Showing posts with label magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magazine. Show all posts
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Publishzer is getting there
Publishzer, the better way to blog, in which we aim to disrupt the way the you can blog. This is the cover, and soon you'll all be able to try it out.
www.publishzer.com
Thursday, January 26, 2012
About saving the magazine industry
Everybody wants to be digital today and most magazine executives today seems to be building iPad apps. Yet the user experience of a print magazine is unmatchable: they’re cheap, never out of battery charge, not a target for thieves and they have twice the screen space when spread as an iPad screen.
The concept of magazines is great and without bringing it to the same level on digital, the executives are running a losing war. Lets consider the recent experience of one of my favorite magazines, The Economist. I subscribed to their iPad mag. First of all, the subscription takes me away from the app, to website with 2 options. €32 13 weeks and 125€ for 51 weeks. But I'd like to pay monthly as is the status quo on most of my subscription services. Sure I could pay per issue, but then there would be no auto-renew.
Granted, this is a small issue in the grand scale. But come on, take a que from something like Spotify, where I do not need to renew, they have my credit card info and its conveniently everywhere I go. That is a well done subscription service. Secondly, most successful magazine concepts in digital media are blog communities. No fees, no limits but high quality accessibility, funded by quality and relevant advertising.
I believe the key on saving the magazine industry is accessibility. Whether it is magazine subscription or advertising funded, the key is to provide seamless accessibility. Let me work a little at the beginning if needed, but aim to guide me to a state where I have the magazine when and where I want to, without forms to fill. This obviously needs security matters, but that I trust you've taken care, right? That is accessibility.
So remember that:
- Monthly fees appear lower than yearly fees
- Cancel anytime feature will enable easier testing
- Have auto-renew as default
- Advertising should be relevant and considered part of the content
If this is taken care, all you really need to focus is having great content.
Photo by: Teppo Hudson
The concept of magazines is great and without bringing it to the same level on digital, the executives are running a losing war. Lets consider the recent experience of one of my favorite magazines, The Economist. I subscribed to their iPad mag. First of all, the subscription takes me away from the app, to website with 2 options. €32 13 weeks and 125€ for 51 weeks. But I'd like to pay monthly as is the status quo on most of my subscription services. Sure I could pay per issue, but then there would be no auto-renew.
Granted, this is a small issue in the grand scale. But come on, take a que from something like Spotify, where I do not need to renew, they have my credit card info and its conveniently everywhere I go. That is a well done subscription service. Secondly, most successful magazine concepts in digital media are blog communities. No fees, no limits but high quality accessibility, funded by quality and relevant advertising.
I believe the key on saving the magazine industry is accessibility. Whether it is magazine subscription or advertising funded, the key is to provide seamless accessibility. Let me work a little at the beginning if needed, but aim to guide me to a state where I have the magazine when and where I want to, without forms to fill. This obviously needs security matters, but that I trust you've taken care, right? That is accessibility.
So remember that:
- Monthly fees appear lower than yearly fees
- Cancel anytime feature will enable easier testing
- Have auto-renew as default
- Advertising should be relevant and considered part of the content
If this is taken care, all you really need to focus is having great content.
Photo by: Teppo Hudson
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Top 10 Blogposts 01/2012
I will be curating 10 great blogposts each week. Published at Publishzer obviously! Below is the first one for this year!
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Social Curation and Evening at REVS Fashion Mag Launch Party
Yesterday I spent an nice evening first at BonnierDevCamp talking about Social Curation. There is more about it in this blog, but I thought to share the slides I used. My focus was five points to cover the current change in the media industry and what opportunities social curation brings. I'm happy that the 30min talk turned into a discussion with active interaction with the hackers. I all up for you guys hacking the media into the digital future.
The five points were:
1. Media is under digital revolution and will follow the fate of music.
2. Social Curation's value is in filtering out noise to focus on niche interestgroups.
3. Enabling readers to use their own voice has huge advertising opportunities.
4. Through these bloggers have opportunity to become a shaping force in the media industry.
5. Mobile is the most personal device and therefore very good for media consumption.
Also after the break you find a nice picture of REVS magazine launch party. It a rather artistic magazine coming out from few of my friends. Nice picture and all, but I see them having hard time making this into a business...well it is very artistic.
Bonnier Lounge
Revs visuals
The five points were:
1. Media is under digital revolution and will follow the fate of music.
2. Social Curation's value is in filtering out noise to focus on niche interestgroups.
3. Enabling readers to use their own voice has huge advertising opportunities.
4. Through these bloggers have opportunity to become a shaping force in the media industry.
5. Mobile is the most personal device and therefore very good for media consumption.
Also after the break you find a nice picture of REVS magazine launch party. It a rather artistic magazine coming out from few of my friends. Nice picture and all, but I see them having hard time making this into a business...well it is very artistic.
Social Curation and Mobile
View more presentations from Teppo Hudson.
Bonnier Lounge
Revs visuals
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Magazines are losing the publishing war to bloggers
Digitalisation hit first on the music publishing business. Currently similar impact is happening in the magazine publishing industry. The main reason for a distruptive change is that consumer are receiving and subsequently increasingly expecting to have content for free. For example, many bloggers do write and publish content online that include faster and even more relevant info than most printed magazines. My personal interest is in how can these bloggers get paid and be brilliant. Is there an answer to this in the disruptive changes on the markets?
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
I'm not a businessman, I'm the business, man! (Jay-Z)
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
So my argument is that rather than relying on producing magazines and hit ebooks (which thou are interesting from content point of view, but not from business point of view), magazine publishing should enable bloggers to earn revenue from issues that they are passionate about. Revenue could come from brands that wish to be included in this passionate conversation by providing content to reference, analyse or just do some shout-out. Results would be much more focused and much higher engangement, and would result in a better service for readers. Afterall, we all loath banner ads, right?
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