How to start your magazine with “zero” or little money (tested and 100% possible)
In this article you will discover how to publish your own magazine. You will also discover how to attract the things; people and resources that will make you achieve it. Don’t mind those suckers out there telling you that you need money to print your magazine. Have they forgotten the term: (OPM) other people’s money? That’s the trick we are going to use here!
Are you ready?
Let’s go…
An idea
you must be able to innovate: that is, bring ideas that will stand you out in the market place. By standing out, it will leverage you and make you attract the customers you need. When your customers are broad, you must determine your consumers taste, age group and what they really want in a magazine.
You can even do a small survey to really to “pin-down” the aspiration of your target consumers. For example, if you target the youths and create a magazine that will talk about music and hip-hop in Nigeria I guess you know you have a big market already? :)
Content
After you’ve done that, then you need to come out with suitable content that will go along with the magazine. You need to get articles, pictures and clips. Create and organize your table of content.
After that, know that you shouldn’t bother yourself with writing articles or where you are going to get content from, where to get content from is easy if you know where to get it. All you have to write as the editor is to simply write the editorial note, or probably the main subject of the magazine then simply look for other aspiring writers to do the rest job.
A bit “laziness” is permitted here, you can’t work yourself out when there are people to work with?
And again leveraging on peoples talent will increase the quality of your magazine, of course you will make sure you hire the right people, your magazine will be as good as the people you work with.
So make sure you choose the right people, hire a good editor too. One good thing is people are looking for platform where they can showcase themselves so you leverage on that opportunity. The internet also has infinite amount of resources if you know where to get them, there are books, online magazines, blogs, websites, e zines, articles directories that you can get ready-to- use resources e.g.:
The content are absolutely free to use, yes you can copy and paste. Just make sure that when you steal their content, you put the author of the article there to avoid legal/copyright issues. Remember you may never know where your magazine is going.
The good thing here is nearly all subject you can ever think of known to human can be found there if you are willing to search and dig for it.:)
If you are not like me that you can do the graphics yourself you can hire someone who is looking for a platform; be smart and tell the person that you will give him/her free advert since your are the publisher, your magazine is reaching a lot of people who needs a graphic designers or an illustrator.
Or play with google search engine, there are often free software’s or free one month trial version that you can use to create your magazine, make sure the software is a quality one that has good “plug-ins” that you can use to create absolute beautiful designs! Or just simply hire me.:)
I also recommend this software, that is if you can design for yourself or you have some experience in designing; click here to visit site!
When those are done, you can now go into the next phase, publishing, and printing then distribution.
Your finished product
When it comes to printing, we all know its quiet expensive; you will have to spend money, and remember we don’t have money, This is where you will have to apply this little secret:
Listen!
“The reason why most people fail publishing magazine is that they fail because they are selling the magazine not the space in the magazine.
Don’t package the magazine and try to sell it expensive for God sake, simply create advert sections for space in the magazine and let people advertise. That is how you really make the big bucks! Then you can now sell the magazine for more bucks, the advert space will cover all your expenses! :)
Here is a simple trick, companies and even small scale business will like to advertise when they see that you are printing over ten thousand copies and you are distributing it all around, everyone wants his or her product or service to get massive exposure, won’t they like to advertise for a cheaper rate?
How will you sell advert space for money?
You may begin to worry on how to sell advert space on your magazine. Calm down it is very easy; simply do a beautiful graphic design of the cover of your magazine with the content headlines make it catchy of course, write a simple letter to the proposed organization(s): just look for organizations, businesses within your reach grab their addresses then send them a letter enclosed with the cover of your magazine; tell them you are printing over ten thousand copies and this is an opportunity to reach more people with their products/service;makes sure you include all the advert price list. Don’t worry about not been a brand yet, you will have to convince them, all brands started this way, you will have to push your service into the market by force!
Don’t worry about the ten thousand copies I just mentioned, you may not print up to that amount, just know it’s all about the marketing gimmicks you will employ when trying to push your product into the market as a fresher. But the money you will make when selling your advert space will cover to print as much as possible… :)
Make sure there is plenty of advert space in your magazine to cover up your expenses and don’t bother about your consumers by thinking that your magazine looks like a market place, they will understand as long as your magazine is printed in good quality.
Distribute your magazine
Hey, Nigeria is one of the best place to do business if you know what you are doing, or are you doubting me? We don’t have junks of government policies of don’t and do’s to limit us and bug us with so many things. Look at the unemployment status here in Nigeria? Is it not a great opportunity to hire people and make them sell your magazine for you while you chill in your office with a glass of wine? :)
Well, you may say this is unethical, but think about out it; are you not helping the government by employing tones of wandering graduates jobless and looking for money? I guess you are!
Simply be smart and create a strategic marketing plan. The ideal entrepreneur weapon is “leverage” that is working smarter. Appear as authority and create a system of recruiting and a boot camp session of training these dumb marketers to help market and distribute your magazines to every corner. I tell you if you get this part, you’ll be laughing your way to the bank! :)
Consider E-magazine
Why not own an e-magazine to expand your reach and get to more subscribers and advertisers? The online market is large, companies are leveraging on the internet to reach more people, you can do the same. When you own a website or a blog like this one you are now on, you can create a section where people can download the E-version of your magazine. Click here to see a sample.
This is the age where people love gadgets; some people prefer reading theirs on their devices: laptops, tablets, Phones etc.
Make sure before they can download your magazine, they have to subscribe: that is they have to give you their email, here is free subscription software that can help you get people’s E-mail: www.listwire.com. I guess you know that real business is built on repeat customers? The idea is to make them come and download more issues of your magazine. Consider making downloading you E-magazine free but get revenue by selling advert space in the magazine and the blog.
It will shock you how much you will generate if you sell advert space on your E-magazine and blog. Just make sure you cross-promote your E-magazine by leveraging on social media: facebook, twitter, Instagram, youtube, google plus and the likes and also using google and yahoo plus other channels.
You can see that this guide is short and straight to the point. See you at the top and don’t let anything whatsoever stop you from achieving your dreams!
If you have any questions whatsoever feel free to ask and I will be willing to answer you by commenting below. :)
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