Most small papers sell advertising by phone, one conversation at a time, and publish their rates as a picture. That puts a ceiling on the work: one person can only make so many calls. Your rate card here is a page a business can read, pick from, and pay on — by themselves, at ten at night, without reaching you.
What a rate card is
A list of the spots you sell. Each one has a name, a description, a size, who can see it, and a price for each length of run. You write all of it; nothing here is set by us.
The size is how the ad appears: a full ad carries a picture, copy and a link; a short ad is a line of text. Who can see it is how far the ad reaches — people around your town, everyone in your state, everyone in the country, or everyone. Local is what most papers sell, and it is the cheapest floor.
The run length is how long the ad stays up, counted in months. You can offer one length or several, priced however you like.
Setting it up
From your publications, open the publication and choose Ad rates. Add a placement, name it something a business will recognise — "Front page banner", "In the local news feed" — and say in a sentence what the advertiser gets. Then price it.
We show you the least you can charge for each spot. That figure isn't ours to keep; it's the platform's minimum for that size and reach, and a price below it can't be paid for, so we won't let you publish one. Above it, the number is entirely yours.
Nothing is public until you switch it on. Build the card first, look at it, then turn on "Show these rates on my Advertise page". Until then, businesses see the request form exactly as they do today.
A local placement is measured from where your paper is, so your publication needs a location set before you can sell one. If you haven't set one yet, add it on your publication's profile first.
What happens when someone books
They pick a spot, write their ad, upload a picture, and pay. The ad goes live as soon as the payment clears and runs for the length they bought. You keep 90% of what they pay — the same share you get from any support on My Local Press — and it reaches you through the payout account you've already set up.
The ad appears on your publication the way every ad does: it rotates with the other ads running there. That means you sell a run and an audience, never a guaranteed number of views, and it's worth saying so plainly to advertisers who ask.
Changing your mind
Untick a placement to stop offering it. Re-price one whenever you like — anybody part-way through booking at the old price still pays the old price, so a change never catches someone mid-form. Turn the whole card off, or delete it, and your Advertise page goes back to the request form. Ads already booked and paid for keep running.
Setting rates happens on the web. The iOS and Android apps show your rate card to readers, but the writing happens here.