We’ve come a long way, and we’re just getting started.
The Printed Blog 1.0 was launched in Chicago and San Francisco in January 2009 as a daily, hyper-local, hand-distributed, publication. You could pick up a copy every morning at your local train station and read the best of the web, specifically tailored to contain information relevant to your neighborhood. It was a great model, but we reserved the right to change our minds.
In August 2010, we launched The Printed Blog 2.0 with a few slight changes. We brought on well-known celebrity photographer Tyler Shields as our Co-founder and Photo Editor, and switched the model to a monthly, subscription-based publication. We also cut out the hyper-local focus in favor of longer issues with richer content, hand-selected by a series of rotating Guest Editors.
We pay bloggers and photographers a percentage of the subscription revenue—$50 dollars per contribution at first, but payment will increase with the number of subscribers to hundreds of dollars, or possibly even more.
The Printed Blog 2.0 published six promotional issues in order to drive subscriptions, which are available for your viewing and downloading pleasure, in addition to all of the issues from version 1.0.
Recently, The Printed Blog has gone global, with licensed editions being created and distributed to the masses in Lisbon, Portugal, and St. Petersburg, Russia. And that’s just the beginning!