My business plan falls aprart when it comes to the contect provider. While the easiest modle is a CPM (I pay them a set ammount for each time someone has an article the created printed), it seems that it would not be in htier intrests to do that if they have a kiosk right next to my machine.

The other model is that I download thier ads with thier stories, but that requires more effort on thier side. Pushing the work to the client side is a great deal killer.

So my question is, can people think of an agreable revinue model that current print advertisers will find satisfactory?

You want to make a physical device (similar to those news feed LCDs in elevators) that pull news feeds. You sign up sponsors. You place the device in various locations at no cost to them. You generate revenue through sponsors.

Why not call companies like Hi-Rise and Captivate and pretend you want to buy an ad?

Picture a newspaper vending machine. You see them everywhere, you put in 50 cents and you pull out your paper.

Now picture something that looks like that, except you pick the RSS Feeds you want and it prints out the paper on the spot. A hard copy that you can take on the train or bus or anyplace where you might not have the inclination to read from a PDA or laptop. If you read Sci-Fi they are sometimes called Scream-Sheets.

The machine periodically gets the latest news, so the paper you got on the way to work is different from the paper you read at lunch is different from the paper you'll read on the way home.

Yes, the cost of the ink and paper will be higher, but if I remove  the inventory overhead of having someone putting the papers in and taking them out and replace them with on demand service calls from the boxes themselves(Box#243 low on ink).

The problem comes in compensating the content providers. I was thinking a CPC model of paying per download, but that is cludgy. The only other thing I can think of allowing them to sell the advertising space on the article and I get the space in the rest of the paper.

People like newspapers, despite everything we hear about in the media, they like the feel and ease of reading a newspaper. They like the crossword puzzles and the obituaries. They like folding it up and not worrying about it getting dropped or coffee spilled on it.

Next time you are on a train, subway or bus look to see how many people are reading a paper and how many are playing on a PDA or laptop. I'm betting there are more paper readers.

A standard paper is type set and printed in the early AM of the day of release. By the time they get it in the morning it's already @4 hours old. At the end of the day, forget about it.

And I'm not killing newspapers in the process either, they have a bulk of information that isn't going to change on a daily basis. It's the headlines, breaking news and financial information I'm looking to capture. The time sensitive stuff. Only about 3-4 pages at any given time.

So I'm looking at high speed industrial printers, a cheap PC, a touch screen element, a power supply (Don't get me started on that) and a cellphone modem in each enclosure. The software is the stuff that's going to a #$%&%.

Ah, now I understand. It's a kiosk RSS reader/printer!

So, you are going to distribute hundreds or thousands of these printing boxes? Who will maintain the computers, printers, etc? Sounds like an expensive proposition. Inexpensive computer equipment is tremendously unreliable.

It is an interesting idea, I just think you have a ton of barriers to making it work.

And yes, I'm looking at distributing hundreds of these boxes (not all at once, I'm looking at doing it along the Metro lines going into NYC first).

As for costs, it's not bad. The computers just have to be ruggidized to hell and back and so do the printers. Maintainance is less then the cost of having a person drop off and pick up the papers along the route everyday.

Right now my magic number is a cost of 2K per unit. I'm guessing about $20 per unit maintanace per month.

So I'm trying to figure out how to get 1K in revenue a month per unit.

Still running the numbers.

And your revenue goes to 0 if the printer or device fails.

I'm planning on boosting distribution by having it free and just rely on advertising.

*sigh*

If I can't nail down the ad revenue model before the end of next week it will probably go on the scrap heap. I'm trying to get more info on advertising rates for free papers like The Metro.