Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 30 posts

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#21

Post by Jax »

dkokelley wrote: post #18
Mystalic wrote: post #17

Actually, despite its, uh, antiquity, I like this idea. Let me explain. 1) Why does everyone think that they'll have trouble from blogs for republishing? It's huge extra exposure - I feel that you'll get tons of people interested. 2) Go away from publishing blog posts to stories about the bloggers (egos), about how they started their idea, features on getting started, new stories by bloggers, etc. The TOPIC is bloggi…

Very good points. Yes it does seem to be pretty expensive to print up the physical magazines. I'm liking the idea of getting it in an area where the readers may not have access to the internet (specifically plane rides). If I know I'm going to be on the plane for 4 hours and I can't use my laptop for the internet, what better way to calm the panic than by having a magazine full of 10-15 or so blogs that I can read?

Agree with u. As a geek, I would opt to read geeky stuff on magazines when i dont have access to internet. Here are a few things I suggest you consider. 1.) You can start with the air passengers. And the best thing to do would be to setup a small stall in the airport or very near to the gate. 2.) Sell in small number of pages. And sell different volumes per topic. Becoz a geek would like tech content and a granny would health related content(i didnt ask my granny). Like one Maybe around 15 pages per-topic per-week, since u only want to offer them content to be occupie during journey. 3.) when there's blog content about latest stuff, ur content might be old for readers at the end of the month. So publish new editions every week. 4.) if u are going to publish different a volume per topic, then the easiest way of getting content would be Technorati or any other blog aggregator. 5.) remember: start small. U can ofcourse start with around 3 topics for different age groups. Like 'gadgets' for kids, 'talk of the town' kind of content for women and biz for men. 6.) u can also just start by using a laser printer at home to print(i dont know about printing, checkout which is economical. 7.) start as a niche magazine for travellers. u can later expand by setting up stalls at more public travel stations and other places. 8.) u might get busy with aggregating content. So i suggest u hire someone to look after the stall. U can find students looking for partime jobs(getting them might be easy, who doesnt want to read magazines free?)

i hope u liked the above. And please apologize for using mobile lingo, i am on my mobile phone :)

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#22

Post by Tichy »

I think it exists, but I can't remember the name. Shelf-something? It was on HN several times (or their blog was).

Personally I don't care for the idea. A good accumulator of interesting content is OK, but I don't like physical magazines (they tend to clutter my home and I hardly ever read them anyway). Make it readable on mobile phones, that would be sufficient for me.

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#24

Post by sonink »

You might not believe it, but I had the exact same idea sometime back. I think its brilliant(obviously ;)) - allow me to share some of the things I thought about.

1. I think the risk to bloggers not being fine with is overblown. Everybody loves free publicity - and if some of them are not keen, then just drop them. The internet is big enough to find enough interesting content.

2. You can do it in a subscription model. People come to your site and upload their details - preferences etc. You promise them FREE magazines through mail covering their topics periodically. They have nothing to loose. Once you have enough people covered you can get paid for highly targeted ads.

3. Offline model might work well on an on-demand basis. You might want to tie up with local printing shops and send them the formatted material on-demand and always updated. They sense local demand and print based on that. Kind of like a franchisee model.

4. The things to highlight are highly targeted content - ( I have never seen an old school magazine which has more than 15% relevant content to me) and almost up-to-date - (I rarely see a news item in an old school mag which I havent read about online)

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#25

Post by chriskelley »

utnick wrote: post #15

sounds like a decent idea. make a few niche magazines and then put them in vending machines at airports. i would probably buy

Niche markets are definitely the way to go. I'm in the VFX world, and there is a DVD "Mag" (same idea, different format) that basically collates the best spots from the last couple months and sends the DVD out to subscribers. The spots are nothing subscribers haven't already seen, but it's always great to see things in their full beauty on screen, as well as having the tangible product to put on the shelf.

There is something to be said for the beauty of the printed word - I say go for it. Good luck!

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#26

Post by greyman »

Your idea is interesting and might work. One Slovakian daily does something similar - they have blogs written by their readers (anyone can register one), and if they find some blog post interesting, they republish it in print (but they have an agreement with blog writers that they can do that - as a counter-service for free hosting).

The potential problems of your idea to think about:

1) Many blog posts are written in a conversational style, and their purpose is to collect relevant links, comment on something, or spark a discussion. Basically, many blogs can be characterized as conversation platforms - reprinting them to paper will lose this dimension.

2) For reprinting you would need to pick up essay-like blog posts, which have their own merit without reader comments or inbound links. And those are not easy to find, so you can encounter similar issue like "normal" magazines - how to find good content.

3) When we are really talking about magazine (not newspaper), the important parts are also design and photos. You will really need (to pay for) professional photos to make the magazine engaging.

4) distribution - another big pain in the... how will you distribute?

To sum it up, if I would like to make money from blogs, I would rather go to a path of either:

1) republishing the blogs online (might have sense if you add value by grouping interesting stuff together)

2) trying to run blog network myself and share revenue with authors

3) start a blog myself and pay writers per post (or per visitor numbers).

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#27

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I like this.

Like everything else, though, the trick is finding the sweet spot in the market where you can make a buck and provide value to other people.

Who is it worth money to, in order to read your mag? Is it people who are offline -- the internet illiterate? Seems like it would be people looking for good content and not using one of the aggregation engines/sites out there. I'm just guessing, but perhaps that is a pretty tight niche. Something like older people interested in penguin farming but who don't own a computer.

If you can identify/find this niche, then I think you're halfway there. But the idea is only "cool" because in the back of my mind I think there IS such a niche. Beats me what it is, though.

Be aware that your niche may not be readers. It could be magazine providers. For instance, doctor's offices provide magazines for people to read while they wait. There might be a nice niche in there where you could provide content based on the doctor's type of practice and clientele. I'm sure you could identify, for instance, 40,000 foot doctors in the United States. Maybe 20% of them (I know, Chinese Math, but this is back-of-napkin-stuff) would be interested in providing internet "recap" material for those waiting in their office. Eight thousand docs at $40 a year, and you've got a nice niche business for yourself and maybe a couple other people.

Re: Ask YC: A Magazine That Publishes Blogs. Startup Potential?

#30

Post by gmayerson »

You mean like a magazine of blog essays like the Journal of Bloglandia, ISSN 1940-7645? http://wapshottpress.com/j-bloglandia/

Issue 1 is on sale at Amazon and Lulu. We're looking for essays for Issue 2. If any of you would like to send me an essay formatted correctly on the template, I'm sure I'd love to print it.

Ginger Mayerson

Editor, J Bloglandia

Post reply on HN