Only five years after the advent of the tablet, strategies for successful digital magazine publishing are starting to sort themselves out and deliver measurable results. Of course at Mequoda, we’re all about documenting these things so digital publishers don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
Here are 10 things you must do if you want to join the ranks of millionaire publishers … a goal we think is worthy of all digital publishers today.
Digital magazine publishing software is important; which option are you using?
Publishers have been trying digital magazine publishing software during the last few years in hopes of creating the best digital products for their audiences. And like everything else in digital magazine land, digital magazine software has evolved at light speed since we made our initial recommendations in January.
Here’s our latest (opinionated) look at the magazine software landscape.
Digital magazine evolution involves a variety of components, including the distribution of the content and the magazine product itself. Today we’re looking at organizations that are putting more emphasis on digital reach and digital magazine effectiveness.
We often hear about predictions for digital magazines; how they will grow, the revenue generation expected throughout the industry and the time frames associated with these numbers.
These predictions are important, as they help publishers better prepare for the future. What’s more interesting, however, is discovering how people who are already consuming digital magazines are enjoying their experiences.
How often do you read something digitally? If you’re reading this, then you’ve done it at least once today. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this isn’t your first time.
Our top-read digital magazine publishing posts of last year showcase ways you can start a digital magazine from scratch and how to ensure it’s success
We’ve studied digital magazine publishing efforts and found what works. These reader-favorite posts from the past year help publishers approach the business with confidence. There is advice on starting your magazine
Digital magazine publishing is and continues to be the current and next frontier, with unlimited revenue stream options coming from creative use and integration of text, images, video, social content, native advertising and so much more.
Consistent channel conversion zone architecture (3c), when applied to a publishing website, is a fancy way of saying that every channel (or portal topic) consistently aligns with a product that converts the user into a subscriber or paid user of your website. Together, they create what we call a zone. Using this zone to increase website to email conversion rates can be easy, if you let it. This metric is called your email capture rate.
If you’re a publishing professional, don’t wait a minute longer before downloading our best practice handbooks. They were carefully curated into what we think are the most comprehensive handbooks on the four most important digital publishing topics:
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.
Before launching a digital magazine, read through these ten resources.
When it comes to launching a digital magazine, there’s no one FAQ online that can answer all your questions. What edition should you build? How should you price it? Which software is best, and can you get away with a simple PDF edition? We tried to
Digital magazine websites Pitchfork and SI Swimsuit experienced highest traffic to date; ‘Marin Arts & Culture’ debuts with print and digital editions
Today we’re looking at a few digital magazine websites that are experiencing new territories. We begin with a Condé Nast publication that’s having a great traffic experience. Pitchfork has experienced some major stats, and Folio is
Want to know how publishing magazines on Kindles will boost your digital circulation? The simple answer is math: you can only sell more digital issues, not less, by adding your magazine to a new platform.
And we consider Amazon’s Kindle Newsstand to be one of the three juggernauts of digital magazine publishing channels, alongside Google Play and Apple Newsstand. In fact, it’s in second place and I’ll tell you why a little later.
Magazine events bring in user and sponsor revenue, and many publishers have made a profitable business model out of them.
When we talk about multiplatform publishing, it’s easy to jump right into the obvious choices: the ones with words, like books and portals and ebooks. But some of the biggest publishers I know have incorporated live
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
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 read back to front in print magazines. But in a digital magazine, 95% will read front to back. They’ll see more pages (and ads for that matter). Or, they’ll pick an article are start there. With a web magazine, the reading dynamics are similar but different. It’s a fascinating thing to master if you’re a magazine editor in the 21st century. The web magazine is significantly different, and both are very different from the print magazine.
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
You don’t have to pick a primary or favorite digital magazine publishing platform – as we see from leading media companies, multiplatform strategy leaves it wide open, and the more the merrier
When we say digital magazine publishing platform, the image that forms in our mind’s eye is one a jumping-off point, a launching pad, even
September 1, 2016 – BOSTON — The 2016 Mequoda American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook, conducted in Q2 2016, one year after their 2015 study, polled 3,241 US adults with Internet access. The study found that the number of US adults reading digital magazines has increased 13.8% from 2015, with nearly 42% of US adults reporting having read one or more digital magazine issues in the last 30 days.
Claim your FREE digital copy of our 2016 Mequoda American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook: Multiplatform Magazine Reader Habits and Digital Publishing Best Practices now.
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
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
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
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
Mequoda wants no publisher to be left behind
I can talk until I’m blue in the face about how well the Mequoda Method works in helping legacy print magazine publishers make the business-critical transition to the digital age.
That doesn’t mean anyone should take my word for it.
When you attend our Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop, you’ll learn
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
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 numbers. If someone is subscribed to your digital edition and your print edition, you only get to count it once. Most publishers choose to tally subscribers under their print editions, so their number of digital subscribers look small compared to the reality of that last, and regardless of whether a subscriber paid more to get the digital edition as part of a combo package.
There’s no shortage of interesting digital magazine publishing trends to watch, but hovering near the top has to be magazine subscription marketing.
With all of the “ad”-versity facing the industry – ad blocking programs, ad viewability, ad tech, etc. – it’s no wonder that digital publishers are trying to circle back and discover other ways of monetizing content. Subscriptions, of course, are a classic route, but it’s a route that has undergone some serious construction and detours since the heyday of blow-in cards.
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
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,
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 are absolutely crucial to successful digital publishing. And many traditional print publishers have learned, to their sorrow, that digital publishing is crucial to their very survival in the modern age.
If that sounds alarming, we can assure you it’s completely achievable – more on that below. But first, let’s consider all five of those editions that we’ve identified as the very heart of our Gold Members’ publishing empires.
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 table stakes.
Mequoda has learned from decades of experience that having multiple platform editions is crucial to successful digital publishing. And many traditional print publishers have learned, to their sorrow, that digital publishing is crucial to their very survival in the modern age. We’ll tell you all about it at our Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop on Tuesday, Aug. 2 in Boston.
If that sounds alarming, we can assure you it’s completely achievable – more on that below. But first, let’s consider all five of those editions that we’ve identified as the very heart of our Gold Members’ publishing empires.
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
Does your advertising revenue model include content that delights and informs users, while similarly rewarding your advertisers?
As the digital publishing market has grown and changed, selling ad space has only become more difficult. The market is saturated. Sponsors aren’t happy with websites crowded with ads as publishers try to grow revenue (and users aren’t happy with
Bullish 5-year study on digital magazine market shows record growth; plus, Forbes’ focus on events
Monitoring the digital magazine market is a necessity for us to successfully help online publishers establish strong online presences.
But we’re in the trenches, working shoulder to shoulder with publishing executives: Many trends we can anticipate; others we experience in real time.
Digital magazine costs aren’t limited to production and design, there are distribution fees to take into account, as well as the software and hosting fees
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
Digital magazine publishing success can be monitored with the help of these metrics
Digital magazine publishing has come a long way from its inception. Some digital publishers are very active in offering digital magazine apps, including premium and affinity versions.
Like all other digital platforms, there is necessity in tracking relevant data so you can focus on the most successful products and plan for future ones.
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,
Our most-read digital magazine publishing posts of 2015 reveal a desire for better understanding of creating, publishing, pricing and selling magazines
This year in our Digital Magazine Publishing articles we’ve tackled everything from choosing the right magazine software, to identifying pricing strategies that get buyers to pick your highest package, and how to design a digital magazine
The best content management system for publishers doesn’t stop at content or management
If you’re a publisher in business today – congratulations!
You’ve already navigated some stormy times and maybe even stabilized your core business. But the environment keeps changing. How can you respond to that change so that you not only survive, but actually thrive? What’s
Keep more revenue while offering a better customer experience by ditching the app and launching a web magazine
In our eyes, there are two digital magazine publishing software giants: Adobe and Mag+. When we work with publishers developing digital magazine apps for tablets, we recommend Mag+, a spin-out company that sprung from Bonnier Corp.’s very early Popular Science app.
We
The digital revolution not only makes content more accessible; it offers additional ways to generate revenue
Have the changes in digital magazine publishing created new revenue generating opportunities for you?
Those opportunities may exist for many digital publishers, even if they don’t realize it due to other focuses.
A growth in digital medium usage portrays the increasing value of digital magazine publishing
In 2015, our Digital Magazine Market Study study showed that people read an average of 2.37 digital issues and an average of 2.91 print issues every month, which puts digital magazine consumption at 43% of print magazine consumption and climbing rapidly.
Going digital means that you’ll attract a
As MediaShift puts it, “what advertisers want from B2B media is solid leads on potential customers for their products and services.”
Not so long ago, web and digital magazines were considered adjunct media—the consensus among publishers was that almost like ads, they would drive prospective subscribers to their print editions. In fact as readers struggled with flat, inflexible pdfs that served as copy, many did go running back to print.
Today, magazines are going digital at a gallop, keeping pace with legions of increasingly sophisticated web and mobile device users whose facility with the digital landscape is driving sales of iOS devices and tablets into the stratosphere. Digital media consumption on mobile devices has climbed from 18 minutes a day in 2008 to about 3 hours in 2015.
Given that we’ve already revised our thinking since I started regularly reviewing digital magazines back in March, I concede that anything we name as a Best Practice in digital magazines is purely temporary.
But I’m going to bravely list our current Best Practices for the mobile magazine that I know you’re all going to publish, if you’re haven’t already. Tomorrow someone might invent something new that blows away a previous Best Practice, so this is obviously an evolving list.
Five years after Apple introduced the iPad and the magazine industry latched on for dear life, digital magazine consumption has reached 43% of print magazine consumption and is climbing rapidly.
July 21, 2015 – BOSTON — Five years after Apple introduced the iPad and the magazine industry latched on for dear life, digital magazine consumption has reached 43% of print magazine consumption and is climbing rapidly.
Before quantifying the readership of digital magazines, we wanted to first understand what percent of the American adult population with Internet access reads print magazines. We also wanted to learn how many print magazines, on average, they are consuming in a 30-day period.
And what is digital publishing not doing to stay up on tech advances? Are you – gasp – in danger of becoming a “dinosaur”?
What is digital publishing?
Well, how much time do you have? If you have 30 minutes, you can schedule a call with our CEO Don Nicholas for a free consultation. If you happen
“We have used the Mequoda System to create five successful membership programs that leverage our 227-year-old brand and the many books, calendars and issues we produce."
- Paul Belliveau, Vice President New Media and Production, The Old Farmer’s Almanac
“We partnered with Mequoda to create two successful all-access membership programs that are completely independent of our legacy advertising driven business.”
- Stuart Hochwert, Founder and CEO, Prime Publishing
“Even though we are a digital-only publisher, we’ve been able to adapt the Mequoda strategies to dramatically increase our revenues in less than 12 months.”
- Hampton Stephens, Publisher, World Politics Review
“Our all-access membership program includes our print edition, our amazing New England Travel Library, and our new PBS television series. We may have been founded in 1935, but our current strategy is fully multiplatform and digital.”
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"We leveraged the Mequoda System and software to create two new capstone membership programs that have reignited our revenue growth."
- Ed Coburn President Cabot Wealth Network
