How to create your e-zine
How to create a quality e-magazine? What difficulties await you? How to recoup the costs?
I want to tell about all this on the example of the electronic journal BlogNews (a monthly publication for bloggers distributed in the .pdf format), which I am a co-founder of. For all the time, we have already managed to release almost a dozen numbers, so I had some experience.
It all started with the fact that once Anastasia Lukyanova, the author of several thematic blogs, suggested that I launch a joint magazine for bloggers. By the way, I must say that the subject was more than familiar to me, because by that time I was and still is the author of a fairly well-known in narrow circles of the resource , just devoted to the issues of blogging and blog communities.
')
I believe that any stage of the first issue of the journal should include the following points:
1. Creating a separate site for the magazine.
This item is optional. In my memory there were several electronic editions at once, which went as an addition to some site. For example, one travel site published its magazine only as a bonus to the main materials on the site.
We decided to make an independent brainchild of BlogNews, so we registered the domain blogo-news.com and spent on high-quality design and a promotional video, which you can see on the main page of the site.
One-time costs for this item amounted to several hundred dollars.
2. Collecting material.
There are 2 options: a) a copy of what is already on the network b) only unique materials.
It's clear that the first option is not as winning as the second. Although the advantages are definitely there, among which is a lot of saved time and money for journalists. It remains only to monitor the Internet in search of the best articles on your subject.
But since Our goal was to create a really high-quality journal, then we refused to copy-paste.
Articles for the first issue were written either by themselves or by asking colleagues. Of course, it takes a lot of effort, and to jerk colleagues constantly will not work. The ideal option in this case is to order some of the materials from good copywriters. At least, the current income of the magazine is enough to recoup the costs of copywriters, at the expense of advertisers. But the very first issue we had to do without them.
3. Layout of the magazine.
It is important to immediately decide for yourself in what format the magazine will be published. Again, usually choose 2 options. Or .exe, or .pdf.
Before we decide on the blogNews format, I studied many electronic journals. And among them, the .pdf format was much in demand. Moreover, I even know a couple of editions that were issued in two formats at once, but even they subsequently abandoned the .exe format.
Why is that? Honestly, I do not know. But we did not risk, and chose .pdf. Although, by the way, there is one very significant advantage that is inherent in the magazine in this format. It can be printed out on a color printer and enjoy the paper version :) Personally, I have never done this, but I heard from many readers that they are doing just that.
Today there are a lot of programs to typeset in .pdf. I do not undertake to recommend separately any of them, since everyone will have their fans and opponents. In any case, when choosing a program for layout, Google will help you.
In fact, after these three points the magazine can already be released.
What was our first release? Horrible :) Although people liked it, and by the second number we secured a number of advertisers. But first things first.
The first pilot issue I called terrible because of a couple of minuses. The magazine was designed by Nastya on her own, although neither I nor she had done this before. Still, without design talent, and the talent of the coder is difficult. Therefore, do not scold, but I'm afraid to give a link to the first number :) Who wants, can download in the archive .
Secondly, the size was as much as 9 megabytes, which is not deadly, but when scrolling through the pages, the magazine constantly hung up, and for some users the issue refused to open at all.
Thirdly, the design of the magazine itself was far from ideal. We received a lot of criticism, both at the expense of fonts, and at the expense of the quality of pictures.
How to find a way out?
Well, I think either mastering the layout of the magazine perfectly (at least there is literature on the network is present), or involve a good layout designer to work. Fortunately, we were lucky, and at some point a professional typewriter, Stanislav, who professionally designs and imposes some offline editions, joined BlogNews.
Journal of the magazine, but you also need to bring it to the end user. In this regard, Nastya and I decided to turn a rather unusual move. The fact is that most publications give a direct link to the jump. We decided to resort to the experience of info-businessmen by issuing a magazine download by subscription via e-mail.
Of course, this method was subjected to harsh criticism, but we believe that we are doing everything correctly. Yes, the user will have to spend the extra 30 seconds to sign up for a subscription, but then he will receive a fresh issue on his e-mail every month, and we thus do not lose our audience, which is attractive not only to us, but also to advertisers. On the other hand, some concessions were made. The magazine can be downloaded immediately, without a subscription, but only old issues. This is done through the archive .
Promotion magazine.
This is a very important stage. Although the promotion procedure itself is pretty standard: find thematic sites and either just ask to advertise your magazine, or ask by jingling with coins. The main thing that costs were reasonable. If paid advertising gives you a sufficient number of readers, then why not? After all, again, due to the further placement of advertising in the magazine, it will all pay off. And the price of advertising in a magazine depends entirely on the number of readers. Think about it.
There is another way to advertise - to write a good article for Habr :) And although this article is unlikely to significantly increase our subscriber base (after all, the audience is not quite that, and I mostly just wanted to share my experience - maybe, to whom useful), but if your magazine on the subject will coincide with the interests of users, then why not?
Payback magazine.
Of course, when creating a website, to pay copywriters and advertising - you need costs. And well, if the magazine itself pays for all these costs. We have to attract advertisers. Advertising in the magazine can be a paid article or a poster. We, for example, in the last issues still practice advertising on the cover. It is expensive, effective, if it is beautifully drawn up, then the readers do not complain (yes, I also had to take the designer to the team to our layout designer).
The search for advertisers consists of the stage of gathering contacts of potential customers, sending them their proposals and, in fact, the stage of negotiation. As a rule, 2-3 advertisers per number are enough for us to recoup the costs. This is a little and unobtrusive. At least, for your information, advertisements for glossy offline publications account for as much as 40% of the pages :)
What is the current blog BlogNews? Beautiful magazine in .pdf format, no larger than 2 MB (with 50-60 pages), and a subscriber base of more than 3000 bloggers. Of course, this is not the limit, and we continue to grow.
I hope that I was able to reveal the most important stages in the creation and promotion of my electronic journal. I hope that someone the article can really benefit.
I want to tell about all this on the example of the electronic journal BlogNews (a monthly publication for bloggers distributed in the .pdf format), which I am a co-founder of. For all the time, we have already managed to release almost a dozen numbers, so I had some experience.
It all started with the fact that once Anastasia Lukyanova, the author of several thematic blogs, suggested that I launch a joint magazine for bloggers. By the way, I must say that the subject was more than familiar to me, because by that time I was and still is the author of a fairly well-known in narrow circles of the resource , just devoted to the issues of blogging and blog communities.
')
I believe that any stage of the first issue of the journal should include the following points:
1. Creating a separate site for the magazine.
This item is optional. In my memory there were several electronic editions at once, which went as an addition to some site. For example, one travel site published its magazine only as a bonus to the main materials on the site.
We decided to make an independent brainchild of BlogNews, so we registered the domain blogo-news.com and spent on high-quality design and a promotional video, which you can see on the main page of the site.
One-time costs for this item amounted to several hundred dollars.
2. Collecting material.
There are 2 options: a) a copy of what is already on the network b) only unique materials.
It's clear that the first option is not as winning as the second. Although the advantages are definitely there, among which is a lot of saved time and money for journalists. It remains only to monitor the Internet in search of the best articles on your subject.
But since Our goal was to create a really high-quality journal, then we refused to copy-paste.
Articles for the first issue were written either by themselves or by asking colleagues. Of course, it takes a lot of effort, and to jerk colleagues constantly will not work. The ideal option in this case is to order some of the materials from good copywriters. At least, the current income of the magazine is enough to recoup the costs of copywriters, at the expense of advertisers. But the very first issue we had to do without them.
3. Layout of the magazine.
It is important to immediately decide for yourself in what format the magazine will be published. Again, usually choose 2 options. Or .exe, or .pdf.
Before we decide on the blogNews format, I studied many electronic journals. And among them, the .pdf format was much in demand. Moreover, I even know a couple of editions that were issued in two formats at once, but even they subsequently abandoned the .exe format.
Why is that? Honestly, I do not know. But we did not risk, and chose .pdf. Although, by the way, there is one very significant advantage that is inherent in the magazine in this format. It can be printed out on a color printer and enjoy the paper version :) Personally, I have never done this, but I heard from many readers that they are doing just that.
Today there are a lot of programs to typeset in .pdf. I do not undertake to recommend separately any of them, since everyone will have their fans and opponents. In any case, when choosing a program for layout, Google will help you.
In fact, after these three points the magazine can already be released.
What was our first release? Horrible :) Although people liked it, and by the second number we secured a number of advertisers. But first things first.
The first pilot issue I called terrible because of a couple of minuses. The magazine was designed by Nastya on her own, although neither I nor she had done this before. Still, without design talent, and the talent of the coder is difficult. Therefore, do not scold, but I'm afraid to give a link to the first number :) Who wants, can download in the archive .
Secondly, the size was as much as 9 megabytes, which is not deadly, but when scrolling through the pages, the magazine constantly hung up, and for some users the issue refused to open at all.
Thirdly, the design of the magazine itself was far from ideal. We received a lot of criticism, both at the expense of fonts, and at the expense of the quality of pictures.
How to find a way out?
Well, I think either mastering the layout of the magazine perfectly (at least there is literature on the network is present), or involve a good layout designer to work. Fortunately, we were lucky, and at some point a professional typewriter, Stanislav, who professionally designs and imposes some offline editions, joined BlogNews.
Journal of the magazine, but you also need to bring it to the end user. In this regard, Nastya and I decided to turn a rather unusual move. The fact is that most publications give a direct link to the jump. We decided to resort to the experience of info-businessmen by issuing a magazine download by subscription via e-mail.
Of course, this method was subjected to harsh criticism, but we believe that we are doing everything correctly. Yes, the user will have to spend the extra 30 seconds to sign up for a subscription, but then he will receive a fresh issue on his e-mail every month, and we thus do not lose our audience, which is attractive not only to us, but also to advertisers. On the other hand, some concessions were made. The magazine can be downloaded immediately, without a subscription, but only old issues. This is done through the archive .
Promotion magazine.
This is a very important stage. Although the promotion procedure itself is pretty standard: find thematic sites and either just ask to advertise your magazine, or ask by jingling with coins. The main thing that costs were reasonable. If paid advertising gives you a sufficient number of readers, then why not? After all, again, due to the further placement of advertising in the magazine, it will all pay off. And the price of advertising in a magazine depends entirely on the number of readers. Think about it.
There is another way to advertise - to write a good article for Habr :) And although this article is unlikely to significantly increase our subscriber base (after all, the audience is not quite that, and I mostly just wanted to share my experience - maybe, to whom useful), but if your magazine on the subject will coincide with the interests of users, then why not?
Payback magazine.
Of course, when creating a website, to pay copywriters and advertising - you need costs. And well, if the magazine itself pays for all these costs. We have to attract advertisers. Advertising in the magazine can be a paid article or a poster. We, for example, in the last issues still practice advertising on the cover. It is expensive, effective, if it is beautifully drawn up, then the readers do not complain (yes, I also had to take the designer to the team to our layout designer).
The search for advertisers consists of the stage of gathering contacts of potential customers, sending them their proposals and, in fact, the stage of negotiation. As a rule, 2-3 advertisers per number are enough for us to recoup the costs. This is a little and unobtrusive. At least, for your information, advertisements for glossy offline publications account for as much as 40% of the pages :)
What is the current blog BlogNews? Beautiful magazine in .pdf format, no larger than 2 MB (with 50-60 pages), and a subscriber base of more than 3000 bloggers. Of course, this is not the limit, and we continue to grow.
I hope that I was able to reveal the most important stages in the creation and promotion of my electronic journal. I hope that someone the article can really benefit.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96333/
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