Step by Step Guide To Publishing Your Own News Magazine

Published in

mobiotics

9 min readDec 9, 2021

Print media is on the way out and digital is the future. Research has shown that around 44% of consumers read 1–2 printed news magazines a month. In contrast as of now, 27% of people read 1–2 digital news magazines a month. Revenue in the Online Newspapers & Magazines segment is projected to reach $36B in 2021. It is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2021–2025) of 4.89%, resulting in a projected market volume of $44B by 2025.

News magazines will continue to be a popular source of entertainment and insight. As more and more readers choose digital over print media, revenue growth from digital publishing is expected to increase further.

The growth of e-magazines can be attributed to the continued popularity of large-screen smartphones (5–6.9 inches), or the so-called ‘phablets’ globally. The richer experience provided by digital magazines is also another important factor that has led to the growth in their popularity. Digital magazines provide an expanded experience as digital publishers can include videos, animations, audio, images and links, and even products and services that basically combine publishing with multimedia and e-commerce merchandising. More possibilities are lower costs, global distribution and reach, virality, interaction, ad hosting, interactive content, convenience for the reader, and sustainability. Thus digital magazine format has a lot of undeniable advantages. It brings about more earnings, more readers, and environmental sustainability.

Publishers, News aggregators, News providers, Creative magazine publishers, etc. can have different monetization options like Subscription, Advertising, Lead generation, or incorporate eCommerce options which allow readers to buy items directly in their magazine.

An Overview of News Magazines

A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories, in greater depth than newspapers or newscasts, and aim to give the consumer an understanding of the important events using multimedia effectively in a personalized and effective manner.

Magazines can delve further into subject matter than newspapers while allowing writers ample time to craft provocative, insightful articles. Even as newspapers struggle to reinvent themselves, magazines thrive as readers seek, and find, tailored information and entertainment within their pages.

Many publishers use News magazine platforms to have accurate reader analytics, establish additional revenue sources, and promote products or services.

Is Launching a News Magazine Platform Right For You?

There are various things to consider before launching a news magazine platform. We’ve picked out significant points that you need to consider ahead.

The content you have is premium and valuable and can attract a large audience. Will your content or your creative elements be unique? The content must come off as striking and useful to readers so it’s most likely to attract return visits and subscriptions.
You have an established audience on other channels/platforms — if you have an existing audience in print/social media platforms, you can work on converting your readers into paying customers.
You have different content like News desk, Photo, Video and Audio Gallery and have a consistent, content updates calendar. If your news magazine business plan is going to succeed, you’re going to need a steady flow of new articles and related media content.

It is also likely that you’ve got questions like.

Is a News magazine platform worth the investment. How can I monetize?
What shall be the monetization model — Advertising, Subscriptions, Sponsored content, eCommerce or a combination of these.

If you are clear about these— you are ready to evaluate platform options

Evaluating News Magazine Platform Options

Does the platform comes with WYSIWYG(“What You See Is What You Get”) editors, and an easy upload option for HTML5, video, audio and image content. Is content management easy.
Does the platform support your content type — Rich articles, Image Gallery, Video Gallery, Audio Gallery etc. Does it provide you with the flexibility and features needed, Is the UI/UX best in class and onboarding and payments friction-free?
Does the platform support monetization options like Subscription and Advertising? Does the platform provide an inbuilt e-commerce merchandising option which allows readers to buy items directly in magazine platform and makes customers to stay on the site and order products.
Does the platform provide cross-platform support and it should work flawlessly across all the latest browsers and devices. iOS, Android and Web Support is a must.
Can the platform provide social sharing, signup/login support. PUSH/Email Notification support including new content promotion. Does it support a good recommendation algorithm to provide user’s interesting personalized content.
Does the platform integrate with a rich set of analytics including subscribers, subscriptions, purchases, advertisement engagement, and payment detail, etc. which helps you track the statistics on how your publications perform.
Can we manage partners/publishers/marketers easily? Is there a portal where partners can view their content statistics and reports.
Does the platform provide a QoS guarantee and great L2 technical Support? The platform must be monitored 24x7 and kept up. Technical issues coming through customer support must be closed within a guaranteed time with SLA.
Can the platform scale according to your needs? Does it address privacy, security, and regulatory concerns. Does it offer free upgrades and enhancements?

How to plan your News Magazine Launch

An effective way to launch a News magazine platform in front of an audience is through a successful News magazine launch plan.

Clearly define unique content strategy — What, When & How.
Design a distribution roadmap across device platforms
Adapt marketing tactics to find, nurture, and build your subscribers — Viewers need to be engaged by marketing across a range of channels and messaging touchpoints. Make sure you have all the materials needed for marketing, including a marketing budget, influencer marketing/celebrity marketing plan, Magazine platform promotions, Affiliate marketing plan etc.
To reach a bigger audience, when promoting news magazine platforms, it is crucial to be present on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to promote, Email Marketing to engage with an email list and work with influencers, famous bloggers/actors, celebrities, etc.
Design, launch and refine your news content and technology solution in an iterative effort.
Pre-launch awareness marketing strategies — The Awareness phase is your chance to build up excitement and share information about your News magazine platform launch. The strategies are by setting a release date, Understanding your audience, building a website or landing page, Content strategy, Outreach strategy, Social media strategy, App store optimization research, paid advertisements etc.

Launching Your News Magazine

Make a content strategy: ways to keep your audience involved and not lose interest and organize your content thoroughly by assigning each page appropriate categories and tags.
Many technical aspects have to be checked and verified with a quality check of the magazine platform
Add social media buttons for sharing posts, linking your website to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. This will spread the influence of your news magazine to other platforms. In addition, social signals improve SEO indicators.
Setup configuration of the platform like branding, logos, and colors, along with how you’ll monetize it.
Test: QA (Quality Assurance) the platform. This is the step where you review your app for functionality and CX (Customer Experience)
Submission: Platform submissions require careful planning and need details to be provided.
Have a dedicated support & playback team to attend and resolve technical issues immediately.

How to Scale & Grow your News Magazine

Effective strategies to improve the News Magazine platform include.

Deliver a seamless onboarding experience to new subscribers
Always try to give your readers something new
Let users discover and enjoy content with a seamless experience across devices and make them come back for more.
Bring back your platform users with push notifications
Encourage first-time users to Opt-in for push notifications
Recommend new and featured content using personalized banners
Use product badges to drive premium subscriptions
Speed up the content discovery using appropriate recommendation algorithms
Leverage in-app messaging campaigns to increase viewership time
Engage your users with rich promotional emails
Accept feedback and criticism graciously and use it to strengthen your News magazine platform
Develop affiliate marketing program to enhance subscribers through affiliate referrals
Enable “invite a friend” option to encourage In App referrals

Using Analytics to enhance user experience and improve monetization

Monitoring your analytics is essential for retention, but also for driving future users. Keep in mind that key metrics should be tracked in both the Pre-launch and Post-launch stages, so make sure to keep an eye on this throughout the entire process.

Paying close attention to the following points helps to analyze the performance.

Audience Characteristics — It helps to get a better understanding of what types of content their readers want to engage with and what formats they prefer
User Behavior — Looking at user behavior metrics, helps to understand what triggers increase the chances of a reader sharing content, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, quickly clicking away from the platform
Audience Segments — Segmenting online audiences is one of the ways that publishers can figure out how best to target readers based on interests and behaviors. Audiences can be segmented based on factors like visitor loyalty, device, referral channel, geography, demographics, and interest categories
Top Landing Pages and Exit Pages — Find out where visitors are engaging the most or spending the most time. If visitors are continuing to exit when they reach a specific page, then that page should be reconfigured to keep readers sticking around for longer.
Find out articles that are driving the most traffic & which authors or topics are most popular among everyday readers?
Subscriber count: Measure the number of subscribers in a given time frame to track the success of your marketing efforts.
Churn rate: This refers to the number of users that drop out from your services.
Average usage time: The average length of time your users spend viewing a specific piece of content on a magazine platform.
Analyze the monthly active users (MAU), customer acquisition cost (CAC), average revenue per user (ARPU), customer lifetime value (CLV), conversion rate (CR), abandon rate, engagement, inactive users, etc.
Analyze technical problems faced in the platform, have a dedicated support team to manage customer complaints.
Understand the viewer experience in terms of UI/UX design, visibility, etc. If any improvements need to be done on UI/UX, consider implementing the same in the platform.
Does the platform provide quality delivery —creative images/videos/audio, content quality, and multiple language support are all important
Does the platform provide low friction onboarding, payment, and viewing experience? Users must be able to signup/login using email/mobile/social media through easy, secure steps. Plans must be purchasable friction-free. INAPP/PG/Wallet payment options must be provided.

Developing a state-of-the-art news magazine platform with a good user experience takes a great deal of expertise. At mobiotics, our team is well-versed with techniques to provide you best customized News Magazine platform.

Introducing our News Magazine Platform Called — NewsMag

Fast to set up Online Magazine Publishing Platform for Publishers and News Producers/Aggregators

Here is the simple flow of NewsMag platform.

Here are the features of our NewsMag product.

Branded Apps on iOS, Android and Web with easy to use state of the art UI/UX
Support for Rich News articles and Photo, Video and Audio Gallery. Configurable decking and playlist support.
Social sharing, signup/login support. PUSH/Email Notification support including new content promotion.
Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) streaming up to HD and downloads based on bandwidth and plan. Industry-standard MultiDRM for piracy protection.
Subscriptions (SVOD), Adbased (AVOD) and Merchandise (vCommerce) monetisation options. Pre-integrated with domestic and international Payment Gateways.
Detailed Metrics and Reports including subscribers, subscriptions, orders and payment details. Partner and Affiliate Management option.
Scalable SAAS built on AWS. 24x7 Maintenance and Monitoring

Coming to an end.

mobiotics NewsMag package is customized to work across all platforms and devices without snags. User authentication is also taken care of and provides a high-security News Magazine mechanism.

Looking to launch your own News Magazine platform for your organization? mobiotics can get you all of that.

Click here to book a 15 Min demo with us to know how NewsMag works.

For more information about our product and services please feel free to get in touch with us

Call us at +91 9620209869, or write an email to the sales@mobiotics.com