WE ARE STARTING A MAGAZINE - ARE YOU SAM?

Running a sale

What's the best sale you've run (widest, most cost effective, ...?)

GUD's trying a "Pay what you want" (for our digital editions), and it's by far the best response we've gotten on a sale (in terms of both reach and "profit"), but it's still nowhere near what I'd like it to be.

It's a crowded market of want, but really, how wrong can you go paying as little as a penny? The question's not entirely rhetorical, as we haven't had hordes knocking our doors down to get their penny PDFs. Exposure, sure... and we've not sold "nothing" from it in the day or two it's run so far--people almost seem embarrassed to not pay a "fair" amount, but we'd rather they paid less than that and got a copy (or a copy of all five, for that matter).

See our sale: Pay what you want for GUD Magazine

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 19, 2009 at 9:47am

Really interesting! But don't you think this is very short term? I mean if people expect in the future that they will have this possibility why should they pay the full price? Don't mean to criticize, just interested in your thoughts.

Can’t say that I have been running any exceptional campaigns so far. I’m trying to work after the principle that Making the whole larger than the sum of the parts

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on November 19, 2009 at 10:17am

It's a really strange mentality; but plenty of people are paying cover price, and most aren't paying less than a dollar an issue, which is a sale point we've tried before with very little success.

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 19, 2009 at 11:02am

That's really strange!?? Why do you think it's that way that they pay the full price?

I know that they have tried this concept on concerts and sports events, but I'm not sure how it has worked out.

But GUD is a printed magazine and right now you are just selling pdf-versions of the back issues!? Have you sold out the printed back issues? I know that some magazines use pdf-sales after they have sold out the back-issues.

We have tried some price campaigns, but it hasn't worked for us. We get a lot of kids and the wrong buyers overall. But GUD is a grown up magazine so I guess it's easier for you.

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on November 19, 2009 at 11:11am

:heh: I almost wish it wasn't a grown-up magazine; I'd be peddling it to schools left and right. ;)

No idea re: full price. People don't want to be cheap ~ but I've seen that they can be. I had a bunch of links but my computer crashed. It's been done all over the place for all sorts of things, successfully so far. Restaurants and bars, even. Taxis.

What caught my eye most recently was the video game "World of Goo"; they published the results of their "pay what you want sale" ~ http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-huge-success/

GUD sells print or pdf (and a host of other digital formats through Amazon and Fictionwise); and our goal is to never sell out of either. when we're low, we'll reprint (we've reprinted one issue so far).

The PDF sale is also pushing print sales, though less so--and our margin is so slim on those that they're almost not worth mentioning. More eyeballs, but not more money.

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 20, 2009 at 5:19am

Really interesting stuff! And I would be happy to continue this discussion with you when you have the time!

This English magazine have a model where they sell pdf:s as well as a paper version. Not pay what you want, but rather cheap: www.backpassmagazine.co.uk

I've read the article about "World of Goo" and as I understand they were not getting any profit on the pdf sales, but they made a huge increase in sales in other channels!?

So you don't have any margins on the pdf sales!? Are you sure that the pdf sales are pushing the sales of the printed version? How do you know?

Was this just a campaign or are you going to continue with it?

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 20, 2009 at 6:15am

I have another couple of ideas!

1. Is there any publicity value for you with this campaign?
2. Isn't this basically a short term viral campaign that doesn't work in the long run?

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on November 20, 2009 at 10:00am

World of Goo was software--a game. It had been out for a year, doing moderately well, and, I believe as a business they were about to go under. They dumped a lot of advertising into their sale (it was all over Kongregate, at least, and probably other major gaming places).

re: backpass ~ I don't see where they discuss digital version anywhere? what's the deal?

PDF sales--the only margin is paypal fees (beyond what we've put into doing the layout, up front, and what we've paid our contributors as advances--and what we'll owe them once their advances earn out), and we're signed up for a good deal on that (set up a second account for their micropayment rate which is 5% plus 5 cents. The awesome thing is they won't charge you more than you take in, so if you only get a penny--they don't charge you five cents, just the penny. And most people pay more than five cents by a healthy margin. :)

This was a test, really--I don't know if it can work in the long run. I'm running it for almost an entire month--at that point I'll see if things have dropped below baseline or not, and may just leave it running until/if it _does_ drop.

There's definitely publicity value in the campaign--and this one is on the tail of a "win a kindle" contest we ran, which didn't really grab any sales but did a somewhat decent job spreading us through the twitter-sphere.

So far our print sales are well over baseline as well; especially for it being a month or two _before_ we release a new issue (2 issues/yr, this is our low-point).

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 20, 2009 at 12:58pm

Don’t get me wrong! I think you’re brilliant! You’ve got the goods to succeed! I just love to discuss back and forth with intelligent people. Maybe something good will come out of it!

When I think about it, we have been doing “similar” campaigns. The problem was that it was just our subscribers that got the message. We never got the “viral” part going. I think you need PR to get the rumour going!? I would be interested to know how you marketed this campaign!?

Our most successful campaign is our newsletter. It’s amazing!!! If you don’t have a newsletter get things going right NOW!!! You can get brilliant newsletters for almost nothing.

Regarding “World of Goo”: I mean it’s a brilliant viral campaign! Getting into the “Share of Voice” business is not for us small publishers, we have to be smart and aggressive!?

Re Backpass: It’s in there somewhere! In the header I believe.

Re Publicity: Guess you’ve not landed from outer space? You must have some media experience before!? I like the way you’re running your business!

Re Long Term: I will try it out at “home”. I don’t think it will be that much damage control. I’ll keep you posted! Have you read about the Radiohead campaign!?

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 20, 2009 at 1:17pm

My basic idea is that you can get these massive viral campaigns going, but only if you're good at PR!? Or what do you think!?

I think it's very hard to be viral from your "little" community. It's all about being viral in the "mediaworld"!? It's basically a good PR campaign that it's all about!?

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on November 20, 2009 at 4:28pm

:heh: I wouldn't argue for brilliance. Persistent, though, and _sometimes_ I learn from my mistakes. Maybe one in three. ;)

Getting viral--I really don't know how to do it. There's the whole "thousand true fans" model, but we're a ways from that. We've got 5, maybe 10. We love them to pieces, and they do all they can to help. Hopefully we will find or make more, with time.

I have a newsletter of sorts--a spamlist that the website can send out to; opt-in, confirmed; folks who sign up on the website. It's less effective than I'd like, but I could well be using it wrong. It's better than nothing, by far. Currently 1400 people on that list.

Media experience--all I've got is I've been working at it for GUD on and off for three years. But I've been working it a _lot_ for those three years. Tried every social network (well, all the majors and several of the minors, plus niche communities all over the place).

Radiohead--yeah. :) A list I made earlier:

* http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1666973,00.html ~ Radiohead, famously. And recently
* http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-huge-success/ ~ World of Goo did very well by it and publicized all their numbers (very cool)
* http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/04/01/flex.payment/index.html ~ Real-world restaurants seem to be running with it, and
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/feb/11/berlin-honesty-bars-re... ~ bars as well! And
* http://www.gadling.com/2009/08/05/vermont-cab-driver-offers-pay-wha... ~ cab drivers, even. :) Lotus (the band)
* http://www.jambase.com/Articles/19131/Lotus-Pay-What-You-Want-Tour ~ toured that way. Though
* http://paywhatyouwantonline.com/ Pay what you want online is a music service that charges a minimum of fifty cents a track--that's not very "what you want".
* http://springwise.com/tourism_travel/bencoolen/ ~ A hotel. Here's a one-off
* http://blog.kernest.com/archive/pay-what-you-want-for-chanks-chumle... ~ font that starts at $15/yr min (I think that misses the point?) And Eidos
* http://www.edge-online.com/news/pay-what-you-want-for-championship-... ~ is offering Championship Manager 2010 for just a penny (plus 2 pound fifty transaction fee--haven't they heard of micropayments???).

Digging deeper,

* http://springwise.com/media_publishing/pay-what-you-want_magazine_sub/ ~ Paste Magazine beat us to the "magazine" punch.
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/02/faber-ben-wilson-ebook ~ Faber did it for an ebook (or more?).

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Permalink Reply by Fredrik Svensson on November 21, 2009 at 5:04am

Quiet a list :) Have to take some time to go through all the stuff. I think you should read about Paste on Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_(magazine)

I think they made a huge mistake with their campaign. They got almost 30 000 new subscribers for their printed version of the magazine. Finally they got into huge financial problems because they couldn't get enough advertising money to back it up. Your solution with a digital issue is much smarter. But it would be interesting to see how it pans out in the long run. If the printed sales will increase or decrease.

My experience from cheap price campaigns is that the people you get very rarely are interested in paying the full price when their subscriptions run out. And there are other aspects as well. We ran a successful price campaign 1 year ago and suddenly we started to get bad media. I think the main reason for that was that the wrong people got hold of our magazine and they were starting to say bad things about our magazine on mostly the Internet. I think that envy was a part of bit, but I think that it hurt our business. Another downside of our campaign was that we got a lot of e-mails from people that almost hadn't paid anything for the magazine.

We have a monthly newsletter that's a huge success. We get 65% to open every newsletter. We are offering movies, news, previews, competitions etc... It takes a little time, but it's worth all work and more.

I agree it's all about perseverance!

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Permalink Reply by Kaolin Fire on November 22, 2009 at 1:30pm

Thanks for the info on the Paste Magazine fallout--I hadn't gotten around to tracking that down. Sorry to hear how it worked for them.

GOOD magazine apparently did a similar thing, as well, but somehow--either with donations or more advertising, or I don't know what--seems to have weathered the lower-subscription-prices even for their physical copies.

OH! It's trust-funded. So, er, huh. A lot less worry about cost, a lot more worry about just "getting out there".