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

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

#1

Post by dkokelley »

I had this idea about 10 minutes ago on my way to the mailbox. Since I believe that ideas aren't worth anything on their own, I submit it here to see what you guys think about its potential. Here's the idea:

A magazine that finds interesting blogs, bundles them together (maybe with themes), and publishes them in a print magazine.

My thoughts on this>

People could be exposed to new/interesting blogs that they might not find on their own. They can also read up on their favorite blogs in places that they normally wouldn't be able to (anywhere they don't want to pull their laptop out).

There are some pros for blog publishers too: For new and undiscovered writers they can have their blogs featured. More established writers could opt to publish with a revenue sharing model.

Of course there are also the articles about Adsense optimization, etc.

Another variation of this idea would be a system for bloggers to have their blogs bundled up and printed in a magazine to give as a gift to their readers, similar to amateur musicians making a family and friends CD.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Is something like this even feasible? Any gaping holes that I haven't even realized yet? (And remember, I just thought of this a few minutes ago.)

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

#2

Post by alaskamiller »

Sounds like an old idea of a zine. Two problems to tackle:

First, logistics of the physical stuff, thankfully http://magcloud.com/ was recently launched so barrier to entry is considerably lower.

Second, getting the permissions from bloggers to syndicate their content. There's plenty of issues here. Foremost being that most blog content are... well... blog content. They're pithy, short, fluffy, sugary, whatever. If you find higher quality material then you have to pay for it. The established bloggers might not be interested in sharing control of their content.

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

#3

Post by dangoldin »

A couple of things that came to my mind when I read this:

1. You will need to get permission from every blog author you want to include in the magazine

2. How will you go about finding blogs to include?

3. People that are interested in reading blogs are pretty handy with Google and would be able to find relevant posts themselves.

4. A lot of blogs are very similar to one another and I noticed that any given day you will have a few blogs writing about the same exact thing. A monthly, or even weekly, magazine may not be frequent enough to capture everything of interest to the average blog reader.

An idea you may want to consider is just having "channels" of blogs and then having people sign up for the various "channels" they are interested in, providing them with a daily feed of posts. You can also try including this feed into the Kindle, maybe something can come of that.

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

#6

Post by mileszs »

I think you'd have to pick a 'market', really. If you were targeting politics, you might be able to make it work. In the tech market, I can't imagine people opting for the over-priced dead-tree version over our computers, keyboards glued to our hands and all.

Do note, however, that I'm a tad bitter when it comes to magazines. I would actually enjoy browsing them if they were not so expensive and the information not so out-dated (and AdBlock were available as a plugin).

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

#8

Post by PStamatiou »

As an active blogger myself one issue I see, aside from getting bloggers to agree to this and finding a price they would accept (very few bloggers will do it for free, unless this publication becomes popular), is the fact that many blog posts simply aren't of publishable quality. If someone told me they wanted to pick a random article of mine and publish it, I would definitely want to edit it first. Web content doesn't entirely work well as print unless tweaked.

The other issue is.. will people used to reading blogs actually read print material of the same type of content? The nature of some of the content might make it outdated and so on

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

#9

Post by bluehatrider »

This is not a good idea.

Newspapers and magazines are in trouble.

Ad revenues to newspapers nationwide are down double digits this year. The top 100 advertisers have shifted over $ 1 Billion in ad dollars to the web from print and tv.

Going from what is growing to what is dying doesn't make any sense dkokelley.

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

#10

Post by alaskamiller »

mileszs wrote: post #6

I think you'd have to pick a 'market', really. If you were targeting politics, you might be able to make it work. In the tech market, I can't imagine people opting for the over-priced dead-tree version over our computers, keyboards glued to our hands and all. Do note, however, that I'm a tad bitter when it comes to magazines. I would actually enjoy browsing them if they were not so expensive and the information not s…

Yeah, I wish I could get all my information free. Why can't content publishers understand this?
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