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 | All 1,034 P.O. boxes and the one carrier route in Palmer Lake (zip 80133) - 1,318 papers |
| All 1,490 P.O. boxes and the fifteen carrier routes in Monument (zip 80132) - 8,521 papers |
| Eight carrier routes from Baptist Road to Northgate Road (zip 80921) - 3,722 papers |
Total mailed circulation = 13,561 papers.
Most of the remaining 439 papers from our 14,000 print run go to stacks at more than 50 stores in Monument, Palmer Lake, Larkspur, and Black Forest.
Copies are almost always available in racks at the Covered Treasures Bookstore (on the corner of 2nd and Washington in Monument) and High Country Home and Garden (Washington St. between 2nd and 3rd in Monument). We also offer subscriptions.
To be sure to be included in an issue, please let us know what size ad you are planning and, the graphics and ad copy if we are to do the layout, by Friday two weeks prior to the publication date.
NOTE: Although we will work hard to get your ad into the paper, we greatly appreciate it if you can send all submissions, changes, and cancellations by the due date. If you contact us after that time, we may not have sufficient ad space remaining in the paper or may not be able to offer free layout on your ad. In that case, we will provide you with names of local graphic artists who, for a fee, may be able to prepare your ad for the paper.
If you plan to prepare your ad or have it prepared by a graphic artist, finished ads in electronic form are due Friday, 5 pm, one week prior to the publication date. Formats for submission of ads in electronic form are shown below under Ad Layout.
NOTE: If it looks like you are going to miss a due date, please contact us as soon as possible. We will work hard to help you meet your advertising objectives.
OCN's only fixed-size ads are business card size and related sizes. The special rate for business card sized ads (3.25" wide x 1.75" high) is $20. Half business card sized ads (3.25" x 0.875") are $10. Multiples of business card size cost the same multiple of the business card rate. For example, a double business card sized ad (3.25" x 3.5") costs 2 x $20=$40. A triple business card size (3.25" x 5.25") costs 3 x $20 = $60. And so forth. Please note that our "business card size" is actually a bit smaller than a conventional business card. That is done so three business card sized ads will fit within the width of the page (10.38"). Vertical format business card sized ads (1.75" wide x 3.25" high) are OK. Some examples of multiple business card sizes:
1.5 BC ($30): 3.25" wide by 2.625" high
2.0 BC ($40): 3.25" wide by 3.5" high or 6.5" wide by 1.75" high
2.5 BC ($50): 3.25" wide by 4.375" high
3.0 BC ($60): 3.25" wide by 5.25" high or 9.75" wide by 1.75" high
3.5 BC ($70): 3.25" wide by 6.125" high
4.0 BC ($80): 3.25" wide by 7" high or 6.5" wide by 3.5" high
5.0 BC ($100): 3.25" wide by 8.75" high
6.0 BC ($120): 3.25" wide by 10.5" high or 6.5" wide by 5.25" high or 9.75" wide by 3.5" high
7.0 BC ($140): 3.25" wide by 12.25" high or 6.5" wide by 6.125" high
8.0 BC ($160): 3.25" wide by 14" high or 6.5" wide by 7" high
9.0 BC ($180): 6.5" wide by 7.875" high or 9.75" wide by 5.25" high
Aside from sizes related to the business card size, OCN doesn't have fixed ad sizes and the ads are instead priced at $4 per square inch. To determine the cost for an ad, multiply the ad's width in inches by the ad's height in inches to get the number of square inches and then multiply by $4.00. Some examples:
2" x 5" = 10 sq. in. x $4 = $40
4" x 5" (sometimes called "1/8 page") = 20 sq. in. x $4 = $80
5" x 8" (sometimes called "1/4 page") = 40 sq. in. x $4 = $160
8" x 10" (sometimes called "1/2 page") = 80 sq. in. x $4 = $320
Full page = 10.38" x 15.75" = 163.485 sq. in. x $4 = $653.94.
With exception of the full page ad dimensions given above, these are just examples. OCN can accept any size ad as long as it isn't wider than 10.38" or taller than 15.25". If you have an ad you like that has run in another publication, please ask them to e-mail a high resolution version (300 dpi or better) electronic form of the ad to ads@ourcommunitynews.org and we will usually be able to run it as is. If minor changes or resizing of an ad you have run elsewhere is needed, we can usually handle that as well at no additional charge.
There is a $0.25 per square inch additional charge for special placement; that is, if you want your ad to appear on a particular page or position. Please contact us well ahead of the ad space reservation due date if you are interested in space on pages 2, 3, 4, 5, or the back page. Those locations tend to sell out quickly.
Note to graphic designers: All the dimensions shown above are full-bleed. The border of the ad should match the specified dimensions.
We will gladly scan your artwork and work with you to prepare your ad for the paper at no additional charge.
If you want to lay out your ad, please note that we use Windows-based PCs and can accept the following file formats:
| Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (.PDF) |
| Adobe InDesign 2.0 (.INDD) |
| Adobe Pagemaker (Versions 6.5-7.0) |
| Adobe Photoshop (.PSD) |
| Corel Draw (Presentation Exchange 6/7 format - .CMX) |
| Graphic image formats EPS, GIF, JPG, PICT, TIFF, and WMF |
| Microsoft Word 2000 or 2003 (.DOC) |
| Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 or 2003 (.PPT) |
| Microsoft Publisher 1997, 2000, or 2003 (.PUB) |
| Print Shop 10 (Poster format - .SIG, business card format - .BIZ) |
| Quark Xpress (Versions 3.3-4.1x) |
| Word Perfect Office (Version 11.0 - .WP) |
If you have a choice, we prefer Microsoft Publisher or PDF.
With Microsoft Publisher 1997, 2000, and 2003, stick to fairly common typefaces we are likely to have or select the "embed fonts" option under the Tools->Commercial Printing Tools->Fonts menu.
With PDFs, please select the Adobe Acrobat option to "Embed all typefaces."
Once you have prepared your ad, you may e-mail the file as an attachment or, if the file size exceeds your e-mail system's limits, mail a CD or drop off a CD at the Covered Treasures Bookstore (on the corner of 2nd and Washington in Monument).
Note that OCN is a black and white newspaper printed on a web press using a direct-to-plate process. This results in the contrast of photos and graphics being flattened somewhat.
For best appearance, we recommend that you convert all graphics and photos to grayscale and then adjust contrast and brightness to a full tonal range from white to black with just a bit more contrast that you might otherwise use.
OCN is printed at about 300 dots per inch (dpi). If you you prepare a raster image (GIF, JPG, TIFF, etc.), please make sure that it is generated at 300 dpi or more. Lower resolution graphics will look fuzzy or pixilated when printed.
| Ads with photos (especially photos of people) generally attract more interest than ads that are all text. |
| Try to avoid crowding too much information into your ad. Ads with a fair amount of white space in them are more likely to be read. |
| Keep in mind that your ad will be running next to articles and other ads. Include a border or other graphic element to define the area of your ad. |
| Using a typeface other than Times New Roman will help your ad stand out since all the articles in OCN are set in Times New Roman. |
| To avoid a "ransom note" look, limit to two or three the number of different typefaces used in your ad. |
| Type smaller than 9-point may be difficult for some readers to read. |
| Fancy script typefaces can be very difficult or tiresome to read. Avoid using them for extended blocks of text. Extensive use of boldface or italic forms should be avoided for the same reason. |
| Serif typefaces are generally better for extended blocks of text because they can be somewhat easier to read than sans-serif typefaces. |
View and print our advertisement order form on-line or download it in MS Word Rich Text Format to complete and print off-line.
Payments may be made by check, money order, or cash. Payment is due at the time artwork is approved. If you prefer to have us send an invoice and tear sheet after the issue is published, please let us know. Please make checks and money orders payable to Our Community News. Payments may be mailed to P.O. box 1742, Monument, CO 80132-1742 or dropped off at the Covered Treasures Bookstore at the corner of 2nd and Washington Streets in Monument. If you desire a receipt in addition to your cancelled check, please include a note to that effect.
For greater visibility, have your advertising item inserted into our paper and distributed throughout the Tri-Lakes area. You supply sufficient quantities of your circular, we do the rest for $50 per 1,000 ($0.05 per mail stop) up to 0.2 oz. There is a charge of $10 per 1,000 per additional 0.2 oz.. Note that there is a DISCOUNT of $5 per 1,000 for full-run inserts, that is, if the number of inserts you run in an issue is equal to or greater than our total mailed circulation.
For our current full print run of 14,000, the cost for inserting a single sheet of copy paper (typically 0.15 oz.) is $630 (14 x $45, includes the full-run discount). In case you don't want to have inserts put in the full run, it is easiest to focus on particular zip codes. Most maps show zip code boundaries. See the circulation section above for the number of papers that are delivered to each area.
NOTE: To lend more visibility to the inserts that are run and to minimize production problems, we are currently restricting the maximum number of different inserts run per issue to three (3), at most one (1) of which can be a partial-run insert. To avoid disappointment, please place your insert reservation early!
Pages in OCN are printed 16.75" high by 11.38" wide and then the paper is folded in half to approximately 8.38" by 11.38". We recommend that your insert be close to the size of the folded paper. A sheet of paper 8.5" x 11" fits nicely with just about 1/8" of the insert showing at the edge. Inserts significantly smaller than that may have a tendency to fall out of the paper when the letter carriers are delivering the papers. Inserts much larger than 8.5" x 11" will probably have to be folded to avoid being damaged during handling. We have had good results with inserts that were 11" x 17" folded to 8.5" x 11". Generally those pieces weigh between 0.3 and 0.4 oz. and so the rate would be $60 per 1,000 ($55 per 1,000 for full-run inserts). Please contact John Heiser at 488-3455 or ads@ourcommunitynews.org if you have questions about a particular item you are thinking of running as an insert.
If you decide to run an insert, we ask that you deliver sufficient quantities of your item clearly marked "Insert for Our Community News" to Signature Offset (formerly called InterMountain Color), 4910 Northpark in Colorado Springs. Northpark is the first signal light east of I-25 on Garden of the Gods. Turn north and go to 4910 on the left. The front of the building faces I-25. Notify the receptionist that you are making a delivery of inserts for OCN. The inserts must be delivered no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday prior to the Saturday publication date.
We recommend you provide 2-5% spare copies of your item to ensure that Signature Offset has enough in the event that some copies of the paper are inadvertently inserted with more than one of your items. Our volunteers will be glad to pick up left-over copies and bring them back to the Tri-Lakes area.
| Annie Matchett, House for Sale - "Thanks to the double business card sized ad that I ran in OCN, I sold my house in Woodmoor in one month. It worked great!" |
| Kathie Kaufer, Help Wanted for Family Reunion - "The (business card sized) ad yielded excellent results. Thanks!" |
| Mike Reaster, Guitar Lessons - "Ads in OCN work great for me. I tried other local papers and got no response. Thanks to my double business card sized ads in OCN, I can work from home and make a decent living. All my work comes from my ads in OCN." |
| Meg Nash, Six Rocks Media - "We had a great response from our ad in OCN. We have a great synergy between OCN readers and our target customers and were pleasantly surprised with the feedback from our first ad." |
| Lauren Bursell, The Dog House - "I generated a lot of business with my OCN ad, it paid for itself with the first call I received!" |
| Susan Walsh, The Walsh Company - " We advertised in three Tri-Lakes newspapers this year. Over 60% of those new clients obtained from these three sources were from OCN. Thanks!" |
| Karen Adams, Santa Fe Trail Jewelry - “Ads in OCN really work. I know that because my customers tell me they saw my ad in OCN.” |
| Monika Marky, Toys 4 Fun - “I advertised in many local papers. The only one that got results was OCN.” |
| Chris Barto-Hallmark, Housekeeping - “In one month, my business-card size ‘help wanted’ ad drew three or four phone calls per day. The response to my business-card size housekeeping ad brought in enough business to keep the new hires busy. I started with three clients. Thanks to my ads in OCN, I now have 90 clients and 9 people working for me!” |
| Tommie Plank, Covered Treasures Bookstore - “We get more coupons returned from OCN than from any other paper.” |
| Karen Evans, Northern Lights Dance Club - “We got great response to our dance class ad in OCN.” |
| Tarik Albert, Velocity Wireless Internet – “We got 20 phone calls from the very first insert we ran in 3,000 copies of OCN.” |
| Sarah Heckathorn, Animal Magnetism – “I can always tell when OCN comes out. My phone just rings off the hook.” |
Free copies OCN are placed in stacks at more than 50 stores in Monument, Palmer Lake, Larkspur, and Black Forest. Additional copies are almost always available in racks at the Covered Treasures Bookstore (on the corner of 2nd and Washington in Monument) and High Country Home and Garden (Washington St. between 2nd and 3rd in Monument). You can also read all the articles on-line or download an Adobe Acrobat PDF of any of our issues by following the links on our Latest and Back Issues page. We also offer subscriptions. To see all the ads in our latest issue, download the PDF. There is a link to it at the top of our Home Page.
OCN does not currently carry a classified ad section; however, many of the sorts of ads that would typically run in a classified ad section (help wanted, houses for sale or rent, cars or furniture for sale, garage sales, etc.) have run with great results in a half-business card sized ad (3.25" wide by .875" high = $10 per month) or business card sized ad (3.25" wide by 1.75" high = $20 per month). You aren't limited by word counts or other restrictions typical in classified ad sections. You can include photos and as much ad copy as will fit comfortably in the space without making the type size too small for people to read. We will be glad to work with you to craft an ad that meets your needs. For even greater visibility, please take a look at the other ad sizes and prices in the Display Ad section above.
OCN currently does not offer color anywhere in the printed paper. We work with our printer to achieve high quality grayscale printing; however, those needing to include color in their ads may want to consider running an insert. Since you provide the item to be inserted, you can make it as colorful as you like.
OCN is not currently set up to accept credit card or PayPal payments. Payments may be made by check, money order, or cash. Payments may be mailed to P.O. box 1742, Monument, CO 80132-1742 or dropped off at the Covered Treasures Bookstore at the corner of 2nd and Washington Streets in Monument. If you desire a receipt in addition to your cancelled check, please include a note to that effect.
To get discounted ad rates, other publications generally require the advertiser to sign a contract committing the advertiser to a minimum number of ads within a specific number of issues. Many advertisers have told us they regretted signing the contract because their advertising needs changed and yet they were still required to fulfill the contract. OCN does not use contracts. We want people to advertise with us because they see value in doing so not because they are bound by a contract. You can purchase ad space month to month to meet your changing advertising needs. Everyone pays the same low rate. You can also buy all the ad space in advance you want at the current rate. In addition to writing fewer checks, another advantage to buying space in advance is that you are buying the space at the current rate so even when we must raise our ad rates to cover increases in production costs and circulation, your ads are run at the rate you paid. Some of our advertisers have paid a year or two in advance, which has been quite a savings for them. Unlike advertising contracts, it's risk free: If you find you bought more space than you need, you can get a refund for the unused space at the price you paid. To purchase space in advance, all you need to do is send a check for the amount of space you want to purchase.
OCN does not make value judgments as to which organizations, individuals, or events have more laudatory goals and therefore deserve to be subsidized through a lower ad rate. OCN is published by non-profit Our Community News, Inc. staffed by volunteers. Our ad rate is set to cover our cost of production. That has resulted in OCN offering one of the lowest ad rates in the area and, considering our large circulation, a per-printed-copy ad rate that is a fraction of what you would pay in local commercial newspapers. Everyone pays that same low rate.
Unlike other newspapers, OCN does not give certain businesses preferential treatment over their competitors by running free business promotion articles. Our policy has always been that business promotion articles run as paid ad space. The same policy applies to informational articles. Such articles are typically "soft marketing" tools intended to establish the expertise of the business. We will be glad to help you prepare such articles for publication but they must run as paid ad space with a border or with a "paid advertisement" notice above them. If you are interested in running an article, please contact us so we can determine how much space would be required and what the cost would be. Given our relatively low ad rate, you may be pleasantly surprised. For budgeting purposes, figure that using 10-point type, you can fit about 12 words per sq. in. so a 300-word article would take about 25 sq. in.
For more information or to arrange an appointment to discuss your advertising needs, please contact:
John Heiser
Advertising Manager
488-3455 (office and FAX) or 488-9031 (home),
ads@ourcommunitynews.org
P.O. Box 1742, Monument, Colorado 80132-1742.
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Contact us at editor@ourcommunitynews.org or P.O. Box 1742, Monument, Colorado 80132. This page was last modified on May 06, 2008. Home page: www.ourcommunitynews.org. Copyright © 2001-2008 Our Community News, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
