The following is the full text of an email I wrote to a university classmate who is involved in a startup music publication called Noise Magazine, a monthly PDF magazine covering independent music “from Australia and and around the globe.” I heard the magazine was struggling to gain subscribers, and was considering shutting down. These were my thoughts on the topic:
I saw your tweet about a lack of subscribers for Noise Magazine. Here are my thoughts on the topic.
Firstly, I am a fan of Noise mag. You guys have done a great job so far and should be congratulated. Congratulations! Writing quality content is key to any publication, and you guys have done this well. I think the biggest downfall for Noise mag is it’s format.
In essence, I think you should be distributing Noise mag as a magazine-style-blog, rather than a subscription based magazine-in-a-pdf. There are hundreds of reasons why this would be to your benefit. I will try to cover as many as I can. The key advantage of a blog-style format is the way you can use it to generate more readers, and from your original tweet, that seems like your goal – gaining more readers.
First, let’s have a look at the current situation. From what I can see, you are relying heavily on word of mouth through Twitter, Myspace and Facebook to gain new subscribers by getting them to visit the Miss Daisy Music site and enter their email address into this form. They then have to wait up to a month before receiving their first issue. It’s possible you are losing some readers right from the beginning.
The first thing I noticed is that there are no back-issues available. As a potential reader, I would be looking for past issues to see exactly what I am subscribing to, or as a subscriber I might be looking for an article I have seen in previous issue. You have also shut the doors to any casual readers who may be interested in reading just one issue or one article. If you take none of my other advice into account, you should at the very least make back-issues available online.
My second thought is that by publishing Noise mag as a pdf emailed direct to subscribers, you have eliminated the possibility of gaining any readers through search engine results. A key advantage of a blog, over your current format is the ability for a blog to generate search engine traffic. In my experience, a substantial chunk of the traffic a blog or website receives will come from search engines. That is, someone making a Google search and finding your site through the results. You might be surprised at how many keywords your site starts to show up under on Google.
As your site grows your content will begin to work for you. As you publish more content and your site becomes more popular, your blog will show up in more search results, and in higher positions, delivering you more readers. As I mentioned, you’ve all sorted regarding content, so why not put your content to work for you by generating new readers?
Through covering emerging bands, Noise mag is perfect for generating this type of traffic. When someone Google searches for a new band they’ve just heard, they could find the Noise mag article about the band right underneath (or even above) the band’s MySpace page in the Google results. You have potentially just gained yourself another reader by having your site appear in the search results.
The second major way a website can generate traffic (and thus, new readers) is through inbound links. Unfortunately, this is another area where your pdf-in-an-email format fails. It’s impossible to link to. Imagine if the bands you feature could send their Twitter followers or Facebook fans a link directly to their interview in Noise mag. The simpler it is to access content, the more likely readers are to access it. If a new reader likes what they see they will read more, and keep coming back. A blog format will allow other sites to link directly to your content.
At the moment you know how many people subscribe to Noise Mag and receive the email in their inbox. But do you know how many people are actually reading it? This is another downfall of the pdf-in-an-email format, you have no way of gathering reader statistics.
This is another reason a a blog-style publication can be a huge advantage. Not only can you measure how many people are reading your magazine, but you can use the statistics you gather to keep improving your publication. Reader statistics can be used to find out what sort of content your readers like the most, and also the content that isn’t so popular, and fine-tune your publication accordingly. Use statistics to find out what your most popular content is, so you can produce more content like it.
- Get readers involved – let readers comment on your articles and interviews and ask bands their own questions.
- Give away a CD or ticket to a show for the best comment or reader submitted question.
- Embed a band’s videos at the end of your article or interview.
- Link to each band’s MySpace/Website/YouTube/Twitter page in your post.
- Publish a gallery of photos, or a video from a show to accompany your reviews.
- Put an AddThis or ShareThis button on every one of your articles so your readers can easily share your content with their friends.
It’s important to remember that people read online content in many different ways – some people like to check in on a siteweek or two to check up on what they’ve missed, or they visit the site more regularly. Others appreciate a friendly reminder in their email every week/month or month, letting them know about new content. Other readers like to stay right up to the minute, and subscribe in an RSS reader. Some follow their favourite blogs on Twitter, or friend them on Facebook or MySpace and access new content through those portals. Fortunately you can deliver your content through all of these methods using a blogging platform, even a free platform like Wordpress.
I understand that you have specifically gone for a very traditional “magazine” style publication, but in my opinion (for what it’s worth) this is what is holding you back, especially when it comes to reaching new readers. Many online publications have successfully managed to incorporate all of the advantages of a blog, while still maintaining a very magazine-like feel and use regular email “issues” to keep readers up to date. I think this type of format would also work well for Noise.
Some of my favourite websites use this method of publishing. Be sure to check out Vice Magazine, Mashable, Four Thousand and Vive Cool City (Video Magazine). Take note of how they publish their content, and be sure to subscribe to, and check out their email
Logically, I make the same decision when I’m buying alcohol as I do when I’m grocery shopping. It’s all about value. Why shell out a dollar for a small can of John West Salmon with Onion and Tomato when I can get almost twice as much Home Brand Tuna Chunks in oil for just 89 cents. It mightn’t have any fancy flavours, but it will still fill my sandwich; in fact it will fill two sandwiches! The same theory applies to alcohol shopping. A carton of Tooheys Extra Dry containing 30 standard drinks will set me back around $40, while a box of Golden Oak Medium Dry White containing almost the same amount of alcohol costs just $12. Let me break it down for you in tabular format:
