next to each other, less than half a mile from center of one town to the next) for free.  If you can hear us over the air, you can have free ads.

I sell ads to the surrounding town businesses at 30 cents a spot.  Most buy a hundred for $30.  It costs me $15 a month for FSN news service, and I have a sponsor who pays that so it's free to me.  He pays me yearly to sponsor the top of the hour 5 minute world news.

I've developed quite a few regular paid advertisers.  I have a satelllite TV company that buys a couple thousand spots a year, who pays me once and I schedule out the ads for the year.  As well as a couple cell phone providers.  Same thing. They generally require a monthly report of when their ads played, which is no problem as my automation software easily generates a printout or graph for any given cut, and shows the date/day and hour that cut played for the month.  I save it as a pdf and email it to them. 

I also have worked through some ad agencies, advertising coops, and some online resources to offer ads.  I sell them 15 spots for $5 or 40 for $10.  Again, this is a resource I have simply because I've been in the radio biz for 40+ years and have the connections to work with these people.  So I have tons of spots from mail order companies, authors, musicians, even psychics all runing regular schedules. As well as web sites, forums, dating services, all sorts of interesting stuff.   I run about 6 spot sets an hour, each with no more than 4 spots in them, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Although I don't charge for the spots that run from 7 PM - 6 AM simply bacause with skip and interference rolling in in the evening and overnight coverage is limited to only a block or two.

It also helps that my audio is on the local cable TV system which greatly increases my potential listenership, as the cable service covers thousands of homes and cabins that are around all the lakes in the area and are well out of my over the air coverage. 

But when you talk with local business people and tell them they can have a hundred spots for $30, that can be well less than they pay for ONE spot (depending on the market) on commercial radio.

You gotta work with the resources you have available!  I would almost be embarassed to share what my station billed in 2016.  Actually, we don't bill.  Advertisers must pay for the ads when the order is placed, so I minimize paperwork. 

So the revenue generated covers any operating costs, allows for equipment improvements and expansion, pays for music licensing, advertising (we're always in the local paper) and lets us help sponsor local community events and city projects. 

TIB

Tim,

Thanks very much!  This is great info and very helpful.  May I ask what automation software you use that incllude the reporting function?

Jim

I have a quick question as well.  How many free ads do you let your local businesses have (i.e., do you limit them)?

I'm a Mac user, so I use Megaseg for my automation. Not a free program.  I believe I paid $200 for it 4 years ago.  It generates a log of everything that's played, including songs, etc. I can choose a cut (be it a song, commercial, jingle or whatever) and pull up a chart of when it was played -- I can choose dates, e.g. "June 1st through 30th", etc. 

That said, I often get crap for using Mac computers --  but I grew up on them and deal with the PC's at work every day.  Know how much downtown my on air Mac has had over the past 4 years.  Zero. I can work with that 🙂

A schedule the freebies as time is available. This is a small town so there are only about 15 potential businesses that will advertise at any given time.  I generally do 3-4 spots a day (not counting overnight) and still leave room for a few PSA's and community announcements (all of which are local to my towns or at least Minnesota, such as boating safety, fishing laws, snowmobiles, ATV use, etc... each when in season of course). If I get too busy I pull some PSA's to free up time. 

TIB

Another Part 15 Success Worthy Of Mention

Ken Norris and Friday Harbor Tiny Radio have an amazing relationship with the town of Tiny Harbor, Washington.

Visit Tiny Radio

Man if threre is anything you need to learn from Tim's post it is this "Actually, we don't bill.  Advertisers must pay for the ads when the order is placed, so I minimize paperwork."

Bill collection is one of THE hardest things in commercial radio and at our full power cluster it is standard to charge new customers up front. It becomes more of a problem the cheaper you get in spot pricing, I've had more trouble collecting small bills than I have with the big billers. For a part 15 I 100% recommend you collect all advertising dollars up front, you will get ripped off and it will happen. Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when.

I've sold ads in the past on my part 15 station but no longer have the desire to do so as I find it a conflict of interest with my full powers but there are MANY part 15 stations running ads and generating revenue. For those of you with stations operating out of your homes, make sure you're not violating local ordinances regarding home buisnesses. Some municipalities may require taxes.

Easily 75% of my ad revenue comes from out of state businesses or independent people out of the area.  As I sit here looking at my spot cut list for this hour the out of the area spots I have: a pitch to become a cell phone store, a psychic, political forum, author, sales of home remodeling products, fishing lures, wood working products, another author, some medical product I don't understand, another author, a bar b que sauce, and a cell phone company.  These are all out of town/national business that send copy or mp3 ready to use spot with their Paypal payments. 

As for the "near locals" (remember, intown businesses get 'em free) I generally just pick up copy and get $$ at the same time.  Even if they're buying a hundred spots that's only $30. Most just hand it to me out of the register LOL. 

Some people only buy the 15 ads for $5 and I play one a day. Sometimes I take pay in the form of donuts 🙂  It's just not worht even trying to bill for small amounts.

I have one local theatre group that I send an invoice to via email and they send me a check. Simply because their board approves purchases, and checks take two signatures. So they have to have paperwork to issue payments. They always buy 100 spots for $30 to run prior to any upcoming performance, and they always pay. 

As a one man operation who is working full time for a three group station with a morning show and chief engineering duties, who is running a record store on the side.... I don't have time to mess around with billing!

TIB

I guess it's just me, but that sounds extreamly cheap.. I suppose it's because my experience with selling ads have always been in relation to print publications (local only, about a two and a half mile stretch of distribution), ad space starts at about $100 a month on up to $500 for a full page color ads..  there's several publicatins on this island, I was for years directly involved publishing them and that's common pricing. If/when I ever get a mutiple install island wide coverage acheived, I was thinking about $4 or $5 per spot - or perhaps printing a companion magazine and providing complimentry air spots for the advertisers.

Here being a tourist spot, most everyting is exspensive..

This also by the way why I have become such a stickler of being 100% part 15 legal.. this nonsense about covering anything much over maybe a half mile in an urban setting with a single transmitter LEGALLY is just total nonsense though many kid themselves that it is.. and many have been getting away with it for years, and probally will for years to come - but if you start taking people money to advertise on it, you better be damned well certain about just how legal your operation really is.

Yes, it IS cheap. However, the commercial stations I work for sell a :30 for about 10 bucks.  Obviously that varies greatly with number purchased, special packages, multi station packages, etc.  And they cover tens of thousands of people.

If you sell ads at 30 cents a pop, and run at least 16 paid spots and hour, 12 hours a day (I don't charge for anything that plays overnight, that's a bonus) That's 4.80 an hour.  That's 57.60 a day. for $1728.00 a month or $20,736 a year.  Just for a rough number.  There are times during the year that I'm actually nearly sold out and I pull PSA's to fit in more paid spots.  I open a couple more breaks an hour November-December for the extra Christmas stuff. That's 8 minutes of paid spots an hour. Some hate that because they believe commercials are ruining radio, and perhaps in some formats that would be a real drawback.  But in my vintage country format where the songs are 2- 2 1/2 minutes long it still allows for a very good bunch of songs per hour.  Most commercial stations that have a decent sales team run well over that per hour, especially in drive times. 

That's a pretty darn good income for a part part time Part 15 station with one guy running it. Fixed expenses are about $600 yearly for music rights and news. 

And remember -- print has the extra cost of graphic design, printing, distribution, etc. Most of my paid ads come to me ready to go.  From the time I download them until they're in the air computer ready to go is about 2 minutes. 

TIB

You illustrated that well, I guess it's a lot more revenue than I thought at first glance.