I'm thinking about creating an online magazine to offer to readers. Has anyone done this? How easy is it? Did you see an increase in traffic? Please share...
How easy is to create an online magazine?
(3 posts) (3 voices)
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It really isn't that difficult. I'm guest writing for an online magazine that's 84 pages. I'm not sure what platform the publishers are using. But you could use Microsoft Publishers, Word, Adobe InDesign (convert to PDF), or Microsoft Power Point.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hi Sarah
I think it depends on what format you want to offer - I've seen some that weren't much different from a website or blog, they simply called themselves a "digital magazine", and used a theme that looked very newspaper-like. So that route would be quite simple.
I've also seen them done in a complex, page-flipping, format that I don't personally like, because generally those don't allow for making font sizes larger (or a controlled zoom) so that I can more easily read them. Often the print is too tiny for me, and if I can't modify the font size, I get frustrated and don't read them.
But the most important consideration is cost - with so much free content online these days there are few people who are willing to pay a subscription fee for an online magazine, not like they would with a print magazine (I still subscribe to a number of print magazines, but I doubt I'd ever pay for an online version). So whatever format you come up with would likely need to be self-supporting, which means advertisers.
As for whether or not it would increase traffic, again that depends on what format you go with. Those stand-alone documents don't make me want to go to their website - the few that I do read (SPJ's Quill comes to mind) don't really drive me to their site....I can't speak for everyone else, but if your primary goal is to attract people to your site, and online magazine may not be the best use of your time and resources, unless your whole site IS the magazine, as in my first suggestion.
For examples just browse the sites of any of the large magazines or newspapers to see how they're structured.
Posted 1 year ago #
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