Just a couple things I've done the past week that may be of help to someone. Nothing to do with actual programming or transmitting, but more "office work".
I was thinking it would be nice if I had a separate phone for the station. I already work in commercial radio and have an unlisted home number to prevent "spirited listeners" from calling me at home, in the middle of the night (which for me is after 8 PM). So I didn't really want to use the home phone.
I knew many cell phone services exist that are cheap and "pre-paid" (no credit checks, no bills) the cheapest I knew of was from ATT (around here anyway) that was $15 a month, but I felt I could do better. A bit of web searching led me to "PureTalk". They had solid coverage in my area, a very basic (VERY basic) flip phone was FREE (with NO shipping) and I got the $5 a month service, which is only good for 50 minutes a month. But that's enough for people to leave a message and I can call them back on my regular cell or home phone for free. For the cost of $5 a month I have a station phone number with a station answering message "Hi, thanks for calling Iron Range Country Radio. We're either away from the office or busy in the studio. Please leave a message and we'll get back to you as quick as we can. Thanks again for calling Iron Range Country Radio". Instant public communication and cheap too! And if I ever get actually busy it appears to be easy to upgrade the service plan and keep the same number! Just an idea if you need a station phone.
Second tip of the week (LOL) is Vistaprint. You may have heard of them, they print business cards and tons of other stuff. They offer "free" business cards. If you haven't seen the pitch, you can get 500 free cards, paying only shipping. You have to choose from one of the stock free designs (there are many to choose from and they change every so often). You have to be careful when you check out because they REALLY pitch the ad ons, and be sure to change it to the cheap shipping at the end. You wind up paying about 6 bucks for 500 nice looking professional cards. I have a batch made up as a nice station card, with my name, the email, all that on it. Then, I also just made up a batch for Chiristmas that promote upcoming Christmas programming, reminding people that ads for in town people (those who can actually hear us over the air) are FREE, and encouraging submission of club announcements, etc. I did splurge on these a bit and for $5 extra (I think) I added "foil" which gave some nice shiny foil details to the green cards, making them look very Christmassy. I took them around to local businesses who left them out for customers and clients, hung some up on the bulliten board at the post office, etc.
You wind up paying under 2 cents a card for 500, and that's 500 impressions you can make on people, and we only have 681 people in this entire town!
No, I don't work for Vistaprint, just a satisfied customer. I've bought tons of business cards from them for various (some quite odd) purposes over the years.
Tim in Bovey
Iron Range Country