How to Make an Internet Magazine
It is easy today to start an online magazine, but it's difficult to do one well. Often, internet magazines run for one or two issues and then disappear, having proven to be too much work for their owners to maintain. Starting an Internet magazine right requires that you locate the right web hosting package from the start, design your website and acquire plenty of good-quality submissions before you even consider launching your magazine. Keeping it going requires an audience, which means you, the editor, need to learn how to market.
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Instructions
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Create a concept for your Internet magazine, and be as specific as possible. If you want to create a fiction magazine, decide on a genre and a focus. For example, you might decide to run a romance magazine focusing on vampire romance. Nonfiction magazines should be even more specific: a magazine focusing on tools for beading jewelry crafters, for instance. Sharply focused magazines are easier to run and market.
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Choose a title, and at the same time, buy a domain name. Don't agonize over "the perfect" domain name; just pick something close to the title of your magazine. The vampire romance zine above, for instance, could be www.love-bytes.com or www.dark-love.com.
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Choose a commercial (not free) web host that offers unlimited storage and bandwidth and that has received excellent reviews. Your website should have, at minimum, a cover page home page, a table of contents linked to stories and an archive section. Many online magazines also run forums for writers and readers, and some also offer an email version of their magazine that readers can subscribe to. You may not know everything you will want to do with your ezine yet, so try to keep your options open.
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Decide how you're going to monetize your magazine. Even if you're just running your zine for love, it's smart to try to turn enough profit to offset expenses and maybe even pay your writers a little bit. The simplest and surest way to make money from your magazine is by running advertisements provided by Google's Adsense program and by signing up to do affiliate sales for Amazon.
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Create your website template and the logo for your website. Keep it simple for your first launch: home page, story/article pages, advertising slots, a table of contents.
Develop a writer's contract. Writers will need to assign you electronic rights to publish their stories, and you will need to inform them of exactly how long their stories will remain electronically available, as well as what your future plans for their stories are. You will also need a page outlining submission guidelines. The easiest way to develop both these documents is by visiting online magazines that are similar to yours and using their guidelines and contract as samples.
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Advertise for submissions to your magazine. Post advertisements at writers' websites and on Craig's List. If you offer to pay for published stories, you are likely to be swamped with submissions. Give yourself plenty of time (ideally, about six months) between requesting submissions and launching your first issue, as it will take time to wade through manuscripts.
Before you're ready to launch your magazine, you should have enough submissions lined up to fill two magazine issues. Generate, acquire or find graphics for your magazine, as well.
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Once your first magazine is in place and you have user-tested it to ensure your links work, you're ready to launch. Have a marketing plan in place so you'll have good traffic from the very beginning. Advertise using Adsense or Yahoo! ads (many web hosts give away a limited amount of these when you first sign up), and create a Facebook page so you can advertise there, as well. If you have any famous writers publishing in this issue, write and distribute a press release to the appropriate industry media. Put up fliers in your local bookstores and libraries. Ask friends and family to advertise your ezine, and ask writers in the issue to advertise, as well.
Then start preparing your next edition.
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Tips & Warnings
Because paying magazines are often swamped with submissions, start by not paying writers, paying in revenue share or paying only a small amount. After your first round of submissions, you can adjust payments upward if you need more quality submissions.
If you're inexperienced in web design, use a WordPress magazine theme to create a blog that acts and looks like a magazine.
Create a strict deadline calendar, and adhere to it. Magazines with a regular print schedule are more likely to count as pro or semipro magazines, which draws higher quality writers.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit blank magazine spines - with dates image by Wingnut Designs from Fotolia.com
