The online era

The latest issue of Triangle/Triad Construction News in North Carolina. You can view this publication online at http://www.triangleconstructionnews.com or http://www.triadconstructionnews.com.

At our special meeting yesterday, we decided to focus attention on online publishing. The combination of versatility and effectiveness, and much lower distribution costs, makes this a no-brainer for improving the product while reducing costs.

Online service yudu.com has solve the problem of putting the publications online. There are several other page turning services out there, but I've found all of them to be astoundingly overpriced for an online service -- yudu.com's basic service is free and its enhanced offer, which we will soon purchase, is only a few hundred dollars annually.

You can see our online editions by visiting the relevant publications' websites -- for example, Ottawa Construction News is at http://www.ottawaconstructionnews.com and Charlotte Construction News in North Carolina is at http://www.charlotteconstructionnews.com.

When you go online, you'll notice that hyperlinks and email addresses in editorial and advertisements are set so you can click right through to the relevant websites or email addresses -- an obvious advantage to advertisers. With the enhanced yudu.com version, we will also be able to import video ads and make other revisions to the pages; creating a new multi-media package.

We won't stop the print publications just yet, but I expect the migration to an online business model is imminent.

(In our cost cutting meeting, we decided, however, not to reduce our allocations and resources for editorial quality -- savings on freelancer fees will be offset by my own efforts and harder work.)