Classifieds

Costs of advertising in local newspapers and magazines in Gauteng today

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Did I get the shock of my life when I recently called the classifieds advertising division at the Pretoria East Record newspaper?

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I learned that any advertisement, up to about 40 FORTY words, in the classifieds advertisement section of the Pretoria East Record costs R750.00 per ad per newspaper placement. The newspaper is printed weekly.

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An actual current R750.00/placement ad with the following content –

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PETER THE PLUMBER

NB: No call-out charges!

Free quotes.

Blocked drains and isolation of geyser.

083-588-2341

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COSTS ANALYSIS

This ad will be placed in the Pretoria East Record for 80% of the 41 weeks in the year (that is how many times – on average – the newspaper is printed annually). This newspaper is printed for 41 weeks of the year, considering holidays, the festive season, and other factors. (Still an estimation)

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If you wish to place the above-sized advertisement in the paper for 41 weeks of the year, you will have to budget R30 750.00 for newspaper advertising costs/exposure. How many artisans or self-employed persons can afford this amount?

 

Noticeably, only two plumbers were advertised in this particular weekly edition of the paper in mid-September 2024. The others were one garden/rubble removal advert, one handyman advert, and so on. This indicates that most of the artisans operating in the affluent Pretoria East region simply cannot afford to advertise at these "ridiculous" rates!

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Artisans and self-employed people need access to an affordable advertising platform from January to December, year after year. One cannot do business “in the dark,” and owners of these regional newspapers are most certainly outpricing many potential advertising clients. We prefer to call their pricing models “daylight robbery,” and because there are no alternatives, you will get the “PETER THE PLUMBERS” who desperately need to make ends meet and sometimes use their living expenses to pay for the ads.

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​IT IS A DISGRACE TO CHEAT PEOPLE LIKE THAT BY RIDICULOUSLY OVERCHARGING THEM FOR ADVERTISING!  

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The BEELD newspaper’s “Snuffel Gids” ads / Classifieds ads division is fading daily. They print their ads so small nowadays that you need a magnifier to read them. Their Snuffel Gids used to be 3 to 5 pages. Nowadays, they're only one page, sometimes less, yet prices continue to spiral upward yearly. I learned from trustworthy sources that the BEELD was discontinued in January 2025. Is this perhaps the end of an era?  ​

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Artisans and many self-employed people cannot afford to pay R750.00 for one classified advertisement in one newspaper, running for one week before it is considered “old news.”

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The Gauteng Business Group is here to help people like "PETER THE PLUMBER."

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We offer “PETER THE PLUMBERS” among our community and members access to our classified advertising platform where they will pay about one-twentieth, even lesser, of the price one pays at the Pretoria East Record (for example) and for similar exposure, if not better.

 

Online advertising on website platforms and social media sites like Facebook’s Advertising Manager, Google AdWords, Instagram, and Twitter is the future of advertising locally and internationally. It’s time for South African business owners to experience this RUDE AWAKENING!

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Consider we calculate your classifieds advertising costs on our CLASSIFIEDS advertising platform on this website and compare them to the costs of advertising in the Pretoria East Record—as follows—considering the placement of the same PETER THE PLUMBER ad on the PLUMBERS sub-menu of our CLASSIFIEDS pages. 

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COST CALCULATION –

Ad in Pretoria East Record

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Cost/placement/week for 41 weeks annually -

Total costs at R750/week equals R30 750.00 annually.

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Ad on our CLASSIFIEDS pages of the Gauteng Business Group -

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Cost/placement/month for 12 months -

Total costs at R300/month equal R3600.00 annually.

[equals 88% less than the price of advertising in the Pretoria East Record]

 

Which of these two options would you prefer –

1. Considering that you can change the content of your classified ad every week on our CLASSIFIED pages,

2. Also, consider that your ads will be displayed on the website for 1 month or 30 days.

3. Also, consider that we will, and you will promote our CLASSIFIED pages on social media sites on an ongoing basis, allowing your ad/s to be viewed online by at least 100,000 ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND viewers per month, and that such exposure will grow from month to month!

4. Also, the income we produce will be used to cover the costs of administration and management of our CLASSIFIED Ads Division and the costs of modern-day, professional website traffic analytics and page visitor monitoring so that you are convinced of the traffic volumes visiting the pages where you advertise (these traffic analytics are not in place yet).   

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WHICHEVER WAY ONE LOOKS AT IT, IT IS SURELY MUCH MORE SENSIBLE TO ADVERTISE ONLINE!