Introduction
As more people move toward digital content consumption and away from print, which takes up space in their homes, kills trees and fills landfills, the demand for digital magazines is on the rise. Many traditional print publications are seeing droves of their subscribers moving to digital-only subscriptions, or at least asking for digital copies of their print subscriptions.
One of the greatest things about publishing a magazine digitally is that it reduces the barrier to entry significantly, making it easier for beginners to publish a magazine without investing a fortune into printing and mailing. Almost anyone can publish a digital magazine with very little effort using a few easy-to-use tools.
In this report, you’re going to learn how to publish your own digital magazine, allowing you to earn revenue in a variety of different ways and increasing your reputation within any market.
Whether you’re looking to increase your income or just to develop a reputation in a specific market, publishing a digital magazine is an easy way to accomplish your goals.
So let’s begin.
Why Publish a Digital Magazine
There are many different reasons to publish a digital magazine, and surprisingly making money from subscriptions is only one aspect. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons one might want to publish their own magazine in digital format.
Reason #1
Profit from Subscriptions
The most obvious reason to publish a digital magazine is for pure profit from subscription sales. An online magazine can be extremely profitable, and there are many different ways to profit from your magazine, which we will take a look at later in this report.
Most people who start their own digital magazine will be doing so purely for its immediate profit potential, and that’s fine. You can make a great deal of money this way through subscriptions and other methods. However, it’s shortsighted to think that this could be the only reason to publish one.
Of course, most reasons do end up being about profit, however sales of the magazine itself don’t have to be the ultimate goal for publishing it. You could even profit in the long term from a magazine with a free subscription.
Reason #2
Branding & Reputation Building
You might want to use your digital magazine for more than just immediate profit, and that’s great, too. You could even offer your magazine free in order to use it for other purposes, such as branding and building a reputation within your niche.
Let’s say you’re looking to get into the weight loss niche. What better way to brand yourself as an expert in the field than to publish a magazine in it? Having your name as the author byline of articles within the magazine, publishing your own ads within its pages, and even putting yourself as the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine can all help build your reputation.
Reason #3
Free Advertising
If you have your own products, what better way could you advertise them than in the pages of your own magazine? Placing an ad in someone else’s magazine can cost thousands of dollars, especially if you take out a full-page ad. But if you publish your own magazine, you can advertise your own products for free. In fact, you’ll even be paid to do so if you charge for subscriptions or sell advertising to other people!
Having your own magazine will allow you to promote your products in a way that is very profitable, because you won’t have to spend money advertising your products, and you’ll also be given automatic credibility because you are the publisher of the magazine.
Revenue Sources
There are multiple ways to make money from your magazine. Let’s take a look at a few of the different ways you can profit from your own digital magazine.
Revenue Source #1
Subscriptions
Subscriptions are the most obvious way to profit. You can charge a monthly fee for your magazine, which might vary from $0.99 per month to as much as $5 per month, depending on your market. Some markets will be willing to pay more than others, but those markets that support high monthly subscription fees (such as business) are generally very crowded and competitive.
You can also charge a higher monthly fee for your magazine if you have a very unique take on your industry, or if you’re publishing in an industry with a decent demand but no existing magazines available.
Revenue Source #2
Email Marketing & Solo Ads
Another great way to make money from your magazine is to use it to build an opt-in email list and use that profitably. You can use this email list to market your own products, affiliate products, and other people’s products for a fee.
When you send a message out to your email list on behalf of someone who has paid you to do so, it is called a solo ad. If you have an email list, you can charge a fee (generally based on the size and/or responsiveness of your list) to send marketing messages to that list for others. This can be quite profitable, but if your list is responsive it is usually much more profitable to email about your own products or affiliate products for which you will earn a commission.
Revenue Source #3
Your Own Products
If you have your own products that relate to the niche of your magazine,
Revenue Source #4
Affiliate Products
Don’t forget that you can also advertise affiliate products within your magazine. One of the great things about digital magazines is that you can often embed media in them, including marketing videos and links.
If you’re publishing your magazine in a format that doesn’t allow links, you can still promote affiliate links by purchasing a short, memorable domain expressly for each affiliate link and redirecting it to your affiliate link.
Revenue Source #5
Advertising Revenue
As you’ve no doubt noticed, most magazines are full of ads. In fact, many magazines are around 50% advertising and 50% content. These ads are accepted by the general public as part of reading a magazine.
You won’t get a lot of advertising revenue until you have a decent subscriber base, but once you have a decent number of subscribers, you’ll be able to start charging well for ad space in your magazine.
Revenue Source #6
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is a bit different than standard advertising revenue. Rather than simply renting a small ad space, you can rent sponsorship of the entire magazine.
Someone who sponsors your entire magazine would be featured at multiple points throughout the magazine. Such points could be:
- On the front cover
- On the back cover
- In the acknowledgements
- A strip at the top or bottom of each page
- A featured article (like an advertorial*) about the product or company
*An advertorial is an ad disguised as an informative article. Basically, the ad is framed within the context of actual, valuable information.
You don’t have to use all of these, or you could use others, but these are a few examples.
If you decide to allow sponsorships, be sure that you don’t run ads from any of the company’s direct competitors in the same issue at the same time. A direct competitor is one whose offerings are the same as, or very similar to, the company sponsoring the magazine.
For example, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are direct competitors, because they both sell soft drinks. However, Pepsi and Tropicana Orange Juice would not be direct competitors, because although they are both beverages, they are not significantly similar.
If you have any question regarding whether a company might be a direct competitor, it’s best not to run the potential competitor’s ad until after the sponsorship has ended.
Content Sources
You may assume that you’ll need to write all or most of the content for your digital publication, at least at first when your profits may not support paying writers.
Fortunately, in most markets it should be relatively easy to find people to write for you without upfront payment in exchange for advertising space, a byline or some other non-monetary compensation.
Content Source #1
Getting Unpaid Writers
For a writer who is looking to build a résumé and a name for himself, getting published in a magazine is a golden opportunity, even if he isn’t paid for his work.
Additionally, for someone who is looking to establish themselves in a particular market, what better way to do so than to become a magazine published author. This would give anyone instant credibility in a market.
Another reason someone might want to write for you is to promote their business or products. If you allow someone a brief mention of their product or service at the end of their article, it could be very valuable to them and allow you to get an article for your magazine without paying anything upfront.
There are many ways to find writers who might be interested in writing for your magazine without being paid:
- Write to bloggers within your niche extended an offer
- Post on Craigslist seeking writers
- Visit various freelance sites and contact writers with experience in your niche
- Visit various webmaster forums and post for writers
Content Source #2
Getting Paid Content
Paid content is another option. You can always hire writers from freelance sites or other sites, but premade content is another option.
Here is a source for getting paid content:
>> http://www.constant-content.com – You can find pre-written articles here by searching through categories or searching by keyword. Content is very reasonably priced, and is also checked by the site’s administrators for basic quality before it is posted. You can buy content on an exclusive basis or non-exclusive.
Producing & Publishing a Digital Magazine
Joomag is an all-in-one digital magazine creation and publishing platform. It’s incredibly easy to upload your pre-existing PDF, OR you can use their built-in templates to create your magazine online. Using their template system, you can create your digital magazine with no design experience very quickly and easily. It’s literally a drag-and-drop style system!
Because of this template system, Joomag stands out for those who don’t have the design ability to create their own PDF for upload.
You can still use your own PDF version if you wish, but unlike their competitors, you don’t need to do this if you don’t have the ability. Their templates make it a breeze.
Your magazine can be published to the following formats:
- Desktop (PC & Mac)
- Tablets (Apple, Windows & Android)
- Smartphones (Apple, Windows & Android)
Best of all, Joomag is remarkably affordable. Their current pricing structure allows you to use many features free, and a gold subscription (billed annually) is just $39.95 per month. You save 20% by paying annually.
Keep in mind that the free option will not allow you to charge for your content, and some other features will be disabled. But the free version is a great way to test the system to see how easy it is to use before you commit to a monthly or yearly fee.
If you can’t afford to do their yearly subscriptions where you must pay for 12 months in advance, they also have very affordable monthly subscriptions. For example, the Gold plan is $39.95 billed annually, $49.95 billed monthly.
Issuu will allow you to upload your PDF file and will convert it into their reader format.
They have over 100,000,000 monthly users you can potentially reach, and their pricing is quite reasonable.
Calameo will allow you to turn an existing PDF into a magazine (or brochure, sales catalog, annual report or other publication). These publications can be interactive and accessible online from a computer.
Yumpu claims it is the world’s #1 in digital publishing. You upload your existing PDF and you can publish it immediately for PCs, Mac, tablets and smartphones.
Content is converted to Flash for desktop browsers and HTML5 for mobile devices. They can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter, through email and on landing pages without having to download the magazine!
Yumpu has a 30-day free trial so you can test the system without commitment. There is no contract, so you can end your subscription at any time. They also have very reasonable pricing.
Conclusion
Creating your digital magazine is a lot easier than you probably think. You can use your own PDF, or even use a template to create your magazine if you have no design or content creation experience.
In fact, you won’t have to pay very much upfront, because you can even create all of the content yourself or get other people to do it for you without charging anything.
If you think it’s over your head to create and publish a magazine, give it a try. Most of the services featured in this report have free levels or free trials, allowing you to try them out without spending any money, so you can see how simple it really is.
Whether your main goal is to make money from subscriptions, get your name out there, or just build a resource to use in some other way, a digital magazine can let you achieve your goals without the massive printing costs associated with traditional print magazines.
Give it a try. You’ll be glad you did!
Resources
Here are some resources you may find helpful for creating and publishing your own digital magazine:
