Hi! This is Dan Pacheco, the founder of Printcasting.com. I'm posting here while Tom is out of town, but going forward I will also be posting more things here (along with Tom) when we have cool new things to talk about from Printcastingland. And this week, we do!

But before I get into that, we have a new, free Printcasting e-mail newsletter for Printcasting news. We'll use it to talk about new features, highlight cool Printcasts people have created, provide tips and tricks, and more. If that sounds like something you're interested in, we welcome your subscription.

With that out of the way, we have a couple of big announcements ....

First, Printcasting ads are now paid.

Why should you care? Because you as a publisher can keep most of the ad revenue!

Up until now, ads in Printcasts have been free. But what good does that do you as a publisher or writer? There are real costs associated with creating and distributing content, and that's where our new paid ads feature can help.

As of this week, all ads placed on Printcasting.com cost $10, and publishers have the ability to mark up the cost of ads for their Printcasts. But even more exciting: 60 cents of every dollar in an ad will go right back to publishers, with the other 30 percent set aside to share with content contributors on a regular basis.

We're happy to send 90 percent of ad revenue back to Printcasting network participants because we know that you are the ones who will make Printcasting a success. Ad revenue will help you cover your printing and marketing costs, and hopefully eventually make you a nice profit.

So what do you need to do to get paid? Only two simple things:

1. Provide us with a filled-out W-9 (sorry, the taxman requires that), and ...
2. Put your Paypal e-mail address into your user profile.

That's it! Of course, you also need to get the word out to local businesses about your publication so they can advertise in it. We have some tools that help you do that, too.  You can read more about how Printcasting advertising and revenue sharing works on the official Printcasting.com blog.

And Second ... Printcasting Goes National

You may or may not know this, but Printcasting is run out of The Bakersfield Californian, but is primarily funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We received a grant to develop and test Printcasting in Bakersfield. When it was ready, the idea was always to make it available in other cities through strategic partnerships. From the beginning we were approached by newspapers, and other types of organizations, from around the world that wanted to know if they could use Printcasting in their cities of operation.

We're thrilled to announce our first partner: MediaNews Group -- one of the largest U.S. newspaper publishers. It has 54 daily newspapers in 11 states, including The Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News. MediaNews Group will be using Printcasting to create targeted niche publications in Denver, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. You can read more about our partnership here.

So what does that mean for Printcasters in Bakersfield? It doesn't change much for them at all, except they may be able to use content from marquee media brands like The Denver Post. Of course, you can already use all of the content from The Bakersfield Californian, which is more local. But what if you're a gardener and need more content for a gardening magazine you create? The more topical content our media partners provide, the better for you. And we also hope that bloggers in those towns register their content.

The other thing you will notice is that the Printcasting.com home page has a new addition: Find Printcasting Near You. If you type in a Bakersfield ZIP code or browse to the Bakersfield page, you'll see a page that features only Bakersfield Printcasts. If you click the "make this city my home" link at the top, the Bakersfield page will be what you go to first whenever you log in. Soon, the directory and feed finder will also bubble up local content first -- while still letting you choose content from outside of Bakersfield.

So those are our updates for now. As always, please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or other feedback about Printcasting.

- Dan Pacheco, Founder of Printcasting.com