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E-Publishing : Creating a Magazine from scratch - Online
Hi all,
I have a concept that I'd love some opinions on. I'm looking at starting a digital only magazine - we would start with it as an emailed pdf, and evetually evolve into a log-in website - not to charge for subscription but to create a sense of 'elite' or 'closed-community.' The idea is to create content for a lead-user group, where they could connect to other lead users (ie a community rather then just one-way content) and suggest story ideas etc. and along with it they would be able to read content online or download a pdf to print the magazine out themselves, so they could have a print copy to carry with them without the costs of distribution and mailing. And because it the type of content has a networking theme, we'd initiate new members through other members. So after the initial set of members (who would be personal recruits) we'd add new members by recommendation only. Advertisers would be scanned - we'd only accept advertisers who'd be interested in our audience; and in turn, they would be offered an interested audience who would be highly likely to engage with their products through our media.
Ideas? Comments? Criticism? I'm seriously considering this idea so feedback to catch things that might otherwise slip by my notice is highly appreciated. If you want to follow along as I develop the idea, check out my blog, where I'll post updates and the marketing plan (once it's finished) - www.mbreau.wordpress.com.
I have a concept that I'd love some opinions on. I'm looking at starting a digital only magazine - we would start with it as an emailed pdf, and evetually evolve into a log-in website - not to charge for subscription but to create a sense of 'elite' or 'closed-community.' The idea is to create content for a lead-user group, where they could connect to other lead users (ie a community rather then just one-way content) and suggest story ideas etc. and along with it they would be able to read content online or download a pdf to print the magazine out themselves, so they could have a print copy to carry with them without the costs of distribution and mailing. And because it the type of content has a networking theme, we'd initiate new members through other members. So after the initial set of members (who would be personal recruits) we'd add new members by recommendation only. Advertisers would be scanned - we'd only accept advertisers who'd be interested in our audience; and in turn, they would be offered an interested audience who would be highly likely to engage with their products through our media.
Ideas? Comments? Criticism? I'm seriously considering this idea so feedback to catch things that might otherwise slip by my notice is highly appreciated. If you want to follow along as I develop the idea, check out my blog, where I'll post updates and the marketing plan (once it's finished) - www.mbreau.wordpress.com.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Cheng on -
A more open type publication might get you more readers - some people might only want to read it once in a while. You can always have elite content available to subscribers only.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Convertito on -
the thought of emailing actual PDFs makes me cringe in horror...Ideally you'd just email a link to download the new issue (driving traffic to your site too)...or maybe consider publishing online via open source tools and restricting premium content or number of page views to registered members/subscribers. There's lots of free tools out there for creating PDFs and printer-friendly pages of your web-based content...
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Permalink Reply by Melisa Breau on -
Well the idea would of course be to do that ... but in the VERY beginning (until we have the site up and running) I'm considering doing an initial test version via email. Just to see if there is interest in the type of content, etc. and to get some feedback. I'm talking about emailing a pdf version to maybe 20 people initially. Once it expanded past that number, emailing just isn't a viable option. Do you really feel strongly that even in the initial phases it's best to have a download from a site?
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Permalink Reply by Rob Oberheide on -
Sending PDF's by e-mail can backfire. Even in small transmissions, I have experienced problems with attempting to e-mail PDF's. As Kevin mentions above, you are much better off hosting the PDF somewhere and sending out a link to the hosted file. Good luck with your start-up.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Convertito on
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I suppose emailing a PDF to your 20 closest for feedback is not such a horrible idea, you just need to be sure to send each email individually (no cc's, no bcc's) and keep the attachment under a few Mbs, or you run the risk of having your domain blacklisted as a SPAMmer by either yours or the recipient's ISP...
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