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Home » The Famous Blog » How to Turn Your Blog into a Profitable Print Magazine

How to Turn Your Blog into a Profitable Print Magazine

December 10, 2011 - Last Modified: December 10, 2011 by Veronica Pamoukaghlian 1,619

Profitable Print Magazine

If you´ve been blogging for a while, and you´re making enough money as it is, it´s always healthy to look for new ways to expand your business.

I had never thought about creating a magazine from my blog The Wander Life, until my friend Rosario, who had seen my blog blossom from a humble personal travelogue into an authoritative site, came up to me one day and said, you should start a magazine with all of your blog´s content, people would be interested in buying it, and advertisers would follow you too.

At first, I thought she was crazy, but then, I did some research and, turns out, it was not such a bad idea after all!

DYI STYLE

Tabbloid & Zinepal

If you thought you needed a big office with designers working at full speed to start your own magazine, think again. In the DIY era, anything is possible.

tabbloid magazine sampleThere are several free online services that will grab your blogs and format them into stylish customizable PDF magazines ready for printing.

Tabbloid is a creation of HP. It lets you input the URLs or feeds of your blog and then sends a clean PDF with a stylish design to your email. It is completely free, you don´t have to be an HP customer, and you don´t need to sign up for anything.

Zinepal is another service that lets you turn your blog into a magazine that can be read in print, kindle, ipad or other mobile devices. While the free version of the service is pretty cool, a pro account will let you edit, add advertising and customize designs. The free version only lets you add 5 stories to your magazine, and it will include a “Created by Zinepal” footer on every page.

The red lines you can see on the image (left) are warnings you will get when there is video or audio content that is unprintable; another drawback of the free user account.

FOCUS

To start a profitable magazine, you need to have a clear focus, you need to know the audience you are targeting very well. Blogs started out as online journals, where writers and ordinary people alike could write about whatever took their fancy.

A magazine, on the other hand, will die quickly if it doesn´t have a defined audience. When you are deciding which blogs to include on your magazine, think well about the audience you are targeting. Perhaps your favorite blogs do not fit, and you´ll have to leave them out, but you should always remember that focus will yield much more loyalty and sales in the end.

DESIGN

If you are not doing the fast DIY thing and you´re hiring a designer, I recommend that you look at magazines you like and buy first. Designers are nothing without clear guidance from the person hiring them. Magazine design is not about making things look pretty, it´s about making the magazine work, about attracting advertisers and satisfying readers.

If you have no clue where to start, I also recommend that you take a look at some books like 10 Influential Creators for Magazine Design and Magazine Designing (you can browse online through the latter).

MAGAZINE PRINTING

One of the keys to making your startup magazine look amazing is finding a great magazine printing company. Once you have the layout and the content, your designer and your printing company will have to decide what kind of paper and format will best suit your magazine.

Digital printing has made this kind of service much simpler and affordable than it used to be, and the cost-benefit relationship can be enormous, if you market your magazine well.

ADVERTISING

If you are starting out with a very small investment, the best idea is to go LOCAL. Distributing your magazine in your area will mean that local shops will naturally be interested in having a presence there. More so, if you are putting out a quality product and distributing it for free.

It all depends on what your niche and your target audience are. You have to work out an excellent pitch for advertisers, and you can also sell a package deal of online and offline advertising.

Your blog´s sponsors may also be interested in the magazine, and you should always profit from a flowing offline-online dynamic.

When approaching advertisers for the first time, it is also a good idea to print out a mock isssue, so that they can see what the magazine will look like. This will work best with advertisers selling products that are somehow related to some of the feature articles in that issue.

MARKETING & PROMOTION

the wander life magazineHere are some great ways to gain exposure for your magazine:

  • Sponsor local events
  • Use targeted advertising
  • Social networking
  • Develop Corporate partnerships
  • Offer free magazine issues with related products
  • Get endorsed by influential people in your niche
  • Listen to your readers and advertisers
  • Use co-creation tools

Now, go out there and start a magazine that people will remember. You can just use your own blog, or enter a joint partnership with a blogger that you like, whose themes are compatible with yours. That way, you can share expenses and minimise risks.

The only thing you will regret is not having tried, so just go for it, and don´t forget to send me a copy of your brilliant first issue. Happy magazine printing!

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business

About Veronica Pamoukaghlian

Follow @thewanderlife

Writer and filmmaker based in Uruguay. Occasional online marketing and design blogger. Check out Veronica's The Wander Life.

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{ 19 Responses }

  1. Alan Clark says:
    Hi, This is an interesting article, especially the HP service that allows you to print your blog into a magazine. The reason I wanted to drop a message here was to remind you that the resolution of an image has to be at least 300dpi if you want to print it. Most web images are nowhere near this resolution and will look terrible when printed. So, if you plan to do this, make sure to use higher resolution images. Thanks
  2. Walter says:
    I like the idea of doing this! Advertising it locally can catapult your local presence and slowly introduce you business/product into the public. On my own experience, local products that is advertised locally gains recognition and you can further evaluate it's potential to sell. If you are planning to go nation wide you better evaluate the odds locally first.
  3. Marco Espinosa says:
    A little genius! The opportunities to make money online are very diverse, a ton of ways to win. But the method to make money online in a good mood or as a hobby, the chances are lower to be successful. Me personally, I appreciate your work and we all do who read this blog. We can only thank you for your nice gesture and for offering us this information!
  4. Jerry says:
    Hey thanks for the resources, I'm going to give Tabbloid a look and see how it goes =)
  5. Dawn says:
    This is great! I had thought about taking certain posts and creating a book based off of my blog but this is a better idea I think. I had not thought about creating a magazine based on my blog. Very cool, I am going to look into this. Thank you for sharing this information with us!
  6. Mohd Akbar says:
    This is such a helpful and insightful article, Really these tips are very useful to me. Have a nice day.
  7. carlbug says:
    In the past was easy to succeed with a blog, but right now the Web market is 'full'. It is very difficult in a competitive niche where you will have (for sure) top competitors. But, with passion and hard working you can make a business from a blog. I tried it in the past, but without results.
  8. Sonia says:
    This was a great article. My mans daughter does this for her website and created a nice magazine with Magcloud actually. They came out pretty awesome and in color. I never heard of the ones you mentioned and I will have to check these out soon. I love the tips you stressed too because anyone hoping to just set up shop doesn't realize the hard work ahead of them. I see how long it takes her to create a magazine and she works hard at it, but she gets tons of sales in the process.
  9. Dianne says:
    I would love to do this in the future! Right now I'm getting my blogs settled.
  10. Veronica Pamoukaghlian says:
    Hi Paloma, The products and services will largely depend on what your magazine is about. You need to find advertisers who want to target the same market as you. (Sounds more complicated than it is) Mucha suerte!!
  11. Drewry says:
    I'm starting to get the hang of this whole blogging and Internet marketing thing, while developing a true love for making this work. It does take up much time during my day, but I do believe it's all worth "doing the transformation work" :-)
  12. Paloma says:
    Dear Veronica, first of all sorry for my terrible english. I really liked the article, especially the part about yo don' t need a big office with designers working at full speed to start your own magazine. I also found very sincere and trying to show the truth. ¿ Do you know any idea about services o products to promote in the magazine and make some money with it ? Thank you very much for the valuable information shared. I am at your disposal.
  13. Mika Castro says:
    Really cool. It's the first 'magazine layout' I see that is truly appealing compared to paper versions. I discovered your blog recently and I'm liking it. It also gives me some ideas as to how I can extend this to WordPress.
  14. David Leonhardt says:
    This is REALLY cool. I know you can put your blog on Kindle, if you live in the USA, but I did not realize there were ways to put it into a magazine format. If you post a lot of evergreen posts, this could be a really great offline marketing tool.
  15. Pritam says:
    Its really a good idea to turn into a profitable magazine. Both the sites Tabbloid & Zinepal offers a cool feature to convert your favorite feed into a magazine.
  16. Jamie Northrup says:
    Nice Veronica! I've always wanted to have my own magazine... thanks for sharing!
    • Veronica Pamoukaghlian says:
      Hi Paloma, The products and services will largely depend on what your magazine is about. You need to find advertisers who want to target the same market. (Sounds more complicated than it is) Mucha suerte!!
    • Veronica Pamoukaghlian says:
      Wishing you best of luck with your magazine!!!

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