Digital Magazine Publishing posts focus on the digital revolution that is taking place for magazines, and how to create the best digital magazine publishing experiences for your subscribers and members.
In our last Mequoda Magazine Consumer Study, we discovered that out of all the paid types of magazine content available online, adults in the US pay for news, most. If you’re in subscription marketing, this is an important take-away.
When we conducted the study, it was the first year we asked respondents what they pay for
If magazine libraries and magazine memberships are being combined with magazine subscriptions to transform the publishing industry into a growth medium, magazine libraries are the nexus of this trend.
In this post, we’ll look at how two savvy magazine publishers have created magazine libraries that go beyond the basics to add even more value to their
Headlines have been brimming lately with news publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired taking back their profits with paywalls and paid content. The New York Times made 60% of last year’s revenue from subscription sales, The Guardian’s 800,000 subscribers are now accounting for more revenue than advertisers, and Wired has followed
When most people think of digital magazines, they narrow their focus on digital magazine apps that can be found in a digital newsstand or app store, but data shows that apps aren’t where users want to digest premium magazine content.
Web magazine consumers like to read their magazines like they read their news – online.
Users are becoming more accustomed to viewing magazine content in the form of web magazines. Web editions are built like web pages, so they can be displayed on any mobile or desktop device, and users are as familiar with the interface as
Mequoda ran its first ever digital magazine consumer study in 2014, polling US adults with Internet access. At the time, the biggest finding was that 20% of respondents reported currently reading or subscribing to digital magazines on their tablets. Back then, 20% was a huge number.
In 2015, we conducted another study with triple the sample size
We aim to be one of the best sources for magazine trends online, but we do it with a whole lot of help from our brothers and sisters in the industry.
Below we’ve compiled a list of the best portals, the best influencers, and the best reports on magazine trends available online. If you have more
I woke up this morning thinking about all the great ways we’ve discovered to sell subscriptions on the Internet. Yes, these are the things that I dream about. The idea that while I’m deeply asleep, the systems we manage are busily selling subscriptions to magazines and newsletters and premium memberships that include all sorts of
Do you think a 24/7 online encyclopedia of information is a product people might subscribe to? Would they be willing to pay more for a subscription to your magazine if it included access to all your archived content? The latter is usually the reason why publishers decide to create a digital archive of their back issues,
I Like Crochet has improved upon their already best-practice web magazine with collections, clubs, and previews.
It’s genuinely thrilling to be in the publishing industry at this moment and time. Think about how one of the defining factors of millennials is that they have been alive to experience life with and without immediate access to the
What do you think are the essential elements of the perfect digital magazine?
If you think back to Gutenberg and the printing press, magazines are still being produced the same way now as they were then. We have a long way to go. The technology necessary to fully utilize the Internet as a principal marketing and distribution platform is available
As preferences for digital magazine consumption go digital, here’s a list of all the ways you can improve your multiplatform editions.
Last week we published this year’s 2018 Mequoda Magazine Consumer Study. We’ve been running this study since 2014 to analyze digital magazine adoption, and have come across new interesting findings each year:
In 2014, 20% of respondents
As tech industry observers like to note, the world of apps is wild and wacky. There are almost two million apps in the Apple and Google app stores. If you pick up or click to pretty much any tech publication these days, you’re guaranteed to see at least one app review, to help bewildered consumers
Are you still selling your magazine on one platform? Sure, print magazines smell good and even look good on a coffee table, but the most successful subscription publishers we know are leveraging more than paper to increase profits.
What are they doing exactly? They’re adding a web magazine, back issues and special collections to their magazine offers and are creating an
If you’ve ever joined a club, purchased a membership, or even became part of a team, you understand the benefits of mutual collaboration and teamwork. This year, our goal at Mequoda was to help our Gold Members run and grow their subscription marketing and publishing businesses even more by creating a publishing network of like-minded
If you publish a variety of subscription products for a single audience, you have the makings of a super club. Super clubs are the easiest money you will ever generate because their high profit margins are driven by content you already own and an audience that already trusts you and your brand.
Don’t scoff—we truly believe that web magazines can be the ultimate platform for periodical content for most magazine publishing brands. The problem is that, as we’ve covered in prior weeks, most web magazines aren’t living up to their potential. We are very close to destroying magazines as a medium by the way our industry is
The magazine industry has lost their way.
It’s been a long time since the dawn of digital publishing and publishers bringing their content online, but at this point we hoped that the industry would catch on and be rigorously testing their digital products.
Unfortunately so much has stayed the same, and while many magazine publishers seem to
Now that so many publishers are issuing digital editions, it’s time to take a look around and quantify some best practices that we’ve noted in researching apps and digital magazines.
First, let’s do some definitions. Terminology is changing daily, as it always does with new technology and new products, but for now we should at least
I have complete confidence in saying this: “your web magazine design is not very good.”
And why does this roll off the tongue so easily as such a blanket statement? Because we’re in the midst of a massive research study on the state of web magazines, and out of 300 of the top B2B and B2C
Recently Google publicly told publishers that they strongly encourage flexible sampling with their paywalls, through the use of metered paywalls and lead-in. You’re likely familiar with metered paywalls where the user gets to access a certain number of articles before being asked to subscribe, and the lead-in paywall shows some content of an article but
Today we begin with a look at Working Mother, which has seen a big growth in traffic since a recent digital strategy adjustment. Folio: reports, “Working Mother’s new digital strategy appears to resonating with its audience; according to data from Omniture, its website saw an 84 percent increase page views in August compared to the
The newsletter platforms you may be familiar with are often print and PDF formats, as most newsletter publishers haven’t gotten hip to the newsletter app format, and neither have their consumers.
How you think about digital magazine software needs to change if you want your subscriber base to grow
“Eventually, they’ll become like sailboats. They don’t need to exist anymore. But people will still love them, and make them and buy them.” – Kurt Andersen, a former editor of New York and co-founder of Spy, on the future
Learn how to write more effective native content advertising for a sponsor and start getting paid more for content
According to Business Insider data, the amount advertisers are spending on native advertisements has risen from $4.7 billion in 2013 to a projected growth of $21 billion by 2018.
Consumers have always disliked ads that are disruptive to their user experience,
There’s a new trend happening in the magazine world, and it’s the magazine club model. Publishers everywhere are adopting magazine clubs, an all-inclusive membership model that can offer everything from total access to magazines, to video archives, to VIP event access. The 160-year old Atlantic, for example, is just one publisher who has recently joined
Take this information to the bank … 2016 Mequoda American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook & Handbook polled 3,241 U.S. adults with internet access and found that nearly 42% of them are reading digital magazines, up 13.8% from 2015.
At a recent networking event amongst publishers, the owner of a publication for teen health asked a Mequoda team member if it was worth launching a print magazine to go with her ad-driven online presence. She already had other print publications, but this niche, teen health, geared towards a younger generation—would it be too passe’?
The
A recent copy of National Geographic featured a story that showed a man, hanging off the side of a mountain, dangling from a several hundred foot rope ladder. You couldn’t see the bottom of it, because it was covered in mist, but you could see his face, reaching toward the next ladder step, covered in
There’s very little consistency when it comes to pricing magazines on the internet, and even less when it comes to bundling magazine subscription offers. We’re all familiar with the $12 print subscription, offering a printed piece of art, signed sealed and delivered for $1 per month. Some may say that pricing scheme is devaluing magazines
Media company acquisitions from Hearst and BrideClick; Access Intelligence acquires digital advertising and events company
Today’s news focuses on media company acquisitions, including some interesting ones that expand the current business model of the companies involved.
Ask yourself these seven questions before starting your journey towards digital magazine transformation
I’m going to go ahead and assume if you’re reading this, you have a print publication who is asking for siblings. You’re at the magazine store and it’s eying the “big brother” t-shirts and wondering when it’s getting playmates.
Below you’ll find a comprehensive
Increase publishing revenue with self-serve listings and more robust ad packages
The directory and listing-style content business has some pretty unique benefits. If executed correctly, this business add-on can be a win-win-win for any ambitious publisher.
Let’s say you’re a regional magazine who is primarily sponsor-driven and your sole publishing revenue stream is those ads. How can
When we are in the process of business planning for a client, one big question we need to answer is what platforms they will publish their magazine on, going forward. Often they are selling magazines that are printed and wondering if an app or web edition is the logical next step.
A replica-plus is a replica with some extra bells and whistles added. And normally you’d think that adding things such as video, audio, HTML links and other technology-rich features would be an improvement to the simple replica. We’re not so sure that it’s a good enough upgrade, and here’s why.
The problem with adding bells and
While the biggest news of the last week might be Ryan Seacrest joining Kelly Ripa on the new Kelly & Ryan morning talk show, there have been many adjustments in the publishing world as well worth talking about!
“It’s more effective than direct mail and as effective as telephone – and so much less expensive.” That’s a quote from ClickZ’s latest report, Email and the Age of First-Person Marketing. While marketers were saying just three years ago that social would consume email, it’s proven to become even more powerful and celebrated during that
Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Have you ever felt in your personal life, like plans are useless? Many people feel this way, and in fact I’ve heard the best advice you can give a bride before her wedding is to
Pretty soon, most magazines won’t just be managing editorial teams in-house—they’ll be managing more editors remotely. Here’s how to make the virtual world work for your publication.
Managing editorial teams in-person can be a challenge for any seasoned magazine executive. You’re dealing with constant looming deadlines, bouts of writer’s block, keeping your team on-task, and producing
If you’re not writing contextual email text ads, your magazine marketing and paid products aren’t selling as well as they could be.
Have you ever thrown a birthday party for your kid that was totally themed? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—you got this. There was pizza and ice cream (the Turtles’ favorite food combo). All the kids
Digital magazine marketing will give you an afterlife
There are times in business when we feel like we’ve created something great, and we don’t understand why it’s not selling.
Back in 1967, a successful New York ballerina by the name of Marta Becket stumbled upon an old social hall in Death Valley Junction, California, population: 6. After
Creating a magazine layout that includes interactivity is one more key toward selling more digital magazine subscriptions
It’s true that users prefer familiarity in digital magazines. As soon as you begin creating digital magazine apps that require an instruction manual to learn, many users tend to get frustrated. That’s why we think when designing a reflowed
Digital magazine engagement should be top priority for publishers in 2017
If there’s one area of publishing that has not stood still, it’s digital magazine publishing. In 2015 it was more important than ever for publishers to understand the five digital magazine archetypes and get app magazines at least one step up from a replica. And in
Master the art of marketing digital magazines and bundles by learning about why readers subscribe to digital magazines
Several years ago we ran a study that showed us the majority of magazine consumers were subscribing to digital magazines because they felt paper magazines were wasteful and they wanted to “go green.” A full 52% of respondents said
Our top-read digital magazine publishing posts of last year show an interest in creating, marketing, and monetizing digital magazines and newsletters
In 2016, publishers couldn’t stop talking about the possibilities of digital magazines. After learning that digital magazines are a profitable content business model they’re actively seeking new ways to create new magazines, market them, and
As the mobile publishing revolution has matured, I’ve been blogging about a lot of large, fancy digital magazines. Publications like New York, Forbes and The Atlantic have become leaders in what I consider the second phase of mobile publishing development – the technology is dependable, early jumpers are releasing their all-new versions upgraded from their
When a print magazine closes, a world of opportunity opens for its portal
A few weeks ago Conde Nast announced that they’d be closing the print arm of Self magazine. And after their single-copy sales dropped from 148,055 to 44,000 over the last two years, who can blame them? If you think about all the strings that
Can you assign dollars and dimes to a free digital newsstand?
There’s no doubt that publishing your digital magazine on a tablet, so that it can be downloaded in some of the world’s largest newsstands, is a good idea. 20% of your subscriptions will come directly from this huge marketplace.
It benefits your content too. Most people
Multiplatform publishers are finding ways to turn magazine publishing into a profitable business model once again
If there’s one thing you might know about us, it’s that we think publishers should have multiple revenue streams. In investing, it’s called having a diversified portfolio. As Canadian portfolio manager Pat McKeough (also a client), would say, a good diversified portfolio should
Chris Moran tells magazine and newspaper publishers how to use their publisher data most effectively
Despite an interweb filled with hugely successful listicles labeled with you’ll never believe -type headlines, “People really, really do want to read great journalism on the internet,” says Chris Moran.
Moran is phasing out of his role as SEO editorial executive at the
