How Are YOU Making Money With Your Digital Magazine?

Sponsorships? Rich media? Live links? What are you doing to make money with your digital magazine? We’re pulling together the results of the 2009 Nxtbook Revenue Generation Survey and would love your insight. Please take the time and tell us what you’re doing to turn a buck with your Nxtbook.

With The Thoughts That We’re Thinkin’ We Could Be Another Lincoln…

From Folio:

Advanstar’s Alic says Nxtbook is also exploring ways to take digital editions to the next level. "Our vendor is thinking about the next generation of their platform and to break away from the literal translation of a magazine online, and I think that’s worthwhile."

Great article (Mike Alic is one bright fellow) and we’re always grateful to see Folio covering the space. That being said, here’s how it could’ve been better:

The media continues to miss the dramatic shift that’s taken place in the industry over the past two years. In the article, Folio only writes about the product features, yet the three vendors featured actually have somewhat similar features, as do an entire raft of other vendors. What’s totally missed is that the larger publishers – for the most part – are going with full service providers. While the full service providers (Nxtbook included) have a higher cost, we also do a wide variety of the heavy lifting – from file preparation, to e-mail services, sales training, multimedia creation, etc. These are the types of things that many publishers, but particularly the larger publishers, don’t have the bandwidth for right now.

Folio’s not the only one. A recent "Digital Magazine Supplement" by Publishing Executive did the same thing – lumping together the full-service providers with the self-service.

This difference will become even more pronounced in the coming years. Currently, we offer content on all smart phones, Kindles and screen readers for the visually impaired. While you might think one button can serve content up to all of these products seamlessly, truth is that it can’t. It’s a service requiring various levels of human interaction.

In the coming years, people will be using these devices more and more, which means publishers will have to decide if they have the time to build various versions of their content at a lower cost or if they wish to pay more to have a full service company do it. Keep in mind, depending on who you are, the answer will vary – but it’s Folio’s job to force you to ask the question of yourself.

To coin an analogy, it would be like comparing shuttle service companies to new car dealerships. While they both have cars in common, they provide different solutions at different price-points for different customers and different reasons. To not acknowledge this fundamental difference and help readers understand the maturation of the industry is an oversight.

 

 

Nxtbook Signs on As Sponsor of Awesome Event for Magazine Publishers

To be blunt, this hasn’t been our favorite year for existing events. There were few stand-out successes among events we have a tradition of sponsoring. FOLIO’s Growth Summit was a surprising success in a year of shows that for the most part were 65% of what they were in previous years. 

That being said, those companies that tried to do something new and innovative were rewarded with great results. ABM’s joint event with Custom Publishing guru Joe Pulizzi was an astounding success. (I don’t know the last time we were giddy over an ABM event and if this one doesn’t happen again, it’ll be a shame.)

Now you can add Min to the list of those trying to raise the bar in a tough climate with their recently announced Bottom Line Leadership for Magazine Brands event next month in New York City. We’ll be honest with you: it’s tough to convince us to sponsor new shows this year. We need to look at them and feel as if we’d truly regret not being there to sign on and that’s how we feel about the Min event. Organized by Michele Magazine, here’s the speaker roster:

• Andy Amill, Weight Watchers Magazine
• Mary Ann Bekkedahl, Rodale
• Deb Burns, Luxury Design Group, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.
• Daniele Campbell, Rodale Interactive
• Jim Elliott, James G. Elliott
• Matt Gay, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
• Ramona Gonzales, formerly of Microsoft
• Philippe Guelton, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.
• Gregg Hano, Bonnier Technology Group
• Chuck Howell, Meredith Publishing 
• Kristine Kern, Mansueto Ventures
• Knight Kiplinger, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine and KiplingerForecasts.com
• Jay Lauf, The Atlantic
• Claudia Malley, National Geographic Magazine
• Janet Mannheimer, Publishing Experts
• Laura Reid, Hearst
• Howard Roth, formerly Bonnier Corp
• Val Scansaroli, Quebecor World
• Ava Seave, Quantum Media
• Sylvia Sierra, Access Intelligence LLC
• Kit Taylor, New York Magazine

Like I said, we looked at it and felt we’d be missing the one great day if we weren’t there. So we are, as one of the fortunate sponsors of the event. It’s a one day event and it’s not cheap. But if you’re a magazine executive, you’ve probably got some questions this year, and we’re looking at this event to provide some answers.

Multipliers

The multiplier effect isn’t tough to understand. If you do a lot of little things well, the end result is a big thing. For example, notice this issue of Ophthamology Times Europe Digest. You’ll notice that the publisher took the time and energy to lay it out for optimized screen reading. However, that little tool bar above the magazine is because this guy took the time to Re-Tweet it. And he did so from an original Tweet by the magazine itself.

Awesome layout. Awesome marketing. Rewarded by free promotion by a happy reader.

Great Nxtbooks…

It’s been a while since we’ve given a shout out to a few of our top titles. These four represent very different audios, but all of them cracked the top 10% in readership for the past 30 days. Congrats!

Interweave Knits – What’s notable about this one? Check out the note from the publisher. This was their first issue. Cracking the top tier of titles out of the gate is awesome!

Nursing Spectrum – This designed-for-digital title incorporates some great layout and design to help the reading experience.

Cookies, Bars & Cake – Note that this title was done pre-Nxtbook 3.0 but when you’ve got great content, people are still reading it months later.

GP2 – If you’re a guitar player, you won’t want to miss this one, and neither did thousands of readers.

Are You Running Ad Networks on Your Website…

…. or worse, in your digital magazine?

Several months ago, one of our competitors started advertising this ability. While the technology wasn’t new (we’ve had the ability to do this for years), it’s not a good business decision to do so and we said as much over at Folio.

Yesterday I came across this interesting article which says it so much better (and with numbers!). In short, ad networks can do great harm with space you could be making far more money on, particularly if you’re a niche publisher and know your advertisers well.

Everybody Dance

Still trying to understand social media (or trying to help somebody else understand it?) Have them watch this video:

Twitter Metrics

Hopefully you’re using Twitter by now, not just because it’s the newest shiniest thing, but because a. it’s free, b. it’s easy and c. if you’re not experimenting with things that are free and easy, you definitely aren’t experimenting with the more difficult stuff.

At any rate, here’s a post about one metric to track to track on Twitter: # of followers v. # of people you follow. The logic in the post is sound, but so is the logic from all the commenters who disagree. In short, figure out what works best for your brand and try it out.

In regards to what Twitter means for digital magazines, here’s an update:

1. Aside from a couple day period in July when one of our magazines went crazy on Twitter, the past 30 days were the biggest Nxtbooks via viewed Twitter days of all with monthly growth of 31% over the previous period.

2. Though Twitter continues to boost the number of overall reads of digital magazines, we didn’t see the continued increase in higher engagement for digital magazine readers via Twitter that we saw early in the year. Probably this is because more brands are now pushing out content this way. This is something we’ll definitely keep an eye on in the coming months, as it would be nice if Twitter didn’t just bring you more readers, but better readers.

For more Twitter, follow the Nxtbook account at http://twitter.com/nxtbook or me at http://twitter.com/marcusgrimm

Down 22.3% is the New Flat?

According to ABM, BtoB average magazine revenue (including shows and ads) fell 22.3% in the first half of this year. Here’s hoping you’re doing way better than that.

The same study showed that magazine pages fell 30% during the same period. Nxtbook customers are down, too, though the number’s closer to 10%. As we’ve said before, we take that as a sign that those publishers who choose digital editions are more clever about a lot of things.

Designing for Digital

It’s a question we get every day. Well maybe not every day, but most days. If I want to design for digital, what fonts and font sizes should I use? Nxtbookers John Hemsath and Andrea Bierly whipped up this simple sample to show you how various fonts and font sizes will look on the computer screen. If you’re starting from scratch, why make something requiring the pesky zoom button?

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