Know-How Exchange : Strategy

There is a large amount of free or no cost content if you are in a pinch. Often this is provided by consultants to your industry in return for an Author Box. (i do this often).

If you pay for articles you can expect to pay between .75-1.25 per word depending on the quality and reputation of the author.

Is August the first time ever the magazine was published? If so, you may have to look to other magazine examples - either by contacting people or finding published articles with information - for your answer.

The budget for creative can be related to "square inches of articles" for the most part. So if you ask other people or look to published articles on the topic, look for square inches of articles published per year (you could estimate this by # pages times page dimensions), how many creative people they have, what the average compensation paid by the company is (wage, benefits, taxes) per year. Divide.

If the magazine has been published before, look at the square inches in previous issues and the cost for creative and ratio this for the square inches in the August issue.

Another way to estimate: bottoms up! for the creative, it largely doesn't matter much what is written. You know the space you have allocated. You know how many creative heads you have to assign to it. Find out the average total compensation the company pays for them per hour and multiply by the estimated hours.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Frank brings up a point I forgot. You may have to pay for the articles and this may be part of your budget - then add this to the creative piece - layout, graphics, typesetting, etc.

Wayde