Phillip Robinson

Florence, AL (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal

Free Ads Weekly

Find More Startups Startup
Location: Florence
Industry: Advertising
Year Founded: 2008
Number Employees: 1-10 people
Description: Free Ads Weekly is a rack and counter distributed weekly shopper publication featuring free private party classified advertising, puzzles and a few easy reading articles changing out from time to time according to seasonal interests. My family and I started the company on a shoe string, with the first edition hitting the streets last July, 2008. Since then we have been mostly concerned with gathering readership and finding our most effective distribution points which have proven to be very successful. Our readership is at about 12,000 readers and we have just over 250 successful distribution points that have been very loyal to us as far as giving us premium rack or counter display areas in such places as Taco Bell, Long John Silvers, Jacks, Krystals, Hardee's and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise restaurants. We also are well received in many local, non-franchised restaurants in the area as well as convenience stores, express oil change businesses, hair salons, doctors offices and clinics. So far, the public has accepted our publication with almost surprising enthusiasm but we need to extend our visibility to garner advertising client's faith. So far, we have been able to operate with very limited capital using my credit cards and family to help in distribution and production. I have over 12 years of experience in the business of production of weekly magazines and newspapers and have worked with companies such as OnePaper and ClassifiedsWork. Being a free classified ad paper, we feel we can be a terrific help to the community during the down turn of the economy as trader papers often see much success in poor financial times. Our low overhead allows us to start selling advertising at much lower rates than any competing advertising medium so businesses will see us as a valid means of getting the word out without breaking their budget. Still, we are only three months old and it will take some time of us expanding our distribution points in some creative ways to get local businesses to have faith in our product. Those few companies that have advertised with us have dropped their advertising with other mediums to stay with us, saying that our publication has been a much more successful medium for them. We just need some capital to survive on long enough to build confidence in our product. We feel we are on the verge of a very large upswing once we hire a good sales manager and the profitability of this project is immense as the brand is very favorable to expanding nationally as a franchise at some point.