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The digital magazine industry is in a state of flux. Many publishers and advertisers are looking for new ways to monetize their content, and the rise of subscription-based models has been a boon for them. This article will walk you through how to launch your own digital magazine from start to finish.
You can launch a new online magazine in a couple of weeks using today’s digital magazine creation software and digital design tools. Even better, you may start a digital magazine for less than $200, depending on your talents and expertise. This tutorial will show you how to easily build a digital magazine and publish it.
Here are the seven stages you must master in order to effectively develop and launch a digital magazine.
1. Create a business plan for your digital magazine.
The development of a business strategy is the first stage in establishing a digital magazine. You’ll need to figure out who your newspaper will serve, how you’ll earn money, and set aside money for magazine launch and administration.
Choosing a Specialty for Your Digital Magazine
You’ll notice that there are many various kinds of magazines on the market if you look at any newsstand for conventional print magazines. Because digital magazines don’t have the same expensive printing expenses as their print counterparts, they have even more sections and subcategories. These divisions are referred to as niches, which refers to a group of individuals who have similar interests and to whom your magazine will appeal.
It’s critical to do a study before deciding on a specialty. Look for both conventional and digital publications that cater to the demographic you’re seeking. Examine rival magazines to see what you like and don’t like, since this knowledge will be useful when you create your own publication.
If publications in the area you want to explore aren’t available, search for websites, books, or other materials that appeal to the niche. If you can discover proof that others are effectively reaching your niche in a variety of methods, you may have found a suitable niche to pursue. If there is a lack of online material aimed towards your niche, there may not be a large enough audience to sustain your chosen specialty. If this occurs, it’s advisable to either alter or broaden your target audience.
A key to establishing a successful digital magazine is choosing a feasible niche that is relevant to a small but sufficient audience. If your magazine’s target audience is too wide, no one will feel like it is speaking to them. If your specialty is too limited, your journal will struggle to attract enough readers to be successful.
Decide how you’ll monetize your digital publication.
If you want to earn money with your magazine, you may choose from a variety of monetization options. To make money from their publications, several digital magazine publishers utilize a variety of sales methods.
Here are a few options for monetizing your digital magazine:
- Use a popular eCommerce plugin like WooCommerce to sell your digital magazine on your website.
- Make money with your magazine by selling it on mobile app shops like Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
- Create an online shop for your magazine using Shopify and sell single copies or subscriptions.
- List your digital magazine on Issuu, Magzter, Zinnio, and other online magazine newsstands and applications.
You may also monetize your digital magazine by selling ads. Sponsored posts, in which you are paid to produce material that promotes a certain product, business, or person, are another method to monetize your online magazine.
On Issuu, more than 15,000 digital magazines are downloaded every day.
The Price of a Digital Magazine
You can either build a digital magazine on a shoestring budget or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating and releasing one. It’s all up to you. You must comprehend the kinds of activities needed to create and promote an online magazine, regardless of the type of magazine you are producing.
You might easily spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to start your digital magazine if you recruit full-time staff such as editors, writers, proofreaders, photographers, circulation managers, and others. To avoid incurring these large personnel costs, most new magazine publishers take on several responsibilities themselves.
Other methods may be used to decrease or even eliminate staff expenses. You may discover free material from guest authors and photographers in return for exposure for their work. In addition, virtually all digital publications outsource their content creation to freelancers. On sites like Fiverr and Upwork, you can find low-cost, high-quality freelancers for most of your magazine requirements.
Expenses Associated with Launching
If you’re on a tight budget, you may make your first digital magazine using the computers and technological equipment you currently have. You may also utilize a number of free internet programs. Canva and PicMonkey, for example, offer free image editing options. Take your own pictures or use free stock photos from sites like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay to obtain free photos for your magazine.
To advertise their digital products, most magazine publishers establish a website. DreamHost offers a WordPress hosting plan for just $2.59 per month.
The more tasks you can perform yourself or outsource for a reasonable price, the more money you’ll save. You might launch your magazine’s first issue for $200 or less if you’re diligent about finding free and low-cost resources to create it.
“My greatest advise to anybody starting a digital magazine is to make sure you’re properly capitalized, which means you have at least six months’ worth of expenditures in the bank.” It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and monetizing a magazine with [Google Ads] and sponsored articles is difficult. The six-month runway will give you time to gain your bearings while ironing out the wrinkles as your audience grows.”
Founder of X Factor Media and New Theory Magazine and Podcast, Tom La Vecchia
2. Assemble a team for your digital magazine
Few successful magazines are founded and maintained by a single person; you’ll need a team to assist you in developing engaging, aesthetically attractive material. As previously said, that team may be made up of full-time employees, volunteers, or freelancers.
Here are some of the most common jobs in the digital magazine industry.
Staff Members of a Typical Magazine and What They Do
While it’s common for new magazine owners to take on many responsibilities when they first start out, it’s not a good idea to handle everything yourself. Magazine readers, unlike blog readers, want to hear from a variety of writers in each issue. That’s why, even if most or all of your authors are volunteers, it’s a good idea to have a large editing staff.
3. Select the Software for Your Digital Magazine
When choosing how to produce a digital magazine, you’ll most likely want to utilize a software platform to make the process much simpler. Taking your time while choosing the appropriate software for your requirements pays off.
Digital magazine software can help you set up your magazine, convert PDFs into magazine-style flipbooks or apps, integrate interactive elements in your publications, and much more.
The following is a list of the best magazine software, along with their prices.
- Joomag: This is an all-in-one digital publishing platform that allows you to produce interactive content, distribute your magazine across various platforms, monitor performance, and monetize your publication via subscriptions. Monthly plans vary from $79 to $149. Enterprise options with customized features and prices are also available.
- Pub HTML5: With this simple tool, you can create media-rich flipbook magazines. Plans start at zero dollars per month and go up to $25 per month. For $999, you may choose an enterprise plan.
With Pub HTML5, you can turn your PDFs into interactive magazine-style flipbooks.
- Issuu: Using the Issuu digital publishing and issue sales capabilities, you may build your own digital magazine and begin selling single issues or subscriptions. Plans start at zero dollars per month and go up to $35 per month.
- MagLoft: You may use MagLoft’s drag-and-drop editor to generate interactive content for your magazine by uploading your own PDFs or ePUBs. Best of all, your digital magazine is responsive, which means it adapts to the reader’s device, resulting in a better reading experience. That means no more annoying left-to-right scrolling and pinching to read your magazine. Plans start at zero dollars per month and go up to $499 per month.
- Flipsnack: With Flipsnack, you can create, share, and embed online magazines on your website and social media platforms. You may also sell your magazine directly on the Flipsnack platform with the professional plan. Plans start at $79 per month and go up from there.
- PressPad/Magz: This program generates mobile magazine applications for iOS and Android devices using your PDFs. Monthly plans vary from $84.99 to $299.
A free trial is available for each of the software platforms mentioned above. Because the features of each digital magazine software differ so much, it is strongly suggested that you use the trial time to thoroughly evaluate the program before making a purchase choice.
4. How to Make Your Digital Magazine Profitable
The format of your magazine will determine where you may sell it. Digital magazines may be produced as basic PDFs, electronic publications (ePUBs), which are the format used by e-readers such as the iBooks and Kindle Reader, or HTML5 documents using software such as Pub HTML5.
You may sell your digital magazine on your own website, via a Shopify shop, GumRoad, SendOwl, or any other site that sells digital downloads.
You may also host and sell your magazine on certain digital magazine software platforms, such as FlipSnack. You may also distribute your magazine via internet newsstands such as:
- Magzter: This website claims to have over 12,000 online magazines available for purchase.
- Your digital magazine will be in excellent company with major publications like Time, Sports Illustrated, and Better Fast Company on Zinio, which has over 6,000 digital magazines.
- Readly: This website has a one-of-a-kind sales model. For $9 per month, subscribers receive unrestricted access to over 4,000 magazines on the company’s website.
Another option is to build an app for your digital magazine. You may sell your digital magazine on major app stores like the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store if you develop an app for it.
The advantage of selling your magazine directly on major app stores is that you get access to a large audience who may find your digital magazine. The disadvantage is that app-development magazine software is often more expensive than epub magazine software. MagLoft, for example, offers a web and mobile app subscription that starts at $299 per month. Professional bespoke app developers bill in the hundreds of dollars.
Create a digital magazine app and sell it on major app stores like Apple’s App Store.
5. Create an online magazine design
Many of the qualities of a digital magazine are similar to those of a conventional magazine. You’ll need to create a masthead that contains the title of your magazine as well as any other information that will appear in subsequent issues. The cover design of your magazine will vary from issue to issue, but some aspects like typography, font size, borders, colors, and so on will stay consistent for consistency.
Your magazine will also need a rational and yet creative page layout that may be changed in parts while maintaining consistency throughout all issues. Last but not least, the photography in your magazine must be striking and captivating. The world’s finest print publications are renowned for their beautiful photography. Readers of print magazines have grown to expect stunning photography from digital publications as well.
These Time magazine covers show how a magazine may change cover components while keeping a consistent appearance and feel from issue to issue.
Layout and Graphic Design for Digital Publications
You may use a variety of graphic tools to create a beautiful layout for your magazine. The most common layout program among graphic artists is Adobe InDesign. If you’re searching for simple design software, Canva’s premium account, which costs $9.95 per month when paid yearly, gives you access to magazine cover designs. Many of the magazine software packages described in Step 3 also provide magazine layout and design capabilities to ensure that your magazine looks professional.
Creative Market is another popular source for design assistance for do-it-yourself magazine producers. There are hundreds of various magazine cover and layout templates to choose from if you want to make your own design.
If there’s one area of your website where you shouldn’t cut corners, it’s the fundamental style of your magazine. If you’re not a skilled designer, make sure you hire one to assist you to develop the appearance and feel of your magazine. You may buy a ready-made magazine template to assist you to create your digital magazine if you can’t afford a designer. Magazines with poor design seldom become big financial successes.
Photographing for a Digital Magazine
There are a plethora of excellent picture sources for your digital magazine. Make sure you understand the use rights for pictures before paying for them or utilizing them for free. Also, if you’re charging for your magazine, double-check that the images you select may be used in a subscription or single-issue publication, and be clear about any photo credit notations that are needed.
Verify that the pictures you’re utilizing originate from a source that has the right to give you use privileges for the images you’re using to avoid expensive legal headaches. Thousands of free pictures may be found on sites like Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash, which might be ideal for your magazine. There have been reports of photographs being uploaded on free sites without the owners’ permission. You might be held responsible as a magazine publisher if you used a picture that you didn’t have permission to use.
If you require assistance with the legal issues of producing a digital magazine, LegalZoom’s intellectual property services may be of assistance. Magazine trademarks, copyright registration, and other legal issues may all be handled with LegalZoom. LegalZoom’s prepaid legal services also allow you to chat with an attorney whenever you choose.
Consider buying royalty-free pictures from stock houses like BigStock, 123rf, Shutterstock, and Getty Images if your budget permits. These sites often feature far higher-quality pictures than free sites, as well as much more comprehensive photo collections. Furthermore, when you buy pictures for publishing on these sites, you have a third-party record that you paid for the right to use the images.
Finally, unique pictures may set your digital magazine distinct from others on the market if you have access to or are a talented photographer. If you can’t locate a photographer in your area that you want to work with, freelancing services like Upwork and Fiverr may help. Scoopshot, an internet platform that connects photographers with customers in need of photographic services, is another place to look for a photographer.
Typography for Digital Publications
When it comes to selecting a font for your magazine, be picky. Typography is an essential design element that has a big impact on the mood of your digital magazine. Do some study if you’re not sure what to use. Examine a variety of magazines to see what typefaces are used and how type is utilized in headers, subheaders, call-out quotations, and other places. The importance of selecting the appropriate type combinations for your magazine should not be overlooked; typography has a greater impact on the entire design appearance and feels of a publication than most people realize.
6. Produce Content for Your Online Magazine
Your magazine’s substance is what keeps readers coming back issue after issue. That’s why it’s critical to prepare your content strategically.
A table of contents, letters to the editor, messages from the editor-in-chief, and numerous short-form pieces addressing the magazine readers’ main interests are all included in most magazines. Note that magazines generally employ a semi-standardized page design for repeating material so that readers get acquainted with these frequent sections. Advertisements may be found throughout the journal, although they are less common in the highlighted pieces.
Create a strategy for what kind of material you’ll include and where they’ll appear in your magazine. The “front of the book” material, for example, is usually filled with short-form information, while the “feature well,” in the center of the magazine, is where the issue’s highlighted content is put. All of the remaining material that a magazine publisher wishes to provide is found in the “back of the book,” but it is not considered top content. Advertisements are usually less expensive here, therefore you’ll frequently find several tiny advertisements towards the end of the magazine.
Choosing Outstanding Writers for Your Online Magazine
If you’re thinking about starting a new magazine, you may already know some excellent authors in the genre you want to focus on. There are a few options available to you if you want to grow your network of magazine writers.
Begin following individuals who are discussing the topics you wish to cover in your magazine on forums, blogs, and online publications. Invite anybody who you believe expresses the emotions and views you want to be conveyed in your magazine to become paid or guest contributors to your publication.
Freelance services such as Upwork, Freelancer.com, and Fiverr also have excellent writers and editors. You may instruct freelancers on the subjects you want to be covered, the tone you desire, and any other details you think are necessary to ensure the freelancer’s work is consistent with the voice of your publication. The best part is that you don’t have to sign long-term contracts when dealing with freelancers. You may put authors’ talents to the test and determine whether or not you wish to collaborate with them on future issues.
How to Get Interviews for Your Online Magazine
Many publications include renowned individuals on their covers, as you’ve undoubtedly seen. Magazines with well-known names sell well. While you may not be able to get interviews with Oprah Winfrey or Elon Musk when you’re just starting out, it doesn’t mean you can’t go for an interview with a person that your target audience is familiar with.
Anyone promoting a new book or business endeavor is a good candidate for an interview. When contacting individuals for interviews, provide them with a variety of interview styles to select from. You might, for example, do a live interview through Zoom, a phone interview, or an email interview in which you give the interviewee a dozen or so questions to respond to at his or her leisure. Make it as simple as possible for them to say yes to you.
Another major benefit of getting interviews with well-known individuals in your field is that the people you interview usually have large followings. It’s free exposure for your publication when someone with a large readership says that he or she interviewed with you.
The more excellent interviews you get, the more people will want to interview you. Interviews are an excellent method to establish credibility and increase interest in your digital publication.
7. Promote Your Online Magazine
As the editor-in-chief of your publication, you bear exclusive responsibility for its success. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that “if you build it, they will come.” When it comes to acquiring readers, you must promote your publication proactively and relentlessly.
Creating a Following
You’ve come to this page because you’re interested in learning how to make a digital magazine. The how-tos of producing a magazine have already been covered in this article, but the seventh step, promoting your digital magazine, is arguably the most important of all. After all, if no one reads your magazine, it will be a failure.
Most magazines develop and maintain a readership in the following ways:
- Offer free samples: Create a special edition of your magazine and distribute it for free through social media, advertisements, your website, and other means. Request an email address in return for the free issue so you may follow up with readers and encourage them to become regular subscribers.
- Create a website: The majority of successful digital magazines include a website where readers can learn more about the publication and subscribe. More people will find your publication via Google if you perform a good job with search engine optimization (SEO) on your website. With DreamHost as your hosting provider, you can create a magazine website on WordPress for just $2.59 per month.
- Create and publish engaging social media content that promotes your magazine and exposes readers to the new material in each issue.
- Guest blogging and podcast appearances: You have a distinct viewpoint to offer to the world as a magazine publisher. Offer to write guest articles on well-known sites or to appear as a guest on famous podcasts. This will assist you in spreading the news about your new publication.
- Press releases: Because new magazine launches make headlines, you should use press releases to advertise your publication’s debut. To get your releases out to as many sources as possible, use a service like Newswire.
- Advertising: Use Google Ads or suitable social media sites to create niche-targeted ads for your magazine.
- Produce shareable content: The greatest approach to spreading the word about your new magazine is to create shareable material with viral potential. Remember that the most popular material is typically visual or interactive, so be sure to produce shareable infographics, drawings, and quizzes.
- Invite readers to participate: Getting people to read an issue of your magazine in its whole or in part is just half the fight. You want them to return often and, even better, to tell their friends about the magazine. Engaging people via interactive conversations and participation sections inside your magazine is the best method to do this.
The more people engage with you across various platforms, the more invested they will get in your publication. It takes time to build a readership, but your magazine will not flourish unless you give it your whole attention.
“Create a genuine connection with your audience.” Respond to communications, solicit ideas, and share their feedback on social media. To become your ambassadors, your first readers must feel like they are a member of the family.”
Founder of Maker Magazine, Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Whether you still have questions regarding how to produce a digital magazine, check if your main concerns are addressed in the questions below.
What is the revenue model for digital magazines?
Subscription, advertising, and sponsored articles are the three most popular ways digital publications earn money. The bigger the subscription base, the more money a digital magazine may earn in most cases.
Conclusion
For less than $200, you can create a digital magazine in only seven steps. You begin with a well-thought-out company strategy and a capable staff. Then decide on a publication format and software for your magazine. Following that, you’ll devise sales, design, and content strategies. The last stage is to use clever marketing techniques to create a devoted following.
