If you think this opportunity sounds ‘right up your street’ (as Cheryl Cole would say!) I’m going to give you some of the detail.
First of all what does a community magazine look like? It is typically A5 size (around 15cm x 21cm) and printed in full colour. It contains information specific to the area: phone numbers for doctors, schools, supermarkets etc; community events and local history; articles and puzzles; and adverts from businesses within or near to the area. It is hand-delivered to the residents’ homes and copies are dropped off at the library, take-aways and garages. The quantity printed obviously depends on the size of your area, but a typical run might be between 4000 and 6000 copies.
What’s involved in running one? The most important aspect is that of approaching businesses and trades and getting them to advertise (more on the sales aspects in a moment). However, getting the order is just the first step. The type of company you will deal with generally won’t have a graphic designer so they will need to have an advert created for them. Nor are they necessarily great writers so they’ll need to be advised on how to ensuring their advert wording is appropriate (and with correct spelling). Of course your magazine can’t be just advertising so you need a supply of articles to put in there. And it doesn’t make sense to try to deliver all those magazines yourself so you’ll have to set that up too – including legal requirements…etc.
In summary it’s not just a sales job, you are running a business.
Getting the order. This is the one thing I must emphasise here: if you are a shrinking violet this is not the business for you. You absolutely must be capable of approaching people that you don’t know to start a dialogue about advertising with you. Now that sounds like cold-calling and in reality when you start you will have to phone or call in on people you don’t know. But the ways to sell and market to people these days are so much more sophisticated than even five years ago. Don’t think ‘call centre’ type of phoning – we build relationships with people so that they really do want to advertise with us.
How much time is needed? To get your first edition ready, as much time as you can spare. You need to go to print with enough pages to make a profit – typically 24 to 32 – and that’s a lot of businesses to talk to. The first month particularly is very hard work although extremely satisfying and exciting as your business gets started.
While your business is still growing, you should expect to spend a good 6 to 8 hours a day. However, remember that this is completely flexible – if it only suits you to work in school hours and evenings, then that’s what you will do. If you have a full time job and want to start this alongside, you will need to take some time off for the selling part and you will have to give up your evenings and weekends.
You can stop growing it though any time you want. If your aim is to make £1000 a month, then all you do when you get to that level is just ‘backfill’ i.e. top up any advertisers that drop out each month. At that point, you can get away with a few hours every week with a busier couple of days just as you go to print.
Isn’t the market saturated with free publications and junk mail? I could talk till the cows come home about who is and who isn’t competition (and we include that as part of our information), and how to position yourself against them. But, no, the market is far from saturated. Think how many homes there are in the UK, and equally how many businesses. Having said that, you can’t realistically have two identical magazines in the Mags 2 Riches format launching into the same area. There are already a significant number of magazines running so if you are seriously interested in this opportunity, you should act sooner rather than later.
If this is so great, why don’t I just start up more magazines myself? What makes these magazines successful is when the editor (i.e. you) lives in or near the area into which the magazine is distributed. There is no substitute for local knowledge, contacts and being the local ‘ear to the ground’. Clearly we can’t be everywhere at once.
Isn’t advertising suffering a real downturn? It is…in some markets. I can say categorically though, that in our market it’s never been better. We are not in the general advertising market, we are in the micro-business market. Many of our customers are one or two person businesses and when the order book looks a bit light, when ‘word of mouth’ dries up, small businesses advertise. That’s not to say we are complacent. As a team we have got a lot smarter this year but it’s tweaking the business to ensure we continue to grow, not trying to rescue us from a downturn.
And, by the way, nobody is about to make us redundant. I can’t tell you how good that feels.
Is just running a magazine the limit to the career? Far from it. Again – remember I said we are operating in the micro-business market? You will know your client base extremely well. You could choose to launch more publications in other areas, or you could opt to offer other services to your existing base e.g. marketing, websites, design services, business management.
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Do you believe you’ve got what it takes? Are you excited because you can see the potential? The next step is to find out from us if your area is available and if it is we’ll give you some initial advice on how to research your market. To do that you need to get in touch with us by completing the contact form on the right. Of course you could always call us on 023 8027 6361.