Have you always dreamed of launching your own magazine? In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know and understand to start a magazine and run it successfully.

Create Your Publication

Brainstorm ideas. Before you can start building your publishing empire, you need to create something. If you haven’t done so already, sit down with a trusted friend, bounce ideas off each other, and see what happens:

• What is the theme of your magazine? Focus on things you love and know about, whether it’s sports, fashion, computers, or social networking. A magazine created based on your interests will end up being more engaging, professional, and useful to readers than one based on a topic you don’t understand.
• Who is your target reader? This helps you focus on your potential. For example, if your topic is fashion, your readership statistics will play a large role in the style and content of your magazine, as well as potential advertising revenue. For example, if your target market is teenage boys and girls, your writing style, content, and even logo and color design will be very different from a magazine targeting men over 40, or people in their 20s.

Be clear about your content. To get people interested in reading your magazine, event spend time, energy, and money on it. Make sure you retain those customers once they read your magazine by reaching people with ongoing needs.

• For example, on the content of buying a house. Three groups of people may need this magazine: buyers, sellers, and real estate agents. However, among the three types of people, only one becomes a repeat customer, and that is the real estate agent. Unless you are targeting buyers and sellers for investment purposes – which is a completely different market – your best target audience for repeat business is real estate agents.

Go out and make contact. To make a successful business, you need to go out and interact with a variety of people – people who can help your magazine succeed.

• It’s important to get to know influential people in the industry. For example, if you’re creating a climbing-themed magazine, you might want to meet with top climbers, content creators, and other stars in the industry. Maybe they’ll tell their friends, “Hey, there’s a new magazine coming out in a few months,” or they’ll say, “Hey, there’s a new magazine coming out in a few months, and I want to cover it.” Either way, the odds are in your favor.
• People with entrepreneurial or financing experience, as well as people in the printing industry. Talk to your bank manager, lawyer, printer, website creator, or anyone who touches your business and has valuable knowledge and experience worth knowing.

Create a business plan. This can help you determine what you want to do and plan for the future. You have to grow sales to be profitable, understand the competition, and figure out your needs so you always know what you’re doing – even when you’re not doing anything!

• When you approach people who can invest in your business, you will also need a business plan. They will be more likely to invest in your business if they see that you are investing your time and energy into it.

Build a team. Once you’ve gone through the stages of defining the type of magazine and figuring out who it serves, you’ll want to be able to assemble a small team that can create that vision. You may be thinking, “I can do it all myself.” Don’t fall into this trap.

• Writing all the articles will take a lot of time. Taking photos or collecting and editing photos takes more time. Much more time will be spent on page layout, advertising and marketing, managing the printing process, sales, distribution, and customer service. Each of these requires corresponding expertise. Unless you plan to publish every six months, it would be wise to build your team at this time.

Hire wisely. Consider the following locations you need to cover:

• Manager. This will most likely be your main role, but you will no doubt be involved in other roles as well. You’ll look at the big picture, produce the magazine, find funding, find a printer, and more.
• Writing and editing. All good and wise words, articles, even page numbers and tables of contents require writing and editing. Focus on editing.
• Art Design. What does this magazine look like? Likewise, different markets require different design approaches, and people will respond accordingly. For example, consider the difference between the two: Wired magazine and The New Yorker. Wired magazine is characterized by bright colors, cutting-edge page layouts, and bold use of white space. Now think of The New Yorker, with its twisted pastel art, witty cartoons, and sharp articles, all using traditional fonts and page layouts.
• Release manager. Someone has to go out and find the printing room, calculate paper costs, do spot checks, and inspections, and be the point person responsible for the nuts and bolts of all releases.
• Sales Manager. All advertising must be profitable as this is where a lot of revenue comes from, especially in the beginning stages as you have to launch the magazine as quickly as possible. Having someone make money for your magazine every day can have a huge impact on your bottom line.
• Marketing Manager. Even if you create a magazine, if people don’t know about it, they still won’t read it. A marketing manager will create the publicity so your magazine appears on newsstands, bookstores, circulation rooms, and more. Together with you, marketing managers will also learn what their competitors are doing – what’s in their press kits, how they promote, how they succeed – and do it better!

Preparing for the first release. Mock up the layout, use “dummy characters” to fill in the blank spaces, download images from the internet to fill in the spots – anything that allows you to envision and plan your first release is good.

• With these ideas in mind, your authors and designers have to know what to create, your marketing and sales people have to know what to sell, and your publishing people have to start calculating prices and getting quotes.
• While they’re at it, roughly plan the next 6 releases. It was easier at first, with the first issue just out and the second issue almost finished.

Start a website. When you’re about to launch your magazine, launch a website. This doesn’t have to be elaborate, at least not at first, but it will provide the public with a place to see what your magazine looks like and what it’s about before they buy it. This is also where you can build an active community forum to get feedback and reviews – invaluable if you want to develop into a successful publisher.

Start your magazine. Now that your team is built, the design is in shape, and the content creators are ready, it’s time to launch your first issue. You will inevitably struggle, but the only way you know how to do it is to do it. It’s an experience you’ll never forget, but at the end of the day, you’ll own a magazine!

Postscript

Get attention. Your first release will be a learning curve and an exciting time, but it’s just the beginning. When people start reading it and advertisers see it in the publication, you’ll undoubtedly get some feedback.

• Do they like the content but not the layout? Figure out why they don’t like it. This layout may be perfect for a different group of people, but not your customers. Before you hesitate to make a change, analyze the pros and cons.
• Is the price right? People often complain about the price of something they buy, but the question is, “Will they buy it?” If a lot of the feedback you get is “It looked good, but it was too expensive, so I didn’t buy it,” then you might Gotta readjust your numbers. This might be about repositioning your expectations, or it might mean selling more ads rather than collecting money per magazine.
• Also always pay attention to which decisions you made were correct. For valid promotions – continue to use. Columns that get appreciated – use more of this style. That comment section where people can post their interesting comments about the field? Do they like this? The key is to pay attention and respond to both the things you’re doing wrong and the things you’re doing right.

Make small adjustments. Always keep an eye on the numbers to see what works and what doesn’t. Your market will change, times will change, and no matter what your theme is, it will be subject to good and bad times. Keep yourself ahead of the game by staying up to date on your chosen industry, and you’ll do well. Good luck!

Tips

• Understand that “survival” does not mean that running a magazine will make you enough money to buy yourself a luxury car and a mansion. Being able to make hundreds or thousands of dollars is a completely different topic. But a positive sign is that there are a few new magazines that are making a lot of money, so you still have a chance to give it a try.
• Be prepared and have the ability to look forward. Preparing for possible difficulties ahead of time can help you get through any of them should they occur. Instead of reacting passively, you face difficulties with a plan.
• Be realistic, but not pessimistic. After all, starting a magazine is a combination of business strategy and creativity. Do the right thing. You can make money. If you fail, you will gain valuable experience.
• Don’t listen to all the naysayers. If you think you have a good idea and you have the skills to follow through, stick with it.
• There are a few key points to understand about launching a magazine. Out of every 100 magazines, only one lasts two years.
• Every day, hundreds of people around the world start new magazines. Take a look at the data for your own country and you’ll be surprised at the new magazine names that appear on newsstands every month.
• On average around the world, for every 100 magazines freshly released from printing plants, less than 30 magazine names last six months, and less than 10 magazine names last one year.
• Only two magazines lasted a year and a half, and ultimately only one survived two years.