Start a Magazine/Newspaper Company

If you love to write like I do you can always start your own Newspaper or Magazine company. In this section we will go over how to navigate in this fast-evolving industry and how to build a business in it that can make you more money than you ever imagined.

You will first want to come up with a brand for your publications. Think about the industry you want to be in, which should be something that really interests you or something that you see an untapped market in. If you choose to make a luxury magazine, it should have a classy sounding name, you could call it suave, or Elegance. You can even use Chat GPT to come up with a name for your publication based on the topic you want to write about. Once you have a name, you can either go on Fiverr and pay to make a logo or you can use an AI art generator like Mid Journey or even ChatGPT to make it for you. Either way get a logo and name that will fit the vibe of your publication and speak to the customer you are trying to obtain.

The next thing you will want to do is create a website for your publication. You should check out some other sites of publications on your same topic to get an idea of the layout. You will then need to make some creative page decorations based on your brand and add a nice video to your homepage that you can pay to have made or filmed yourself. Videos are the best way to grab attention and you can talk about what your brand represents in a creative way. You can learn all about building a site in our “How to build a website” section. You will want to start writing articles quickly when you are starting out to create more articles to post on your site as new pages. The key to building this website starting out will simply be gain a large audience that reads your content and is interested in what you have to say and show. You are setting yourself up to spend the money on the more expensive aspects of a publication so that when the time comes you will have customers to buy it.

Now that you have a website, you will want to focus on getting as much great content created as you can for your site. The great thing about website publications is that you can get creative by using videos, interactive clickable items on your page, links to other pages on your site or different sites entirely. Read some articles online to get a good idea for what kind of content they are putting out and how they are relaying information to your audience. For text content, you can simply write and edit your articles yourself or you can give Chat GPT a topic and ask it to write articles for you. Keep in mind that you will want to add some creative information and sources to something a chat bot writes, but you will be surprised with some of the content it comes up with. It just needs more character and details usually.  You can also check out our book publishing section, to learn about the prompts you will use to get long articles written from Chat GPT.

You will also need some quality pictures to go along with your articles, you can either use free images from sites like pexels.com, or you can use Mid Journey or ChatGPT to generate pictures that you want to use. As a bonus idea, you could start a publication solely based on AI and the new tools that are coming out every day. You can write articles about how it is disrupting the art industry, how it compares to the artistic mind of a human, how well these tools respond to prompts and what prompts work well. You can also show off screenshots and images of how these AI tools work. You could basically build your whole publication with AI nowadays. Just be careful not to use people’s images without their permission, which is why we use these methods. You can also go out and take pictures like the old days if you are a good photographer. Once you start making good money you can also start paying photographers for their work.

Now that you have some content on the internet, it is time to get some people to see it. The best way to do grow a publication today is by growing social media pages surrounding your site and physical magazine or newspaper once you get to that point. You should be spending a good portion of your day thinking about 3 good posts per day about your topic, with 2 being regular posts and 1 being a piece of short form video. You should create accounts for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tik-Tok and YouTube. Make sure to make good use of twitter for growing your publication because people on twitter tend to enjoy reading more. Share quotes from your publications, interact with posts from other big publications, respond to comments from people that are subscribed to other publications on pages you follow, and hold giveaways and subscription discounts every now and then.

Facebook can also be good for interacting in a similar way to Twitter. You can use Facebook to share videos and your publications, and you can start and grow groups that you can invite people who are interested in your topic. The goal is always to simply build a community of like-minded people on these platforms so stay active and get ideas from other publications on these platforms as well.

On YouTube you will focus on shorts which is their short form content section. Post consistently about stories and articles you have published. You should make 3 short form videos that are under 1 minute each day. Focus on creating great hooks for your videos and share the best parts for your publications. You can check out our how to make quality video ads for more information on making good short form videos. You will also post these three videos to your TikTok account, Facebook reels, and Instagram reels. On Facebook you should be posting your publications starting out as well and at least 3 normal posts about breaking news in your industry each week. On Instagram you should make 5 posts per week and continue to focus on your short form content. The reason why this short form content is so important is that it is fed to random people that do not follow you. In reality you should create 2 Tik-Tok accounts, 2 Instagram accounts, and a Google account for YouTube shorts so that you can post your 3 videos per day on all those accounts. This will get your content in front of as many people as possible while you focus your time on what can really grow your brand. Make one account on each for your main profile and then sub profiles that you simply blast content on.

Once you grow your publication you will want to start obtaining advertisers for your site and then ultimately your physical publication. Spend a day creating a long list of companies that your publications topic relates to. If you are a luxury brand for example you may want to gather a list of watch brands, clothing brands, designer home brands, car brands, etc. Write down all the contact information you can find for each of these brands as well. I would recommend calling each company to make an introduction to the right department and at the very least get the number for the advertising department or an email if that is all they allow. Then you will follow up with an email that breaks down what you are asking for the exposure you are offering. You can use an email service like MailChimp that can send out all the emails at once, but I recommend personalizing them a bit. Clearly go over how many visitors your site is getting and how many subscribers you have if you are at that point. If you have been growing online like we went over, then you can simply pitch that as your publication. You may be able to charge around .20 per viewer of their potential ad depending on the placement and size of the ad. You should price ads higher on an article for more and price the lower ads for less. You could try to get .10 per view on lower ads and .20 for bigger ads at the top of a page. You could also go to Google AdSense and sign up to advertise once you have enough visitors. Keep in mind that you will be unable to use these brands in a physical publication unless you reach out to them yourself.

Once you get some advertisers to pay you, you can use this money to finally publish your first newspaper or magazine. Uprinting.com is a great place to use for printing physical copies of your magazine. Keep in mind that you could always stay focused on online publications but if you want to have a physical copy once you start making money feel free to do so by planning for distribution. I would recommend taking preorders of your physical copies through your site and the advertising of your social media platforms. You can offer signed copies for your first release, send a small item that people will be excited about and make short form videos for your followers and people that may be interested in your brand about it. You can even fill one order of your publication online before ever printing it and use that money to print and keep a profit immediately. You can also go to small family-owned gas stations and either sell them or make an agreement that you will collect the money later when they sell. It is much easier to get owners to take something on consignment like this, so they don’t lose money if it doesn’t sell.

Once you have started charging for ad space and taking subscriptions, you can also start getting subscribers online. You can either add a subscription timer to your publication’s site or you can create exclusive content just for subscribers. A subscription timer will get people to click on your publication from SEO marketing (which you can learn in our SEO section) or from links you can post in groups on Facebook, Reddit and comments on posts on other platforms related to your publication’s topic. Once they get on your page and start reading a timer will pop up after 10 seconds or so that will lock the page after a few seconds and require a subscription. I recommend however simply adding a paywall for your best articles and advertising them on your social media profile, but you can also get creative with both of these methods. Keep in mind that your main source of income may always be your ad space so don’t get caught up switching to subscription only too quickly.

If you put all these steps together and practice them consistently, you should start seeing traction with your publication in no time. Always remember that it is important to be creative in today’s short form content age. Look at some innovative media brands like barstool sports which took a more nontraditional approach and used it to make a fortune. Combine different types of media, expand to new topics, hire writers when you get to the point where you can spend the money, and keep growing your social media followings. Almost all new publications these days are grown through online profiles and publications starting out so keep this in mind.