By Wagner Dotto
Paid advertising is key to keeping this magazine going, and we’re thankful so many of our advertisers have continued running ads with us, even during the pandemic.
Advertising provides the means for us to publish. Simply put, if we don’t have enough ads, we can’t publish. So, it’s in order to thank those businesses and organizations that have chosen to advertise in Oswego County Business — even during tough times.
The pandemic has thrown everything up in the air. We’re somewhat lucky that about 90% of our total distribution — 6,500 / 7,000 total copies per issue — is mailed directly to readers. That guarantees that readers receive the publication on a regular basis and that advertisers get the exposure they seek.
We also publish this magazine every other month (six times a year), a low number of editions annually, meaning that for companies the investment in advertising with us is very low.
Like most business, we’ve been hit hard by the pandemic — our sales volume has dropped more than 20% in 2020 and remains down in 2021.
Despite that, we have continued working to improve the product.
Many longtime readers may recall Oswego County Business as a black and white magazine, printed on opaque white offset stock — a grade or two higher than newsprint. That has changed in the last few years. Today Oswego County Business is printed entirely on glossy stock and is 100% color. That gives us the chance to use more and larger photos, which makes the publication more visually appealing. We have added pages — the magazine usually prints with 96 pages plus cover.
We’ve also expanded the range of stories we publish. Years ago, our focus was exclusively Oswego County. Since a couple of years, we’ve adopted a more regional approach to covering the news. Readers now can catch great stories about developments taking place in Oswego, Onondaga and Cayuga counties. From time to time, we even include stories from Jefferson and Madison counties. Our economy is very interconnected and it makes sense for the publication to cover a larger area.
Oswego County Business is CNY’s only business magazine and we strive to make it a truly premium, regional magazine — and advertisers play an important role in that.
Wagner Dotto is the publisher of Oswego County Business Magazine.