There is a slight nuance in the printing business - the demand for it is decreasing from year to year. But one cannot say that magazines completely lose relevance. After all, it was once said that with the advent of the Internet, books can disappear, but in reality everything happens the other way around: books against the backdrop of a chaotic Internet are only becoming more relevant.
Create Your Magazine: Beginner's Guide, Tips, and Secrets
Magazines, unlike newspapers and books, are notable for their proximity to life. At all times, journal content was practical: stored in cabinets in piles, interesting pictures and articles were cut out, and constantly changed hands. How much has the picture changed today? Does it make sense to create your own magazine and even make money on it?
To get an answer to such questions, you should first decide on your proposal: what format will the magazine be? Are there any analogues on the market? What will be valuable in it, which is not in other publications? How will the content be generated? If there are specific answers to these and other additional questions, then it is definitely worth starting a business.
If the question of how to create your own journal is relevant, then you should pay attention to the areas of work that will constantly accompany the future edition. It is divided into three:
- The conceptual part.
- Technical issues.
- Sales
This rule applies to all types of publications, whether it is a paper publication or an electronic journal. Consider each direction in detail.
Concept
This is the first step towards creating your own publication. Should you decide what the pages of the publication will tell your readers? What is the feed format? The magazine may be of informational or advertising nature, may contain a wide or narrow subject.
In order to create your own magazine and make it readable, here are some tips on the conceptual part:
- You should choose a specific topic than write about everything. It is better to choose an exclusive niche where it is possible to provide narrowly focused and deep materials. If you choose the “little by little” system, there will be no difference from ordinary newspapers. And the creative team will constantly spray their potential for collecting and processing information instead of creative implementation in one area.
- If the magazine is of an advertising nature, then you should take care of the share of useful content that does not aim to sell anything. The reader should understand that he is interested not only in his purchasing power, but also in other problems. We create a magazine cover taking into account such factors.
- The choice of serious topics. Publishing a magazine for women, for men, or for mothers is conceptually quite simple. Here, the entire relationship with the reader is built at the level of "you have a problem - we have a solution." Another issue is a specialized thematic magazine. For example, the topic may be technical (about computers available), religious, medical, and so on. The point is that people have no time to go to libraries, and the need for serious information is always relevant. In order to create your magazine in such a role, of course, labor and potential are required.
Technical issues
It is advisable to consider two options. When everything has become clearer with the concept, you can implement the magazine in electronic or paper form. It all depends on the characteristics of the target audience. For example, young people under the age of 30 practically do not buy prints, but prefer to read everything on the Internet. For them, the issue of how to create a magazine and where to sell it is not relevant.
If we are talking about the age category plus 55-60, then the opposite is true - people buy newspaper magazines in the old way. The best option is a combination of print and electronic format.
In the first case, the layout of the magazine will be required. This process requires the active participation of a professional designer, artist, editor and proofreader. It’s good if at the first stages the novice publisher himself can cope with such types of work.
If we are talking about how to create your own magazine and its electronic format, then here, depending on the distribution option, a print layout or a reformatted version can be used. The electronic version may be in the form of a website, blog, file for download, or in another form. In any case, it is important to take care of the support of the mobile format. This issue is also the responsibility of technical experts.
Sales
In the chain of analysis of questions about how to create an electronic journal or a paper publication, the sales issue has the full right to be in the first position. A sad sight when the print run is printed, money is spent, labor is invested - and there is no one to read.
The print market is a pretty harsh environment. No wonder they say that the print edition lives one day. In the age of information technology, the lifetime of information carriers has been further reduced. Therefore, sales should be adjusted so that the entire circulation is sold at points of sale on the day of printing.
The next task number one will also be this one. If the circulation remains on the second or third day, then there is practically no chance to sell it. From here follows the next point in the plan - a marketing strategy.
Marketing
The key to a successful business is high sales. Sales will be when a potential customer knows about our offer. This will only help marketing. Ideally, marketing campaigns for your magazine should begin long before the first issue.
What types of advertising are suitable for promoting a magazine? Here are a few options:
- The Internet. Thematic resources, high traffic sites and social networks.
- Printable advertisement. There is no ban on advertising your magazine in other magazines, at the same time you can find out the cost of advertising with competitors in order to set an attractive price for yourself.
- Advertising on TV or radio.
Periodicity
The question of how to create a journal requires studying this question from all sides. Frequency is important for the publisher himself: he must have time to prepare the full content of the new issue, organize the work of the team to fill out the journal every time at the same time interval, and have time to prepare the money for printing, which is important.
There are magazines printed weekly. Most come out once a month. There are even those that go out once a year or once a quarter. It all depends on the subject of the magazine. Also, the magazine is notable for a solid amount of information that hardly any of the readers will master in a week. From this point of view, rarer publications are perceived normally by readers.
Monetization
The goal of any business is profit. Such a creative process as publishing your own magazine is no exception. There are several ways to make money on your publication:
- Placement of advertising.
- Image materials to order.
- Revenue from the sale.
At first, it may be more difficult to place an advertisement, as a business needs a solid audience. But if you publish interesting, useful materials in your journal and sell it where the CA has a chance to see, then advertising performance will also reach a new level.
What to focus on?
It is assumed that the beginning publisher has the necessary amount of money to print. This allows him not to get sprayed on heterogeneous work, but to concentrate on the creative part of his publication. It is important not only to attract the attention of potential readers, but also to make it bought.
If one edition is sold out well, then it should be remembered that another may also be sold in the same way, because a good, meaningful issue will itself serve as an advertisement for future issues. For the electronic format, it is also necessary to continuously search for optimal sales routes and improve existing ones.
Conclusion
At the first stage, difficulties, blockages, delays from the schedule or other unforeseen problems are possible. Almost all publishers go through this. Each of them learns from mistakes, from their own and others' experiences.
Errors can affect not only spelling in the text. They can be formulated as “failed to create a log file” - a technical plan or “low sales figures” - of a marketing nature. We must learn to eliminate them in a timely manner and bring our bright idea to the masses until it has forgotten how to read.