How to Start an Online Magazine Business

You can be up and running with an online magazine business in less than a weekend, after building your own website. Then the really hard work begins. To build a profitable business, you must continue developing magazine-style content, growing your audience through marketing, and attracting advertisers. An online magazine is much easier to launch than a print magazine, but there's a drawback: Online competition is fierce, with countless blogs and websites offering magazine-like content. As a result, building a profitable online magazine business is challenging.

Instructions

1. Define your content strategy. Decide between creating original magazine content, or partnering with an existing print magazine that doesn't have a web strategy. Or partner with several small magazines. Use the content and promotional advertising in the magazines to drive traffic online. Then share online advertising revenue with the print publications.

2. Create a business plan based on your content strategy. Starting small allows you to avoid investing a lot of money in the project at the start. You could launch the business for just a few hundred dollars. Or you could raise money from investors, for a more aggressive approach. At a minimum, you'll need internet access and a small budget for acquiring content, unless you plan to write it all yourself, or solicit free articles from contributors.

3. Define your revenue model as part of the business plan. Ad-based models are the most popular for online magazine businesses, but an online magazine needs millions of ad impressions, or "hits", to generate enough ad revenue to support full-time employees.

4. Seek investors, if you're planning to build a big online magazine that eventually realizes a profit. Making money with an online magazine is tough. Salon.com, one of first online magazines, reported in 2010 that it had lost more than $15 million from 2005 to 2010. The Huffington Post, which offers some magazine-style content but bills itself as an "internet newspaper," raised $25 million in funding from investors in 2008, and announced in 2010 that it was nearing profitability. The Huffington Post model of keeping expenses low by acquiring content for free, or through links, is a good model for new online magazine sites to follow.

5. Launch your online magazine business after acquiring a web address and entering into an agreement with a website hosting service. Reach profitability by building millions of hits in traffic and selling advertising based on the size of the audience. Promote the the magazine through your social networks and invite visitors to do the same. Ask other online publishers about referrals for joining advertising networks, including networks specializing in "pay-per-click" and "pay-per-view" advertising.

References

• The Guardian: Why Magazine Formats Are Starting To Look Online
• Time: The New Internet Boom -- Get Rich Slow
• Business insider: Huffington Post Moves Closer To Profitability
• The Wall Street Journal: Salon.com Open To Possible Partner