How much should I charge advertisers?

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Permalink Reply by Dean Cook on October 7, 2009 at 6:03am

Hi Tom,

I can see the problem here. There seems to be this imbalance for today's micro-publishers offering very niche market titles. The downside is the low number of readers and trying to justify advertising rates.

Any advertiser will struggle to justify the rates they are paying unless you have more than 5000 readers. However, what is the quality of your readership like? This could be your unique selling point.If you have reached out to the only 1000 people in the world who spend money in your area and you have no competition, then you would be data asset rich which is then worth it's weight in gold for advertisers. If this is the case, never release your data and keep it up to date.

To work out your advertising rates you will need to work out your overall costs then divide over 30 per cent coverage (your bottom line) of your publication which should give you a page rate. This is assuming you can fill up at least 30 per cent of your magazine with paid for advertising. You can generally work out the other ad rates from here.

Now if you find your advertising rates would be too much for advertisers then your magazine could financially struggle. There is a fine balance getting the right ad rates for your publication and the amount of readers it reaches.

Here's a tip worth considering. How well is your magazine designed? This could bring the perception for your advertisers that your magazine is reaching a far wider audience which would encourage ad bookings regardless how many people you are reaching. Investing in your presentation by having your publication professionally produced should help increase your revenue and profitability.

Another tip. Don't mention your print run but use your readership. If you are printing only a 1000 but each copy is read by two or three people then your readership would be 2000-3000 people so mention this in your marketing material. You will need to be able to justify this figure though.

I could carry on but need to crack on with some work but hope the above will suffice for the moment.

Dean Cook, The Magazine Production Company

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Sansone on October 7, 2009 at 8:18am

Dean, thanks for your comments and suggestions. they are appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Convertito on October 9, 2009 at 8:24pm

also consider giving free ads to the big game publishers and developers who would never advertise in your mag normally...this can sometimes help build the illusion of you being bigger than you might actually be and thus attract smaller, local, PAYING advertisers...The thinking goes like this: if EA sees a TonyHawk/Activision ad in your mag, they may be more inclined to place a Skate2/EA ad to counterbalance Activision's presence...but honestly the Activisions and EAs of the world are not going to fall for this, your local game reseller or console modder may tho...good luck.

Dean's reply about readership is spot on tho, never give out your actual print run numbers—give out the readership. I've seen some publishers inflate readership numbers by up to 15x the circulation...not saying it's an honest thing to do, just that I've seen it done...

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Permalink Reply by Dean Cook on October 12, 2009 at 8:04am

Kevin's point about getting a large advertiser in so you can use them as bait to get new ones is a very good point but, from experience, it would vastly decrease your chances of getting an advert if your magazine is poorly designed. A well presented document increases it's perceptual value therefore increases the chances of getting an advert thus increasing your revenue and profit.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Sansone on October 28, 2009 at 10:02pm

Actually, I do have some larger advertisers through a pay-per-performance service I am using. I just starting using it so hopefully that should give some confidence to the smaller businesses.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Michem on October 29, 2009 at 2:53pm

You have been publishing since 1998> Do you know how long many magazines would had that long of a life? Since you seem to be doing something right. Just keep on doing what you have been doing. What the old saying? "If it ain't broke don't fixed it.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Sansone on October 29, 2009 at 8:53pm

Actually, the website has been around since 1998. But I have been publishing the magazine since 2008. It was an e-zine until May of 2008, then it was a bi-monthly 5.5 x 8.5 magazine. In September 2009, it became a full size 8.5 x 11 quarterly magazine.

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