Baseball Forecaster evolves from monthly print edition to fax service to diskettes to e-mail to web site--but not without setbacks. (Publisher Profile).

Ron Shandler is one of the fortunate few among us who has been able o convert his hobby interest into a profitable business. Profitable as in--take note--a successful print newsletter turned into an even more successful web site, two additional web sites, an annual book, and an annual conference, all leanly staffed by himself, two back-office assistants, and 30 freelancers.

In the 1980s Shandler was working as marketing director for Westgate Publishing publisher of Sales Prospector newsletter, when he published the first annual edition of the Baseball Forecaster in 1986. "Sixteen years later, it's the only product I have that resembles its original format," he says.

The following spring he launched the monthly Baseball Forecaster newsletter. The market was fantasy league baseball enthusiasts.

"The newsletter did well, but it went through a number of iterations over the 12 years during which I published it. The major factor is that roto-league players are information sponges; they wanted more and they wanted it on a more timely basis than the monthly newsletter could provide.

"At one point," Shandler continues, "we offered a fax service with updates and at another time we offered data on diskettes to download on your PC."

Failure

"In the spring of 1996 I made my first foray into electronic publishing offering an e-mail version of the newsletter which combined the information in the newsletter and the fax service.

It failed miserably. Neither I nor my subscribers were ready for the technological complexity of delivering that much data-heavy information via e-mail. We had subs who couldn't download or format the data, readers whose e-mail service wouldn't accept attachments. After a few months, we simply gave up," he says.

Success

"The big change came in August 1996, when we put all of the information we had on the web. It was an immediate success. In nine months we had more subscribers to the online service that to the print newsletter."

Pricing

"Pricing was less than a science. We were selling the newsletter for $59 and the fax update service for another $59, so I said, 'Well, maybe we can get $99 for the combined service online,' and it worked.

"We haven't changed the price in six years. We also offer introductory subs for three months at $39 and six months at $69, and, of course, there are various discount offers."

In the off-season of 1998-99, he ceased publishing the print edition.

Marketing

"I can admit now, but in the early days I was a heavy e-mail spammer. Before spam was such a bad word, we sent tons of spam e-mails to every address we could compile from any source, Shandler says.

"Am I (was I) a spammer? By the popularly held definitions, yes. However, I didn't go out harvesting millions of names to promote; I cultivated highly targeted prospects from industry web sites and newsgroups. Did they receive unsolicited e-mails from me? Yes. But over 50 percent of these prospects opened these e-mails (try THAT percentage in a snail mail campaign).

"Eventually the negative associations of spam grew so large, we stopped doing it entirely, but we created the core of our subscriber base with those e-mail campaigns in '96 and '97."

Today they market online, including link agreements with non-competing baseball-oriented web sites and products. They do space advertising in related publications--The Sporting News, Baseball Weekly, Baseball America--and they also offer a free e-zine. "Subscriptions to the e-zine have reached about 7,000 and we are able to convert a number of those to paid," Shandler says.

He operates three web sites today:

* BaseballHQ.corn is the "newsletter" site at $99.

* RotoHQ.com offers a database of past articles about fantasy league draft and management strategy, priced at $9.95 annually.

* Baseball Forecaster.com offers unlimited update information to purchasers of the $23.95 annual book. It's priced at $25.

Shandler, now located in Roanoke, Virginia, operates all this with a staff of two who do the backroom operations and a roster of 30 freelancers. "I actually have only ever met about ten of them," he says, "and seven or eight I've never even spoken with on the phone. We do the whole job via e-mail."

Annual conference

As an ancillary product, this fall he will offer his 8th annual Baseball Forecaster conference, scheduled in Arizona in conjunction with the Arizona Fall League. "We have a four-day conference with sessions in the mornings and the afternoons free to go to ball games," he says. Registration fee is $299, and he expects 125+ delegates this fall.

The threat of a baseball strike 

Concerning the recent threat of a baseball strike, Shandler says, "After the strike in '94 that wiped out the end of the season and the World Series, I lost 20 percent of my business in '95. In '96 it all came back and more, when we introduced the web site service."

This time around, he says, "We've had a strike contingency plan in place for about 18 months. We implemented part of it last fall when we did not know whether the 2002 season would start on time. That part essentially eliminated nearly all of our outside prospecting efforts, which meant cutting all our winter 2002 space advertising.

"That turned out to be a marvelous learning experience because it showed that we could still experience some growth without those expenditures. We'll be adding that back this winter, but MUCH more prudently.

"The rest of the contingency planning focused more on editorial cutbacks and refocusing. Since we're so deep in that area, there was room for some play.

"Our goal, however, has always been to preserve our core customer base by maintaining as much editorial value as possible. That's a challenge when there are no more daily boxscores, but with a focus on more long-term analysis, I thought we could weather the storm," Shandler says.

"Would it have worked? I'm glad I don't have to find out. We were a lot smaller during the 1994 strike; I don't know how well we would have withstood a 20 percent+ drop in revenue this time around."

Subs turn into competitors

"Two of our current subscribers," Shandler says, "have just formed their start-up web site that borrows liberally from our site's design, approach and style of analysis. They have gone so far as to lift several of our published research methodologies and results, rename them, and call them their own. Lawyers are already involved, but it appears they are well capitalized and are prepared for a long fight.

"Over the years," Shandler continues, "our direct competitors have come to learn they cannot compete with us on depth of content, so they do so on price. This new group is attempting to come at us from both ends. So I had been contemplating offering a "price match guarantee" in upcoming promotions in an effort to deflate that line of attack.

"The NEPA listserv was opposed to that approach, saying that we would be devaluing our product by stooping to the level of our competitors and we should continue to focus on our strengths. Emphasizing our money-back guarantee was one useful tactic. Another suggestion was to offer a "lite" version of our subscription, which is something we're looking at seriously."

P.O. Box 20303. 6315 Roselawn Court Drive, Roanoke, VA 24018, 540-772-6315, fax [phone]. www.basseball.co

RELATED ARTICLE: Neither God nor baseball are especially dependable partners

When Dave Swit of Washington Business Information failed with the Sky Industry Newsletter after several consecutive mild winters clobbered the business, he said he would "never again publish in an area where the market was controlled by God."

Ron Shandler may be worse off, dependent as he is on baseball commissioner Bud Selig and union head Donald Fehr to protect his market.