Do your magazine marketing promotions spark revenue? If they do, recycle them. If not, dispose of them.
A few years ago, a publisher came to us and during our initial conversations about email, we looked into their EMS backend and discovered that they were creating new email templates for every day of the week as part
Category: Digital Magazine Publishing
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.
How to make the most of your magazine portal every day with the tools you have in front of you
Every magazine publisher should have a free portal. It’s the backbone of your operation. It’s the rhythm section of a jazz ensemble, the neutrals in a wardrobe, the clasp on your watch—it’s the core of your
Even the lowest digital newsstand remit is better than the olden days. Just a few short years ago, magazine publishers were thrilled down to their toes to keep 18-40% of sales from news agencies.
When Don ran an online newsstand, 18% was the average new remit order for the 1,400 titles there. And some publishers earned
In publishing, there’s no room for growth with a solo magazine that stands alone.
One of our favorite stories is that of The American Ceramic Society. The organization turned to the Mequoda Method in 2005 to address the stagnant growth of its two print publications, Ceramics Monthly and Pottery Making Illustrated, whose audience is both ceramics professionals and dedicated amateurs.
The
If you’re not selling sponsored content yet, consider these success metrics and how you can incorporate the process into your editorial model.
In 2016, sponsored content, branded content, and native content (all the same, by the way) have been the hottest buzzwords of the year. In fact, part of the reason our Mequoda Hall of Fame
As the first wave of digital magazine apps has passed, we’ve discovered one thing: People hate apps with nothing in them.
And yet, the vast majority of digital magazine apps available today are nothing more than a retail outlet for single copies and subscriptions!
They are labeled as free, but have nothing to offer unless a purchase
A recent article from Mediapost claims 40% of millennials personally pay for news (print or digital). Pay for news, you say? We think, when looking at the ratio of print to digital, that many of those millennials are probably subscribing to digital news, but we can’t say for sure. All we know is that digital ad
A few good ways smart magazines get “small checks” in between all of the big ones from major sponsorships.
The more space you have on your website, the better. You already know about bundling multiplatform sponsorships and selling banner ads on your site and promotions in your email newsletters. But do you know which content business models can
Multiplatform consumers give us a glimpse into digital and print magazines as consumption of digital grows year over year
In our annual American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook survey, we set out to understand how the demographics of a multiplatform consumer (one who reported consuming both print and digital magazines) differed from digital only readers and print only readers.
We learned that
Industry naysayers are still skeptical about the power of digital magazines. And we’re still ignoring them. At Mequoda, we urge our clients to begin the process of launching a digital magazine yesterday, because, as you know if you’ve been reading here for awhile, we firmly believe that the future of our industry lies in mobile
Readability and scrolling text should come first in tablet and native edition digital magazine design
Since we started our annual Digital Magazine Survey to help publishers home in on digital magazine design, the number one feature desired by digital magazine readers is readability, followed by scrollable text. This is text that you don’t need to pinch and zoom
Isn’t it fascinating to consider how the old journalism phrase “above the fold” has evolved? Once it literally meant “above the fold” of a traditional broadsheet newspaper. Editors, writers and designers battled over what, and who, would win a coveted spot above that fold, where the most reader eyeballs would land.
Exclusivity is the name of the game when it comes to multiplatform magazine sponsorships
If you have children, or even when you were a child you remember, that no child ever truly wants something until someone else has it. Toto the fluffy dog may sit on the end of the bed for a month, but when
Mequoda is big into identifying and quantifying things so we can study them, understand them and use them to enhance our clients’ publishing businesses. And with digital publishing starting to settle down a bit (but just a bit), we’ve identified four models of a digital magazine.
What we learned about the average digital magazine reader in this year’s study about magazine consumption
This year, like we have for the last several years, we ran a study to find out how the average American adult magazine reader is consuming and creating new habits with digital magazines. We polled 3,241 U.S. adults with internet access.
This
Use this road map following Mequoda’s CAROTME framework to establish an economic strategy for your multiplatform magazine
Single-platform legacy media companies are widely out of favor with buyers and investors. That’s not just because they’re not currently “sexy” but because they tend to have lower rates of growth and profitability, and their future prospects tend to
If you’re not bundling these three drastically underused sponsorship package add-ons, then you’re leaving money on the table
Multiplatform publishers are in a great position to sell sponsorship packages that combine traditional print ad placements, digital ad placements, and better opportunities for the sponsor to be part of the story through native advertising and lead generation.
This
Your systems team must always have one foot in the present and one in the future, understanding how all existing technologies span and intercept to create a content marketing system
Publishers have been making organizational changes to deal with the realities of the modern marketplace. Often these changes are made as a reaction to changing conditions
Convince magazine advertisers to “invest” in your ads and native content, then show them the numbers.
If you’re a new magazine, or even just new to digital magazines, you already know if you’re primarily subscription-driven (subscribers pay you) or ad-driven (advertisers pay you), but we find that many publishers generate revenue from both sources.
In either case,
It’s easy to drive the same road with your multiplatform magazine, but it’s fruitful to spend time on strategy and analytics to keep yourself accountable for growth
Many CEOs readily admit that strategy and analytics are not their strong suits. That’s not surprising given their need to understand and manage their economic model for print, digital,
Second-time magazine subscribers may turn out to be even more profitable than they were their first time around
Peter Drucker wrote, “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
When you’re talking to someone face to face, there are signs you might notice. Someone who starts fidgeting might be socially anxious, while
Sponsored content should provide value for the reader at the same time as it creates a positive perception of the sponsor
There’s 23 Stories (Conde Nast), Courageous (CNN), Catapult Creative Labs (Active Interest Media), and so many more. Content studios built by publishers and media producers who have learned that advertising can be sold in abundance and
There are two types of magazine ads that successful multiplatform publishers bundle into their multiplatform rate cards. Each item on the rate card has a value associated with it. Bought separately, they would add up and be quite expensive, but packages of the complete bundle (typically for 12 months, 6 months, or 3 months), allow
Magazine covers can make or break sales on traditional and digital newsstands – are you leveraging current subscribers for input?
I subscribe to magazines and email newsletters of magazines for dozens of publishers. As part of our research, we are always keeping an eye on what’s going on with general interest publishers and niche publishers alike.
One
If you’re not there, your competitors will be.
Registration for our upcoming one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop on August 2 closes today. If you miss it, what do you plan to do instead to grow your business?
Download our program guide and register right now, while there’s still time.
Here’s what you’ll learn at the Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop:
What American Magazine Readers Really
Once print habits are gone, the magazine industry will rely on a new breed of digital magazine habits that you’re responsible for creating
Once pundits started waving the “print is dead” flags, the decline began. It was almost like the media was trying to coerce consumer habits, rather than predict the future. Print is not booming,
Register now, or wait another year to attend this one-day workshop.
I’ll keep this short, because I know you’re busy. Registration for the upcoming one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop closes in one week. If you miss it, what do you plan to do instead to grow your business?
If you’re the owner or operator of a niche magazine business, or are
Create digital magazine teams using agile principles and progressive technology to build more collaborative processes
Magazine teams have historically all been in one building, maybe in New York City, or Washington, D.C. They might occupy more than 20 floors in the World Trade Center, like Condé Nast, or a more humble space, like many of the niche
Please hurry! Your Early Bird price ends at midnight tonight
Your chance to exercise frugality in attending our one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop ends at midnight tonight.
Perhaps you noted our earlier emails about the Early Bird price for our first one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop and told yourself you’d get to it soon.
Well, soon is now! Early Bird registration
At the beginning of your roadmap, this magazine platform should come first, even before an app.
Online magazine platforms or offline magazine platforms or any platforms in between, it doesn’t matter: We’re fans of a good many of them, and believe in a “more-the-merrier” approach because the right deployment can open up new revenue streams.
But if you’re
The answers will surprise you
At Mequoda, we’re deeply opposed to guessing.
That’s why we’re so devoted to testing and statistics, which is how we developed our Mequoda Method and made it so successful that we’ve been able to improve the power and profits of dozens of magazine brands.
And of course there’s one other method for finding
Put down the sunscreen and register before summer fever sets in
So, look, I know you’re headed on vacation in the next week or so, but we have an early bird deadline coming up for our first ever one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop, and I don’t want you to forget.
If you want to attend for the
What most publishers of niche magazines don’t realize is that coming up with an editorial calendar is just as much work as producing the evergreen content itself.
Your magazine app is a platform, but it’s not the most profitable digital magazine platform for passive income
Digital magazine apps are great for one huge reason: They come with a built-in marketplace. People who own tablets are accustomed to buying apps, and using app stores and newsstands to find new content.
The app edition of a digital
If you’ve been reading here about the journey from legacy print publishing to digital magazine publishing, it may sound almost too confusing to contemplate
The journey involves everything from creating a magazine edition you may never even have heard of before – the web edition – to pricing to marketing on social media to upgrading print
There’s no doubt that niche content is the name of the game, at least if you’re playing the game using the Mequoda Method. But digital magazines can’t expect to slap a few enthusiast articles up on a homepage and wait for the money roll in. Rather, online publishers must stay vigilant in repurposing content, developing
Circulation reporting and auditing has been a meticulous science for more than a century. Then digital magazine publishing came along to shake it up for the first time in decades.
In fact, if you haven’t read our recent look into AAM’s reporting methods. The short story is that AAM doesn’t count subscription numbers, they count subscriber
Learn everything from pricing to copy platforms, and watch the print-to-digital upgrades roll in
The beauty of the digital era in publishing is that it doesn’t just give you a new option for your existing audience to choose.
It delivers the opportunity to expand that audience, create several new premium products, drive more orders per promotion, and
If you’re starting a magazine business plan, it would be a good idea to circle the troops and decide right now whether your future will be advertising or circulation driven.
Will you choose a mass circulation strategy that allows you to compete with television and portals for advertising dollars, or will you compete with book publishers
Set up your marketing based on data and continual improvement to reap big profits
One thing that troubles publishers who are planning to make the move to multiplatform publishing is how to promote so many different products, especially given the new marketing channels that are available to us in the digital age.
As we’ve noted here before,
When we develop magazine business plans for our Gold Members, it include seven levels which you’ve probably heard us refer to as CAROTME: content, audience, revenue, optimization, technology, monetization, and exit.
There’s no such thing as publishing a magazine.
The fact is, if you want to transition your business from the traditional print model to 21st-century publishing – and the profits it promises – you have to publish five different magazine editions of every title in your portfolio.
Mequoda has learned from decades of experience that these five
The MPA just released their Magazine Media 360° report and the future of magazines is just as interesting to predict as ever. The top growing magazine brands year over year tapped into just about every general interest niche: Esquire, domino, Nylon, Town & Country, Fast Company, Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, Fit Pregnancy & Baby, Country
There’s no such thing as publishing a magazine.
The fact is, if you want to transition your business from the traditional print model to 21st-century publishing – and the profits it promises – you may have to publish up to five different magazine editions of every title in your portfolio, with three of the five being
Conventional wisdom says that moving your legacy print magazine into the digital age is complicated, expensive and painful.
Mequoda says: Not if we have anything to say about it.
There’s a better way to publish digital magazines that’s driving amazing revenues and profits for the select few publishers who understand this new methodology.
The digital publishing strategies we
Some folks like to talk about the decline of magazines. And yet, the digital magazine surge shows that not only are magazines surviving, but they’re alive and well, with still new ones being born.
Of course, it’s not easy to achieve. Then again, that’s what Mequoda is here for: to help would-be publishers who want to
A magazine consultant is a magazine consultant is a magazine consultant, right?
Since the printing press was invented, the best way to deliver readable content was always on the page. Until the advent of the web, consumers hadn’t even considered other ways to digest content beyond books, magazines and newsletters printed in a linear, bounded fashion.
But then the web arrived on personal computers, and then it arrived
Publishers aren’t just going digital anymore, they’re creating digital magazines that are evolving as quickly as the technology that hosts them
In 1967, an eight-page issue of Computerworld was published for the first time, deemed “the newsweekly for the computer community.”
The goal with Computerworld: provide its readers with insight into the world of technology and how to generate
Publishers will reinvent their digital magazines across platforms and newsstands in 2016
This year print magazines saw a sharp downturn in newsstand sales, with a 10.3% drop year-over-year in single issue retail and a 9.8% drop in dollar value during that same time period, MediaPost reports. Time Inc., Hearst, and Meredith all saw plunges. Meanwhile, The New Yorker,