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Follow Us on TwitterTHIS WEEK IN PALESTINE: “Time to grow” January 2013 December 30, 2012
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There are two main reasons why it is probably not wise to publicly divulge one’s own business plans: competition and the risk of failure. Nevertheless, I’ll take my chances here and now! As far as competition is concerned, I have always believed that fair competition helps business simply because it forces one to work harder in order to produce, or, as in our case, to put out a better product; and so we welcome competition. As far as risk of failure is concerned, well, as someone once said, I’d rather try and fail than never try at all. And you never know, we might even catch the attention of someone who could add value to our future plans!
In 2013, This Week in Palestine intends to grow. After fourteen years of production, we’ve matured in terms of content and possibly design, but we feel that we’re still far from exhausting the project’s potential regarding its reach as well as its business aspect. Even as a static website, www.thisweekinpalestine.com gets over fifty-thousand individual visitors a month, and hits exceed a million. But we would like the numbers to be much higher, particularly when it comes to using these figures for commercial purposes. While we’re still in the virtual world, our plans include a new and more interactive website with regular updates in order to attract more visitors. In addition, we will develop applications for the various communication tools, such as iphones, iPads, etc. Now that Palestine is a state (or almost), we hope it will be possible to utilise the services of credible financial companies, like PayPal, to facilitate online shopping. Once that is guaranteed, our website will surely include e-commerce services.
Setting ourselves the ambitious goal of becoming a magazine for all Palestinians, we intend to have versions of the monthly issues of This Week in Palestine in various languages. Technically, this is actually rather easy for us, particularly if we start with Latin-based languages. In fact, we already have contacts with solidarity groups in Europe, mainly in Italy and France, who are very keen to have TWIP in Italian and French as products for their “clients.” Naturally, the same could be done for a Spanish version, which, apart from Spain, we hope would sell well in South America, particularly in Chile where there are more than 350,000 Chileans of Palestinian decent.
Another major expansion plan includes going regional. The rather simple formula of This Week in Palestine has worked well in a very difficult market: the Palestinian market. We believe that duplicating this formula in the region, and beyond, would work as well if not better. As a matter of fact, we have already concluded a business plan in conjunction with an international auditing firm that confirmed the economic feasibility of introducing a similar publication in neighbouring countries.
In all humility, I can say that This Week in Palestine has become one of our national brands. Since 2006, TWIP has been marketing products, such as our annual agendas, under this brand name. It is our intention not only to continue to offer products under the TWIP brand, but also to expand on them.
We are in the business of promoting and documenting Palestine, and we do that with passion, which we believe is one reason for our success. We hope to keep that passion as we grow.
Finally, I would like to wish all Christians who follow the Eastern calendar a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year.
Thank You.
