Starting a Magazine
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Well, I helped like 4 large magazines to establish their business and I can tell you that there are a couple of rules. This is going to be a long one so please read through carefully.
First:
Distribution is maybe the most important thing. Where you distribute the magazine will dictate your target audience, and with good target audience it's easier to get good advertisers.Second:
Since you're starting out, there is one unfortunate fact. You must count that you will lose money for at least first 6 months. Because I know how you feel about the funding, this is my proposal. You should include a small $100 ad boards in your magazine in order to attract smaller clients. You will see that they are the ones that will bite first. Reserve like 2-3 pages for that board. Having like 15-30 small advertisers will help you financially and it's much easier to sell that to them.Third:
Don't count on sales (if you're selling it) to provide you with money to publish the next issue.
In the normal practice (where you actually sell the magazine) you include the costs of production, but the advertisers are the ones actually covering that expense. The cover price should be your profit while advertisers actually pay for the production.Fourth:
If we say that in real-estate industry main keywords are location, location, location in the magazine publishing is content, content, content. You have to realize that delivering quality content is ensuring good advertisers.Fifth:
Finally, making your publication available to the consumers (target audience) always on time is VERY VERY important. If you say, for example, that you're going out with a new issue every 3 months on 5th of the month, YOU HAVE TO DELIEVER, otherwise you lose advertisers.My personal advice to you:
In the era of internet almost everyone receives some magazines electronically. If I were you I would design a nice web site with subscription support and e-version of the magazine first. This will initially cost less since you don't have to think about production that much, you just invest as much money as you can to advertise it online and offline as well. This is also a good move because it will be much easier for you to present the idea and the appearance of the magazine to potential sponsors. The fact that most of the big magazines are switching to this form of magazine distribution says a lot as well.Be smart, be responsible. Starting a magazine is very serious business. It will occupy 200% of your time. Gathering content, dealing with advertisers and distributors is tricky business. :)
Wish you best of luck.