Ghana’s drive towards digitization has taken an innovative turn with the setting up of an online portal for the sale and distribution of newspapers.
Touted as the first of its kind on the African continent and certainly one of the very few in the whole world, www.ghananewsstand.com has the capacity to host hundreds of newspapers and to deliver these newspapers into the personal emails of customers of the portal.
The website will bring a great deal of comfort to patrons of newspapers, who can now sit at home and access actual copies of newspapers at a fraction of the price.
www.ghananewsstand.com proposes to sell each copy of every newspaper it vends for GHc1.00 in Ghana and $1.00 anywhere else in the world. Newspapers in Ghana currently sell anywhere GHc2.00 to GHc3.00.
www.ghananewsstand.com is the concept and brainchild of Swift Media Ventures. The website, which has been undergoing weeks of testing since November 2021, began officially streaming on Monday 17th January, 2022.
So far, about eight Ghanaian newspapers have signed to distribute on the website, with more showing interest.
The introduction of www.ghananewsstand.com means that consumers of various newspapers in Ghana do not have to walk to newsstands to buy hard copies of newspapers, if they do not feel like it. Rather, they can sit in the comfort of their offices, homes or cars and have the newspapers actually delivered into their emails in portable document format (pdf).
It allows patrons of newspapers to access actual full digital copies of Ghanaian newspapers on their android phones, laptops, tablets and personal computers anywhere in the world, and to view their content, without walking to a news stand.
Newspapers that sign on would have the unique advantage of reaching potentially millions of potential customers every day, with each publication, thus making them infinitely more attractive to advertisers.
Mr. Kenneth Kuranchie, the CEO of Swift Media Ventures, further explained, “In the past, newspaper influence was limited to the number of people who could be attracted to see actual copies on the newsstands. These newsstands are quickly disappearing and becoming more and more unattractive to the potential customers of newspapers, anyway. By distributing and selling online, this narrowing window has been infinitely opened to potentially billions of customers. The whole world is a potential customer, instead of a few hundred newsstands in Ghana.
“This means that publishers can set up international newspapers and magazines in Ghana, with a realistic chance of distributing worldwide. Our distribution as newspapers are no longer circumscribed by geographical boundaries. The whole world is a customer.
“Newspapers, by their nature, are highly perishable. Their time on the shelf is highly limited to the few hours after they appear every morning. That means that they have to be taken off the newsstands every twenty-four hours, in the case of dailies, and weekly, in the case of weeklies. With www.ghananewsstand.com , however, the product is on sale permanently, since customers looking for back copies can easily access them and pay for them as well. The advantages are only pluses and pluses. Now, you sell for only a few hours. With www.ghananewsstand.com , you sell forever.”
He explained further, “Newspapers that sign on would have the unique advantage of attracting advertisers even more than radio and television. This is because each advert assumes a permanent record in digital format for each customer of the newspaper, which the customer can easily refer to in comfort, anytime the customer is minded to do so. Indeed this is a great innovation that all newspapers in Ghana, Africa and the rest of the world should take advantage off.”
Source: Modern Ghana
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