What will be the topic of your magazine? Focus on things you love and know well, whether that is sports, fashion, computers, or social networking. Creating a magazine based on your passions will be more engaging, relevant, and useful to your readers than a topic you have no relationship with. Who is your target audience? This will help you focus on your possibilities. For example, if your topic is fashion, your demographic will have a huge impact on the style and substance of your magazine, as well as potential ad revenue. If your target market is teenage girls/boys, for example, you’ll approach the writing, content, even the logo and color scheme much differently than you would if you were targeting men over 40, or gender-neutral 20-somethings. Determine the age, gender, income level, geographic location, and education level of your target audience. What caliber will your magazine be? As odd of a question as this may be, you will have to decide if you want your magazine to be an authority on a subject (like cooking or fashion) or if you want your magazine to be light, gossipy publication (think Ok! or Us. )
For example, consider buying a home. There are three groups of people who could be reached with a magazine: the buyer, the seller, and the real estate agent. However, of those three groups, only one has the potential of being a repeat customer, and that’s the real estate agent. Unless you target investment buyers and sellers—which is really a completely different market—your best target audience for repeat business will be the real estate agent. It is also important to keep the content simple. Complicated content can lose readers quickly, so make it digestible and easy to understand, tailored to what people are interested in and not wandering off its main topic.
For example, if you’re creating a magazine for rock climbers, you will want to meet the top climbers, content creators, and other stars in that firmament. It may be that they do nothing more than tell their friends, “Hey, there’s a rad new mag coming out in a couple months”, or they may say, “Hey, there’s a rad new mag coming out in a couple months, and I’d love to do a spread on your trip to Smith Rocks. " Either way, you’re a winner. Talk to people with experience starting and financing business ventures, and people in the printing industry. Talk to your banker, your attorney, printers, website creators–anybody who might have a wealth of knowledge and experience that touches your venture is good to know.
You will also need a business plan when you approach the people who will fund your venture. They’re much more likely to invest in your venture when they see you’ve invested time and effort yourself. Consult a business plan consultant or writer who can help you to create a solid, cost-effective plan. While this will cost you money, it will ultimately save you money in the long run.
It takes a lot of time to write articles. It takes more time to photograph or source and edit images. It takes still more time to do the page layout, ad sales, manage the printing process, sales, distribution, and customer support. Each of those disciplines require their own levels of expertise. Unless you plan on publishing one copy every 6 months, it would be wise to build a staff at this point.
Publication manager. Somebody has got to be out there sourcing printing houses, paper costs, doing spot checks, proofing, and being the point person for everything to do with the nuts and bolts of publishing. Sales manager. All those ads have to come from somewhere, because that’s where a lot of the revenue is going to come from—especially at first, as you give away copies as fast as you can. Having somebody working that revenue stream every day will make a huge difference on your bottom line. Marketing manager. Even if you build it, they’re not going to come unless they know about it. A marketing manager will spread the word, get your magazine placed on newsstands, bookstores, distribution houses, and more. Your marketing manager will also know what the competition is doing—what’s in their press kit, what promotions they’re running, and how they’re being successful—and then do it better!
Writing and editing. All those fine and witty words, the articles, even the page numbers and table of contents all need to be written and edited. Emphasis on editing. Graphic designer. What does the magazine look like? Again, different markets need different design approaches, and people will respond accordingly. Consider the difference between, for example, Wired and The New Yorker. Wired made their mark with day-glow colors, cutting edge page layout, and bold use of white space. It appealed to the geekdom like nothing else at the time. Now consider The New Yorker, with it’s wry, pastel art, witty cartoons, and probing articles, all wrapped up in traditional fonts and page layout.
You should also see if you can find reviews for the publisher. If you find reviews like “All of the pages were diagonal and they still charged us!” run away as fast as you can.
Armed with your mock-up, your writers and designers will know what to create, your marketing and sales people will know what to sell, and your publishing people will be able to start pricing things out and getting bids.
Maybe a freelance writer came across a story about a Christmas tree farm that inexplicably gets visited by a herd of wild reindeer every Christmas eve. But you are currently publishing your July issue. No worries–stick it in your ‘To Be Used’ article log and plan on running it in the December issue.
Set your website up so that some of the articles are open to public browsers, but others require a subscription to your magazine to be viewed.
Do they love the content, but hate the layout? Find out why they hate it. It might be a perfect layout for a different demographic, but not yours. Before changing things willy-nilly, analyze the pros and cons. Is it priced right? People often complain about the price of things that they buy, but the key here is “did they buy?” If you get a lot of feedback saying, “It looked nice, but was too much, I didn’t buy it”, you might have to readjust your numbers. That could be just adjusting your expectations, or it might mean selling more ads instead of charging more per issue. Encourage staff feedback as well. Staff may have some great ideas that arise out of what they’ve learned while creating content or marketing the magazine.
