Know-How Exchange : Other

Avoid being "general purpose". Be specific.

Sell advertising in the magazine, possibly user-generated content style advertising (get businesses to write articles about their niche, for which you charge a fee, almost like a subscription).

To attract clients (by which I presume you mean advertisers), you'll need readers: a guaranteed audience for those advertisers to present to and to appeal to.

You keep the thing alive through hustle, by being the life and soul of the project.

Consider this publication as an example:

https://thewomensjournal.com/

Here's their media kit:

https://thewomensjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/WoJoNewCastleKentDelawareChesterMediaKit2016.pdf

This magazine appears throughout the state of Delaware (population: 950,000). It appears in at least three different editions. It is hugely popular. It has longevity. It is free. It makes money.

I had an "advertising supported" magazine that I started and ran for 4 years, before shutting it down. Wrote a blog post on this very subject - how to sell ads: https://expandabroad.blogspot.com/2011/06/ads-in-new-publication.html.

Difficult, if not impossible, to do with a "general purpose" magazine. Better if you can focus on a specific target audience.

Advertisers buy impressions, so you will need enough readers to interest your advertisers. And if you narrow your focus it will be easier for the advertisers to justify the cost. If you are trying to reach people with arthritis, for example, companies who also want to reach that same audience will pay a premium, because they don't have so many other targeted alternatives.

"General purpose" usually means that you are optimal for nobody.

BTW, Peter's blog post on this subject is excellent. He obviously understands the magazine publishing business very well.

Question: Why a free magazine? Is that because you are afraid the content won't be valuable enough to get people to pay for it? If so, you might want to consider upgrading the content.