How to start a magazine and publish it profitably pdf

If you are not able to see your own truth, ask what they see or get a coach to help. How does this decision fit my purpose or personal mission? If you have declared to live your life from a place of integrity, for example, ask yourself: Does this decision I'm about to make cause me to make a deposit in my personal integrity account?

Check for congruence between what you say you believe and what you actually do. Being clear about who you are and what you stand for allows you to make better decisions. Your intuition is your personal guide to help you sense what is right for you. To access it, determine how you feel about the decision. For most people, the best way to do this is to sit quietly, close your eyes and go within. Open to your body's wisdom. Do you feel calm or anxious? If you feel stressed or confused as a result of focusing on this decision, it's your inner wisdom letting you know this is probably not right for you now.

On the other hand, if you feel lighter, peaceful or inspired, this is your validation to proceed. Think back to a time you made a successful decision and remember how that felt. Let your intuition be your teacher. Am I setting my ego aside and listening to my Higher Power? By accessing your intuition, you have learned what is inside of you; now for further guidance, especially for critical decisions, you need to go beyond yourself to make sure your ego isn't interfering.

This step is a very private and personal one and you must decide for yourself how best to do this. Some people pray, meditate or commune with nature. I ask my Higher Power for guidance and then keep still to listen what comes to me. Often we unwittingly sabotage our own success. We do this with positive intent to protect ourselves from fear, pain or disappointment should it not turn out.

We know now that our dominant thoughts influence with events we experience and that it is better to act AS IF the desired outcome is already assured. The key word here is expect, not want. You may want to win the lottery, but you may not expect to be a multi-million dollar winner.

Some undermine their efforts due to a hidden belief that they don't deserve more. To see if this is true for you, look at your life. Do you find that you stop at a certain level of success? Do you have an internal thermostat that causes you to cool down whenever you go beyond your comfort zone? Most of us resist this idea that we don't let ourselves have anymore than we really believe we deserve.

If you believe in your decision, then act on it! All rights reserved. Free Small Business Templates and Tools Here's a collection of business tools featuring dozens of templates, books, worksheets, tools, software, checklists, videos, manuals, spreadsheets, and much more. All free to download, no strings attached. Checklist for Starting a Business: Essential Ingredients for Success If you are thinking about going into business, it is imperative that you watch this video first!

To get your free business plan template The Single Most Important Ingredient for Business Success The first and most important thing you need to acquire in order to succeed in a small business is Sounds exaggerated? Listen to this Here's what you'll discover in the 'How to Start a Magazine Business' book: How to determine the feasibility of your business idea - a complete fill in the blanks template system that will help you predict problems before they happen and keep you from losing your shirt on dog business ideas.

A detailed manual that will walk you step by step through all the essential phases of starting your business A complete magazine business plan PDF template. All this and much much more. Success Tip: Setting Goals Good management is the key to success and good management starts with setting goals.

Reader Profile: Brand values: The unique selling point USP of [MAGAZINE NAME] magazine is that is the sole publication on the market that specifically addresses the problems, and scenarios of the younger generation of travellers and want-to-be travellers, as well as offering them entertainment and news relevant to them. Why it will succeed: M arket Research We questioned over people from our target audience who were thinking of going abroad.

The three things they wanted most were: Real life experiences Accommodation Job listings They said practical advice would make them buy the magazine before they went abroad and that compelling features and exciting regulars would make them want to keep buying the magazine. This is reflected in our choices for the magazine. Managerial Decision Making Techniques in Business. Try opening the above example on a mobile phone. Because of the fixed layout, flipbooks are extremely difficult to read on mobile without zooming in and out.

Some publishers decide to create their own native app for their magazine. A native app simply refers to an app you can buy in the Apple app store, or the Google Play store for your iOS or Android device. These cannot be used on a traditional desktop or laptop computer. Native apps probably offer the best reading experience on mobile devices as developers have almost complete control over the look and feel of the magazine. They can take advantage of digital text reflow — meaning that the text size and layout responds to the size of the screen, offering an optimal reading experience on any device.

In addition, native apps can contain all kinds of extra functionality. They can pull in dynamic, personalized ads. They can download editions for offline reading. They can include rich multimedia. They can track and measure reader behavior so that the publisher knows what types of content is popular among various segments. And the list goes on. However, native apps have their downside as well. Most obviously, they are very time consuming and usually very expensive to develop.

In addition, you are dependent on Apple or Google to approve your app which can take time , and they will take a cut of any revenue you earn. Also, apps need to be downloaded, which is an extra step for your readers — especially in an age where people are becoming more discerning with what they install on their phone.

However, most of these simply convert PDF files and you end up with many of the same display issues as with flipbooks.

Google Play Newsstand and Apple Newsstand have both been discontinued and replaced with Google News and Apple News, respectively — simple news aggregators like Flipboard that pull in blog posts and articles from various sources.

Each of these are native apps that require users to create an account, add payment details, and then allow them to subscribe to thousands of magazines published specifically for the platform with in-app purchases. Many publishers decide to produce online digital magazines for one or more of these platforms rather than developing their own app from scratch because these services already have a large user base.

And while the process is somewhat simpler than developing an app from scratch, you will still need developers and designers to help you. If you opt for this route, keep in mind that you'll be competing with thousands of other publishers featured on these platforms to get your magazine found.

Also, most of these platforms charge a significant membership fee to become a publisher, along with a percentage of your sales. Last, but not least, are HTML5-based magazines. Unlike fixed-layout PDFs or flipbooks, HTML5 magazines use responsive design principles to adapt layout and typography according to the screen size of the reader.

When read on a computer, they feel much like using a modern website — except with a linear flow. When used on a mobile device, they feel much like interacting with a native app. There are quite a few platforms for developing HTML5 magazines, and they all vary in price and options. Foleon offers a powerful drag and drop editor for creating and publishing your own multimedia-rich, interactive, HTML5-based magazines and comes with a free trial.

Now that you're familiar with different types of digital magazines, you must decide which one is right for you. This largely depends on your goal, your budget, the time you have available, and whether you already have a printed edition available.

If budget is your biggest concern, creating a PDF is by far the cheapest solution. If you already have a printed edition and want to go for something slightly fancier without spending much, a flipbook or digital replica might be best for you.

There are even free tools that will do much of the work for you. If you already have a printed edition and you want to replicate its style and format as much as possible — and if you want to earn money through subscriptions — you might consider a magazine subscription app like Kindle Newsstand or Zinio. If you choose this route, you will need to go through a vetting process before your magazine gets listed, pay a membership fee, and likely hire a developer to create XML exports of your magazine.

You can also expect to pay a percentage of the subscriptions you sell. You can find out more about getting a magazine listed on Zinio here. This gives you lots of flexibility over the user experience and provides more than one way to generate revenue — through app sales, in-app purchases, or through advertising.

Just keep in mind, you will only reach mobile readers, not desktop users. And again, the app store is crowded, so unless you already have a strong brand, there is no guarantee readers will ever find you. You can learn more about submitting a magazine app to the Apple app store here. An HTML5 magazine lives on its own domain e. And just like with native apps, you have tremendous design freedom.

You can embed rich media like background videos, and create fluid animations as users turn pages. Because they use the same technology as websites, you can put anything in an HTML5 magazine that you could on a regular website, including forms, overlays, frames and embeds — even 3rd party tracking scripts and remarketing pixels.

Watch out, though, many platforms that claim to produce HTML5 magazines, really just create flippable PDFs that suffer from the same poor mobile experiences we discussed earlier. These can be spotted quite easily as they typically offer to "convert" your PDFs.

At the outset of any big project, it's important to start with the goal in mind. Creating an online magazine is no different. Magazines can have many different objectives, and identifying yours will affect the platform you choose, the layout and design options you decide upon, your editorial formula, and more. When most people think of a magazine, they think of good old-fashioned subscription-based magazines.

Of course, for this to be a feasible goal, you need to have high quality content that people are willing to pay for and a good marketing strategy. More and more publishers offer " freemium " models — that is, they offer some of their content for free, but then require a subscription for full access. National Geographic, for example, offers plenty of free articles on their website and in their native app, but if you want the full experience, or access to past editions, you must subscribe.

Many magazines, such as The Economist and FastCo, offer their digital edition for free if you are also subscribed to their print edition. Others, like Extra Crunch from TechCrunch offer only an online edition. If you have an existing printed magazine with a big subscriber base, you'll need to decide if your upcoming digital edition will be a standalone product that you sell separately, an online replica that print subscribers get for free, or even a supplement that offers exclusive content not included in the print edition.

If you're just starting out, on the other hand, you may want to consider a free or freemium model, at least until your magazine gains enough traction to begin charging a fee.

Most new magazines choose this route, relying on advertising revenue to turn a profit. Not all magazine producers are publishers per se. Companies in any number of industries may create magazines to keep their customers up-to-date , inspire them with interesting new content, and keep them engaged with the brand. Neither of these companies are publishers primarily, but both produce great magazines to keep customers engaged and enthusiastic about their brands and the lifestyles associated with their products and services.

While the above mentioned examples charge subscription fees, other companies simply produce magazines for free. In this case, the goal is not to sell subscriptions or earn revenue directly — the benefits in reader engagement offset the production costs.

Organizations that have other primary revenue-generating activities create magazines to use as valuable communication assets. Whole Foods Magazine , for example, is a completely free nutritional magazine produced by the supermarket chain, Whole Foods, in both print and online versions. It contains news and editorial content, original research, and more. It is not a place where Whole Foods advertises its products. Rather, it contains all kinds of content to inspire people interested in nutrition and healthy eating.

By engaging and inspiring their audience in this way, Whole Foods indirectly encourages more shopping. It's worth noting that, even though Whole Foods Magazine is free for readers, they do also include advertisements to help finance it. Another example where engagement is the main goal are staff magazines. Many large companies produce magazines for internal distribution among their employees. Again, the objective here is reader engagement — to keep their workforce informed, happy, and more productive.

A third goal you might have in mind is not to sell the magazine itself , but to use it to sell your products and services. In this case, your magazine would resemble something of a product catalog or brochure. Probably the most obvious example of this type of magazine would be the duty free shopping magazines you find in airplanes. These are magazines full of nothing but ads, and while they may be in a magazine format, their main purpose is to get readers to buy something.

But some brands also make magazines to sell their own products and services — not only those of their advertisers. Rather than creating simple ads, Volvo devoted an entire magazine, full of long-form content and stunning imagery to market a selection of their products. When we talk about structuring a magazine, we're speaking primarily of the sections you should include and the order you put them in — your editorial formula. Of course the decision you make here depend largely on what type of magazine you intend to create, the goal of your magazine, and your target audience.

The good news is that with a digital magazine, you have even more freedom and flexibility than with a printed edition. Traditional print magazines have four "cover" pages: the front and back covers, and the insides of the covers which are usually reserved for the most expensive ads.

However, because we're dealing with digital formats, the "inside" covers are not really distinct from any other page. The same goes for the back cover — you can't exactly hold a digital magazine and turn it over, so the back cover isn't necessarily relevant.

So that leaves the front cover. This is the part everyone will see and it plays a big part in whether potential readers choose to open your magazine. You should give a lot of thought as to how you design it and what it should feature.

A good rule of thumb is that, if you want to stand out among your competition, your cover needs to be striking. Your choice of colors, visuals, and typography should be well chosen and compelling.

But if budgets are tight, you may decide to launch with as little as months of back issues and allow the benefits of the archive to grow over time.

Ideally, your revenue model is diversified and includes both sponsorship and subscription revenue—you have several options when it comes to magazine subscription website business models. And once you select your plan of attack, you have another decision to make: how to choose the best subscription pricing strategy.

Will you bundle products? Will you offer tiers and contrast pricing? Will you lock readers in or let them roam a bit? In planning to launch a digital magazine or a digital edition of your magazine, there are many factors to take into consideration. The entire suite of these strategic planning frameworks SPFs is beyond the scope of this article. You may find there are additional factors specific to your publication or operation, but these will provide a basic data set for your planning and modeling.

Use these questions to decide how to budget and model your magazine:. While things continue to evolve, the overall trend is clear.