I receive a tough copy version of Inc. magazine monthly, brought to by my friendly mailman. He's been delivering our mail to us for years. The magazine is arriving free of charge, though I cannot recall how or why this arrangement occurred, perhaps it absolutely was from remnant sky miles on airline programs which remained unused, or cosmetici uomo for which I'll never accrue sufficient miles for anything. I love Inc. magazine and think most of the articles are interesting and thought provoking, once you'll find them. In the March 2010 issue, as an example, the reader first finds content on page six with a short profile along with a large photograph, on page 14 there is a letter from the editor and on page 17 there is reader mail (hopefully email).
When we want to be generous and don't make reference to the interior cover being an actual page, the reader is provided with three pages of content in the very first 17 pages of the magazine, or a percentage of 82% advertisements to 18% content. Continuing onto page 41, there is approximately 14 pages of content out of 24 pages, which is a happier ratio of 42% advertisements to 52% content. Overall, in the very first 41 pages I found 17 pages of content which translates to roughly 40% reader content and 60% advertisement. Obviously, if I'd the patience, I might have analyzed all the pages of the magazine. But a quick Google search led me to a web page called Magazine.org, which states that the common (traditional) magazine is about a 50/50 ratio between ads and content. Overall, I guarantee my down and dirty research to be somewhere between relatively accurate to fully anecdotal and spurious. Feel free to get hold of me as you browse your personal magazine pages counting ads versus content should your due diligence and subsequent findings prove otherwise!
Let's compare my Inc. Magazine findings having an online magazine. I would estimate that the internet magazine I review daily has a percentage of 60% content to 40% advertisements, which can be a lot better than the paper based version of Inc., or the Magazine.org estimate. However, and this is a significant caveat, whenever the reader selects an on the web article to see, content always appears. In a conventional magazine, it's somewhat tougher, and certainly more time intensive to get the table of contents and then leaf through the publication to reach at page 41 to see your article. We all have a propensity to browse paper based magazines page by page until an article catches our eye.
It's rare a paper based magazine appears at our house. From time to time we may be given a promotional copy, but our online propensity continues to grow. We have the New York Times on Sundays though we have questioned just how long we will continue to sign up for the paper based version. Our Boston Globe and Boston magazine delivery days have long since passed. We continue to embrace a virtual and online centric method of content consumption, which can be easier, faster and more environmentally friendly. We appear to quote Yahoo, blogs, and online resources far significantly more than we now say, "I read a fascinating article in the paper."
Consequently, I think there is without doubt that online magazines are on the right track from a content and delivery standpoint. Nevertheless, there are many things they might do to boost the reader experience. Like they might place all ads to the right of the information instead of the top and right. They could make the font bolder and more readily viewable for the common reader. They could add a far more graphical reader interface, and perhaps even offer writers the ability to post photos. Nonetheless, they provide an important service to writer and reader alike, offering searchable and extensive content, without charge, an opportunity for new writers to publish and an eco-friendly, non paper based delivery system that will render traditional paper based magazines obsolete in the coming decade cosmetici uomo. For me, although it is early in the overall game, the score seems like online magazines 1, paper based magazines 0, in what is almost certain to be a long term rout.
