I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night because a few complicated editing quotes came through late afternoon Brisbane time, which was early morning here in Toronto, Canada. I’ve been staying up till about 2am each day so I can service the Australian market without any major time differences. So far it’s working reasonably well. The quotes however required a bit of coordination with editors and some calculations which stimulated my brain a bit too much so I had trouble sleeping.
Yesterday I headed to the University of Toronto where I met up with a friend who showed me the more popular student postering locations on the campus. We ended up talking for a while and by the time we finished it was already getting late and I had only barely started to poster. I hit the main library and a few more buildings but with darkness falling and the temperature dropping way below 0 I decided the rest of U of T can wait until another day. It really is a huge campus, I think I have at least another 3 hours ahead of me.
Today I spent inside and did a little research about postering services. Unlike Australia, North America has a reasonably established postering distribution network and there are several business that offer postering services. I discovered the first company, City Postering, via a poster at UBC in Vancouver. I took the number then and later in Toronto discovered the same business, this time with a website as well. I read up and they looked like the ideal business to work with to expand in Canada and North America since they cover the USA, at least according to their website.
An aside – my business idea, http://www.student-marketing.com.au, is pretty much exactly the same as these postering services in the USA, which got me thinking about that business again. I did some more searching and could not find a similar campus postering service in Australia (of course I would use it for BetterEdit.com if there were). I’m now even more keen to launch this service, starting in Brisbane, when I return to Australia. The company that I am going to use, On Campus Promotions http://ocp.campus.net/, have been postering for something like 25 years and have established a huge network of over 100 employees, some that poster full time for a job. The business acts as a middle man for poster distribution and the reps do all the postering. They have a very impressive network which makes me confident I could establish something similar for Australia. – End aside.
I contacted CityPostering.com but unfortunately because they run an essay writing and editing service they deemed BetterEdit a competitor so refused to distribute our posters. I contacted a few more with none providing exactly what I wanted, campus postering, and then after some more net searching I stumbled across on campus solutions and gave them a call. The lady I spoke to was very friendly and while they don’t have a comprehensive network in Canada they should be able to help with the two big areas, Toronto and British Columbia, which will be a good start. They also have excellent penetration in the USA so hopefully if things go well I can stay with this company and form a beneficial relationship.
It sure isn’t easy to find a cheap and effective method of advertising to reach the student market. If anyone has an idea, don’t be shy, tell me!
Yaro Starak
