Tag: digital products

In 2017, all major publishers and most independents have a website portal. What 95% don’t have is a web magazine. But those who do are flourishing.

In today’s Strategy Spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda explains why he thinks the web edition is the best edition.

It’s amazing to look back to just a year or so ago, when digital magazines were still something of a novelty. Today, it’s a given that print publishers will soon create a digital version of their product if they haven’t already.

Premium newsletters and advisory services represent the pinnacle of subscription marketing, often commanding annual membership or subscription fees that are much higher than magazines.

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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.

When you think of the top magazine companies, you probably imagine Time, Cosmopolitan, or Better Homes & Gardens. If you publish a magazine, try to instead think of the magazine media companies in your niche. Comparing a niche magazine to a general-interest publication will leave you empty-handed in the idea department.

Once upon a time, online advertising had a shady reputation.

Luckily for publishers, that’s all in the past. The online advertising industry has improved its reputation, and consumers have become more accustomed to seeing these ads. Even the once-dreaded popup ad has become routine, especially when it’s carefully aligned with your content, which is a Mequoda Best Practice.

In his bestseller, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours, or approximately ten years, so become an expert at something. That means there are very few digital product development experts out there in the universe, even in the publishing world. Let’s consider some of the digital products we interface with regularly today.

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.

So you want to know, how do online magazines generate revenue? The answer is clear: they go multiplatform.
If you’ve considered starting an online magazine, or are a legacy print magazine considering going digital, you’ve asked this question: How do online magazines generate revenue? And the answer is that the successful ones use a multiplatform approach.

One thing we’ve noticed about the most successful publishers we know is that they have three major things in common. And it has nothing to do with being a household name, a ton of charisma or a rampant following on social media.

If your goal is to generate advertising and sponsorship revenue from a free newsletter or advisory service with a robust subscription and advertising website, the Mequoda Haven CXMS can do it, and has done it for many other publishers like you.

Mequoda Systems empowers multiplatform publishers to grow audience, revenue, and profits by integrating web, email, and fulfillment systems into a seamless Customer Experience Management System (CXMS). Mequoda clients routinely double, even triple, their profits in five years or less by using our proprietary software platform, Haven CXMS™—the only customer experience management system created by publishers

If your goal is generate paid subscriptions and revenue for a premium magazine business with a robust subscription website, keep following along.

In today’s Strategy Spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda explains how other publishers have used Haven CXMS to do just that.

Last week I was emailing back and forth with my friend and colleague Jack Edmonston, who often sends interesting news my way with some thoughts to pontificate on. This time it was an article from Politico by Jack Schaefer called, “Do Readers Own the New York Times?” Although the article is about newspaper and not magazine subscribers, it’s an interesting concept to think about for our industry, too.

As a publisher, you’re no stranger to tiered pricing. The question is, is your highest priced tier the most purchased item, or the least? For most publishers, when they price a product and try to bundle it with other products, the highest priced bundle is not their best seller. But for the publishers we work with, it’s their highest and they know how to increase subscription sales with two strategies.

If your goal is to generate advertising and sponsorship revenue from a free newsletter or advisory service with a robust subscription and advertising website, the Mequoda Haven CXMS can do it, and has done it for many other publishers like you.

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

We recently wrote about why magazine clubs are on the rise.

A magazine club is reminiscent of the book club model where you pay one price and gain access to a bundle. For example, you pay one price for a print and digital subscription to a magazine where you also get access to an extensive archive organized by both issue and article indexed by topic. Or you subscribe to a video club, and you get access to an archive of videos, or in the case of a cooking magazine, a recipe club where you get access to a bundle of premium recipes.

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 be working towards putting together web magazines, most have failed, as we’ve explained in recent posts documenting our journey through more than 300 magazine websites and what they think are web magazines.

If your goal is to generate subscriptions and advertiser and sponsorship revenue from a free or controlled-circulation magazine with a robust subscription and advertising website, the Mequoda Haven CXMS can do it, and has done it for many other publishers like you.

Who worries most about the money in their bank account? The person with three jobs, or the person with one? Because you can get fired, laid off, or your industry could go out of business overnight in one job, but it’s unlikely to happen in all three. And that’s exactly why, when running a magazine business, you can’t keep all of your revenue eggs in one basket, either.

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 the magazine clubs party. Beyond their print and digital products, they launched The Masthead. Subscribers get access to exclusive content, and their mission, which is being “sold” to subscribers, is to “fund the future of sustainable journalism.” The introductory price? $12 per month, versus their annual print + digital price of $34.50.

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 short answer is that we’ve seen it work, but testing is worth the investment. One of our clients launched a new print magazine from their popular online portal last year and is now generating thousands of new subscribers every month.

Today we’re reporting on digital publishers bringing in new talent to strengthen their organizations.

We begin with New Yorker, which has brought in a superstar from BuzzFeed to be the director of newsletters. AdWeek reports, “The New Yorker has snagged BuzzFeed’s director of newsletters to lead its own newsletter efforts. Dan Oshinsky will join the publication from BuzzFeed on Aug. 7 to serve in the same role there. It’s a new position at the New Yorker, and one that will see Oshinsky working with a wide array of New Yorker staff, from editors to designers to product team members, as he takes charge of New Yorker’s current slate of newsletters, including its million-subscriber-strong the Daily, and works on creating new ones.”

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

Digital publishers Hearst and Condé Nast add important pieces

We’re seeing some digital-focused personnel changes from major digital publishers.

We begin today with a story on Hearst’s new VP/Global Chief licensing director. Deadline reports, “Steve Ross, a top licensing exec who held positions at Fox Networks Group, News Corp, 20th Century Fox Film Corp and Mattel, has just been hired at Hearst Magazines as VP/Global Chief licensing director. He starts immediately and is responsible for the licensing of new consumer products initiatives, retail merchandising and e-commerce; brand migration including location-based and live events; and franchise development for Hearst’s portfolio.”

Zink digital magazine relaunches; National Geographic launches digital network; Amazon looking at offering subscriptions to publishers
Not all the digital magazine content we report on involves launches. Sometimes we have relaunches to share about, too.

We begin today with the relaunch of Zink Magazine, in both digital and print. WWD reports, “Zink Magazine, the indie fashion magazine founded

In multiplatform marketing and social media, do you ever feel like the content you produce is making more money for other people, than for you? Think about it. 100 years ago, American songwriter, Victor Herbert sued a restaurant for playing his song on a piano without paying royalties for the song and formed a society, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to keep this from happening to other artists and publishers. Sure, plagiarism is one angle of what multiplatform publishers encounter when someone uses your content without permission, but what about the content you give away for free on other platforms?

How to create new products and passive income from old products as a multiplatform publisher

One of the most interesting rodents on the planet is the grasshopper mouse, native to the US and Mexico, which has a bit of a superpower: it’s impervious to venom. Also, it’s a carnivore. So it dines on venomous centipedes, scorpions

As humans we’re always in competition. We want to have a better job, a bigger bank account, a happier life, a healthier family, a cooler side hustle or better behaved dog than everyone else we know. And business it isn’t any different. We want to be the one with the original ideas, generating more revenue, and hiring more people to support a thriving business.

36 ways to build your Internet audience, revenue and profits while building your magazine circulation
There are five different ways to build a magazine audience. You can use free subscription offers, use efficient call to action placements, use time-tested brand-building techniques, email-building techniques and other types of traffic drivers.
Consider the offer
The offer is the most important

How to reduce subscriber churn by providing new opportunities to engage with your content on a regular basis

People love subscriptions these days. Beyond magazine subscriptions, there are now box-of-the-month subscriptions. You can subscribe to a monthly box of beauty products like BirchBox, dog toys and treats like BarkBox, nuts and healthy snacks like NatureBox, or

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

Multiplatform magazine subscribers are looking for more from you. “Let’s make magazines great again,” shall we?
Last week, after over a year of grueling controversy and debate, the US named Donald Trump as President-elect. While half the country was caught scratching their heads, and the other half applauding, Fortune wrote an article about how good marketing got

The more you can give a member of your subscription website, the better.
And it appears we’re not the only ones who think so.

Earlier in the week we talked about Condé Nast’s Wired Media Group who is launching a membership program for executives. According to Lucia Moses at Digiday, “for $4,000 a year, members of the Emerging Technology

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 publishing.

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

If you are a magazine publisher, you are a digital magazine publisher. You are online, and hopefully you have a digital edition of your magazine. But that may be all you’re doing, and if your print and digital magazine are all you have, you’ll want to be broadening your multiplatform magazine horizons.

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

In-person anything is better than phone or email anything. A cold call could turn into a friendly conversation about the latest Game of Thrones, whereas a cold email could just end up in the junk box. An in-person business meeting is how real sales professionals close deals, not over the phone or through WebEx. There’s nothing that replaces an in-person event when your goal is to build a connection with a customer, and that includes magazine subscribers at magazine events. They offer the highest level of interaction and fidelity.

We talk a lot about digital magazine subscription marketing around here, and unwittingly neglect your very important print publications. Once you’ve established your subscription price strategy, the next problem to solve is the offer you make in your magazine subscription marketing campaigns.

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 on mobile phones, and then on smartphones, in email, and through tablet devices.

Publishers sometimes forget that they, themselves, are retailers; publishers sell subscriptions, memberships, books, ancillary products, events, etc. It’s smart for a publisher to think like a retailer: Get people into your store, where they can become your customers. And when they become your customers, get them to come back for more. The “store,” of course, is your website, your portal.

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.

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

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