Any tips on selling advertising space?

I recently bought a franchise for a community magazine but am having trouble selling the advertising space. It is an A5 glosy full colour mag with a quarter page just £40, but after a month of visiting EVERY business in my town centre and industrial estate I only got 4 quarter pages and 1 half. People claimed to not have any budget, not be interetsed as it is not established, etc etc.


I need to pay for it to be printed and delivered and pay a wage as I gave up my job to do it. Any advice?

Any tips on selling advertising space?
I am working for a brand new business myself; here's what we're doing:





1) Give companies a free trial to advertise. I know you have costs to cover but you need to think about long term here. If they get results, they'll do it again.





2) Keep in very close contact with those companies who do buy advertising space from you. Seek feedback as to the kind of results they are receiving from your advertising, and then you can use this information to sell to potential new clients.
Reply:i have several pieces of advice. first take the new phone book and the old phone book and compare them. new business are more likel to buy advertising. second maybe you should make your ad space a community area business review.just write a short "news story" about 10 -12 DIFFERENT KIND OF BUSINESS AND PRINT THEM INSTEAD OF LAYOUTS ,,HOPE THIS HELPS