Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

How To Track & Monitor Ads For New Magazine???

Posted by Anonymous on 9/27/2010 at 3:55 PM ET 250 Points
My partners and I are launching a unique publication centered around home sales in the NJ area. We all come from the publishing biz, however, more on the newspaper side and in the sales capacity versus publishing. The magazine will be put out twice monthly and will be a free giveaway. Anyways...

Need some feedback on a few topics. First...

When getting the magazine off the ground initially, what if we do not have enough advertisers to fill our intended page target. Do we go to print with fewer ads/pages, or, do we hold off until we get enough advertisers to fill the magazine?

Second, how many initial issues would you pre-sell in advance in order to have a wide enough margin to re-sign new advertisers in the event of drop-out's, cancelations, etc. for future issues?

Third, suppose there is a fairly high dropout rate by some advertisers once the second issue is complete and distributed. How do we fill the publication quick enough to again cover our planned page count?

Finally, I have found quite a few software programs online that are specifically geared towards magazines, however, can anyone recommend one of the better ones for tracking advertisers, billing, CRM, etc.?

P.S. - Feel free to contact me if any of you out there in computer-land do any consulting for weekly newspaper/magazine type of publishing companies. If your rates are fair, we would like to either have a one-time brainstorming session, or, maybe bring you on as a monthly consultant kind of thing...Joe

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 9/29/2010 at 4:22 PM Accepted
    You may want to check out the book Starting and Running a Successful Newsletter or Magazine by Cheryl Woodard. I used it with a magazine I started (www.calkayakermag.com) as a side business related to one of my hobbies, and found it very useful.

    Page counts versus ads - this decision is up to you. Smaller page count looks like less of a magazine, but has a better chance of cover costs with less ads. More pages look better, but you have to pay to cover the added pages (and content to fill those pages). Discounting/free ads as lead in to gets advertisers are not uncommon.

    On pre-sell and dropouts - much of this may be covered by your pricing strategy. Buying an ad 1X is most expensive per ad, where multiple ad rates get much lower. Choosing this right will help get companies to sign up for the longer term.

    Can't help you with the software - I do it all by hand myself.
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