Terry’s Weblog

Do you subscribe to any “digital magazines”?  I’m not talking about web sites that claim to be magazines.  I’m talking about the ones that are actually a true magazine converted to a digital format in which you can flip through the pages like a real magazine.

I currently get two magazines in this format:

eWeek
ComputerWorld Canada

I used to get PC Magazine through the Zinio service but I stopped that when my free subscription ran out.  Note - I think Zinio was a GREAT way to deliver a magazine.  I wish I had more magazines available to me.

Of the two magazines that I subscribe to, digitally, they are both free.

Would I choose to get them if I had to pay for them?  No, I don’t think I would.  I do find the stories somewhat engaging and the columnists are a good read.  But would I want to pay for it?  No.  There’s enough content online now that you don’t need to pay for it.

And that is problem that many tech magazines now are faced with.  If you can get tons of tech news through RSS feeds and web sites, why would you pay for a magazine, just because it is in a concise format?  I don’t think that too many people will.

However, all is not lost.  If a magazine can give me content that I cannot find elsewhere and it can be delivered in a timely manner, I just might change my mind.  For example, when I used to get eWeek by postal mail, I would get it at least 2 weeks late and sometimes even later.  The stories were stale.  Now that I get it in a digital format, it is much more relevant for me.

I don’t mind advertising in the digital magazines at all and I actually find myself reading the ads.  On a web site, I ignore them.  If a full-page ad comes up before the article, on a web site, I just click the “Skip Ad” link.  But in a digital magazine, I actually look at it and I will read it if it catches my interest.

I think we’ll see a lot more magazines go digital in the future.  But their cost model needs to lean towards targeted advertising in the magazine, to keep the cost free or very low.  Publishing companies probably could cut their costs by 40% if they stopped printing pages and stopped delivering to people.  If it was all online, there’s no cheaper way to do it.

Finally, for an entrepreneur, come up with a way to determine the types of ads that a user seems to be interested in and make sure that you send them ads that fit their interests.  An advertiser would be happier to pay a fee if they know that “X” number of readers like their technology and tend to look at the ads than if they are paying and just hoping that maybe a few people will actually read the ad.

When I think about it, I think that these types of ads probably have the most relevance in the new media.

What do you think?

Update - after publishing this, I checked out Zinio’s site again.  I was surprised at how many magazines are now available there.  Considering that some subscriptions are equal to that of buying 3 issues of the newstands, perhaps digital magazines, for a fee, can be even more viable than I thought.