The Digital Magazine Side Hustle

According to Comparably.com - The salaries of Magazine Publishers in the US range from?$23,150 to $118,722, with a median salary of $89,085. The middle 57% of Magazine Publishers make between $89,165 and $98,931, with the top 86% earning $118,722.

What topics or hobbies get you excited? Cooking? Teaching? Children's Books? Travel? Cars? Gardening? Golf? Running 5k races? These are all great subjects for an online digital magazine. And with today's technology, producing a digital magazine is easily within reach for everyone.

Digital Magazine Tool Kit

With art creation tools like Canva.com, magazine creation tools like Flipsnack.com and Paperturn.com, and content writing tools like Regie.ai and Jasper.ai, it's becoming easier and easier to do.

Here is an example from Flipsnack that shows the animation and video possible using these digital magazine publishing tools:

Here are two examples made with Paperturn.com. The first is more of a product magazine without video:

This second example shows the interactivity, such as GIFs and Videos, that can be built into a magazine. Imagine what that can do for a travel or children's book:

And some digital magazines are figuring out ways to package content and advertising as a package. One example that you've all seen is the Top 10 physicians, surgeons, or specialists in a city. If you're writing an RV travel magazine business, then it might be the Top 10 RV Sites in the [United States, Canada, California, Tennessee, etc.]. For 5k races, it might be the Top 10 5k races in the World. You get the idea.

Media Kits

The way the packaging works is to combine being listed as one of the best, along with a 2-page article on you or your facility, and then a link to your site to book a sale or a reservation. These usually sell for $2500 for the entire package which includes the digital rights, and an award plague that can be hung on a wall. Ten of those in an issue are going to bring in revenue of $25,000. Four issues per year create your $100,000 side hustle.

But some publishers go a step further and arrange for a hard copy version of the magazine to be printed, with you or your business on the cover. Imagine if you're a luxury RV resort, and you're featured on the cover of a magazine that gets sent to 100,000 motor home subscribers. And then imagine giving these magazines out to guests. Think that would help your business's word-of-mouth? Two companies will print those magazines in traditional style for you, Printivity.com and NewspaperClub.com in the UK.

Here's an example of a 40-page magazine and what NewspaperClub.com charges for 300 magazines and 1,000 magazines for illustration:

For larger runs, the price starts to drop dramatically. So, you can even consider doing a local free magazine like you see in many towns and use your advertising sponsor dollars to pay for the town's distribution.

Creating this kind of customized digital version and then converting it to a?printed magazine is relatively easy to do from an Adobe PDF document, and you have an individual sale that might be worth $25,000 or more from just one customer. And because Paperturn.com and Flipsnack.com have social media outputs, you can even add those outlets as paid alternatives.

The next step is to figure out all your various product offerings, and then create a media kit. You can download a variety of media kits to use as examples from here: Link.

Help with article writing and layout

There are some new AI article writers out there that create great articles. Most have been very expensive and used primarily by large publications to put out multiple analyses?of businesses and other writing chores instead of paying staff writers. They're really good, but not for us entrepreneurs - yet. However, one that I just started to evaluate that does some high-quality work for blogs and other writing tasks is worthy of consideration. It's called Regie.ai. They have a free version you can use to try it, and their Pro version is only $29 per month. Try it. You'll be pleasantly surprised. It even checks for plagiarism.

Another AI article writer is Jasper.ai. It's very similar to Regie.ai and is an alternative for you to consider. It integrates with Surfer SEO to help you maximize your website, blog, and article positioning on Google. It's kind of cool because it helps you to continually move up your SEO rating until you cross the 75% mark, which then gets you onto the first page of Google. Surfer SEO also has a free plan for you to consider, and this is one of the more important things that you can do if you're into digital magazine publishing. Jasper doesn’t have a free plan option and although it starts at $29 per month, it’s more expensive at the higher level of usage.?

From your perspective, what you’re doing is using an AI copywriting tool as an alternative to a staff writer. And if you watched the Jasper demo, you could see that it doesn’t take much writing skill on your end to get some high-quality work produced. But there are other ways...

Another solution is to find someone in your LinkedIn network who is a writer/editor, or alternatively, use Upwork. Some writers charge by the hour and some by the word, but their prices are usually pretty reasonable. But you're better off learning to write on your own until you get some legs under your start-up. Use a tool like Grammarly to help you fix your writing and teach you how to write better. If you start writing enough, the fixes Grammarly recommends will eventually stick in your mind until you can write like a professional. It's like having an editor looking over your shoulder all the time, and Grammarly's free version is excellent.

Create Other Revenue Possibilities with a Website

If you can combine your publishing efforts with a website, that's going to open up your ability to add Google AdSense to your revenue stream. AdSense pays?$8-20?for every 1,000 views on average. The total earnings depend on the website category, the type of content you provide, the amount of website traffic, where users are located, and how ads are set up in Google AdSense to pay the most per thousand views. As a publisher, you will get?68% of the click amount?(and 51% when it comes to Google AdSense for search).?

Adding a website also allows you to take advantage of sold advertising such as banner ads and sidebar placement ads. Depending on the type of magazine you write - say RV travel - you can package up a full-page ad in one of the sponsorship packages along with a banner ad. As you begin looking through the media kits mentioned above, it will help you come up with more ideas for revenue.

One revenue generator that I especially like is combining the notion of a membership with a subscription. For instance, let's say that you list RV sites for free on your website, and combine that with a discount at those sites in exchange. Then you let your members rate each RV site to help other RV travelers (think traffic), and in exchange, you get $29 per year for a combination membership and subscription to your digital magazine. Just to highlight that opportunity, 10,000 members are then worth $290,000 per year in subscription revenue alone, not to mention the other revenue streams above. To see an example of this concept, go to GoodSam.com. Marcus Lemonis is the CEO and Chairman. Marcus did 8 seasons on a show called The Profit. He also owns separate magazines called Camping World and RV Magazine.

9 Ways to Get More Subscribers

This is always a tough road for start-ups. You can search Flippa.com for online magazines that already have a circulation, but then you also inherit their branding if you buy one, so be careful there.

Affiliate marketers can help you get started, especially if you have a membership or subscription for sale. Consider companies like Rakuten Advertising and Clickbank, and there are plenty of others.

But let's say you've done some preliminary work and you're starting your subscription/membership approach. Perhaps you start an active email campaign to several thousand potential vendors to your subscription audience, as GoodSam.com did in the example above. They list 2,000 sites for their members to peruse. Now you put together your first publication, highlight your top 10, and it's time to sell those memberships and the free digital magazine subscription. This is the toughest part. So here are some of the top ways to get that initial subscription base built:

1. You can offer your subscribers access to your magazine on their mobile devices for free through Google Play + Amazon App Store + Apple App Store. If you use Paperturn.com to produce your digital magazine, it's compatible with smartphones and tablets. Give them a free subscription, and in the magazine, upsell the subscribers to the membership plus the subscription.
2. In every area of interest, several individuals will be able to influence potential readers of your magazine.?Reaching out to these people, i.e., journalists, bloggers, or celebrities, can give your magazine some great extra coverage. Use Influencer Marketing Hub to find them and other services.
3. Tried and true email lists are always a possibility. These are also listed on Influencer Marketing Hub at this link. Campaigner looked like a platform that stood out.
4. Another email list creation tool that looks very interesting is IGLeads. Before I begin, you should know that email 'scrapers' are not legal to use, so don't use them. However, this tool professes to work within legal guidelines, as well as within site terms and conditions to capture emails from the following sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. It's done by setting up specific search criteria. As an example, if you were going after a specific group on Facebook, you identify that group to the software. You could also specify a #hashtag and it will work with that. The downside is that it takes up to 48 hours to find the data in this legit fashion, so you have to be patient. It starts at a monthly fee of $49. You can upload these lists into Google Ads and Facebook, or run your own cold email campaign by using Gmail's GMass tool. It's free. Have them double-opt into receiving your free subscription and you can claim them from that point on. (And that would be another revenue stream - selling that list to potential vendors. Just make sure you follow the GDPR, California, and US rules on the use of the lists.)
5. Create a Facebook business page which is pretty easy. Connect the "Learn More" or "Website" button to the home page of your website. Start posting on it about your publication, and some of the features. Allow people to sign up for the free version, and then convert them to the membership version in the magazine if you go the GoodSam.com route. If not, remember that you still have the initial revenue streams I mentioned at the start of the article.
6. Use all social media. If you use Paperturn.com, you can easily post to every major social media platform a link to your magazine. Use the pop-up feature to trap the incoming traffic for a subscription. Just email and first name will get you a ton of subscribers. Ask for more information than that and people will leave. Make sure they can see the initial articles as your "proof of value" and have the pop-up occur as they start to scroll down the page. Make sure you tell them that it's free. You can upsell the membership, if you offer one, later.
7. Create a referral plan. If you do have a membership, perhaps you offer to upgrade them from a 1-year membership to a 3-year membership by referring 10 subscribers to your magazine. Or offer them a tchotchke for helping you get more subscribers. And make sure the tchotchke has your website on it for even more referrals.
8. Attend shows that are about your subject area.?If you’re writing about crafts, there are plenty of craft shows to attend.?Print up some hardcopy versions of your magazine and hand them out in exchange for people signing up for your magazine, or simply allow them to download the digital version.? Many of these shows give you the list of paid attendees – if they use that venue.?But others are “open house” events where no information is collected.
9. Use Facebook to advertise. The ability to target on Facebook is superb. You can micro-focus on people who own cats, go camping, like recipes - you name it. And you can set your budget. I only recommend doing this if you need to show a larger subscription base. Do others use social media to up their subscriptions? The answer is 'yes.' Here is how Vogue does it:

This is their offer claim: “Get your copy of VOGUE delivered FREE to your door before it hits the shops + FREE ACCESS to the iPad + iPhone editions! Alternatively, choose from one of our fantastic digital-only offers, available across all devices.”

Summary and Request

This is one of the most potentially lucrative "side hustles" that you can build. But it requires you to do a lot of preplanning so that you have a solid go-to-market strategy. I like it because if you create the revenue streams talked about above, you're going to be able to sell it for many multiples of that revenue stream in the future - or simply continue to enjoy the cash flow it produces.

Use your imagination to grow your subscribers and if you have an idea, don’t be afraid to share it with the rest of us.??We're all in this together, and if we "crack the code" on this, we'll all benefit. What business wouldn't want also to have a publication that goes hand-in-hand with their products and services? It's a great way to keep top-of-mind with your customers. And if you already have a lot of customers, that's going to be your start for subscribers.

From my perspective, this is a 5-star side hustle opportunity. There are no big expenditures upfront. You can start with a quarterly publication and increase your frequency once you prove it out. But most importantly, you're building a side hustle around something that you love, so if it takes off, you're going to be doing what you love every day of your life.

? 2022, Joe DiDonato, Side Hustles Newsletter #17