What A Person Who Can't Sell Should Do?

Not sure as I have never sold a magazine but will say perhaps you should have planned this out before you spent monies on a magazine that you may end up never selling.

nicely censored...

i think if you want to be known, you have to give some out for free with either other magazines or places that allow it. maybe a smaller edition. i never sold magazines though.

you would need a buzz of some kind. maybe you could send free magazines to potential advertisers and in turn they can pay you to be in that magazine. who would want to be in it - i don't know, maybe you can get a similar magazine and see who advertises in it, then contact them.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I googled your name to get a better look at the magazine and found it on YouTube. The photographs are beautiful. Why aren't you selling those on FAA?

Darn it..and I thought taking great pics of beautiful nude women would be my next career!

Seriously, you do good work. I don't know why they don't sell unless it is just that print is going the way of the dinosaur. All magazines are a hard sell these days. Perhaps an online edition with paid subscriptions would be the way to go? I admit I have no business training or sense :( Don't bother with calendars though!

I don't know... unless you could try sending out freebies to publishers.

Mike,
I am looking for business that seems ti fit the magazine content and public. But still I have to be a good seller to convince them people will open the magazine if I give for to public for free.

Patricia,
I am not trying selling prints anymore because after dedicate my time and even money so deep in that I barelly sold a couple of prints. This is why tried only focus on get exhibition en galleries and cafes. But them, are also hard to get and when got I don't get sales. And this is why I am now trying the magazine, a cheaper ways to show and sell my work, but it seems it won't be different from previous project.

Ted, in the MagCloud where I publish the magazine there is a digital version available. It is half price of the the printed version.

Nicole, I just thoght about it a couple of hoirs ago. It seems it will be my next move now.

maybe you can sell your work to a successful magazine and work from there for a while. and when you get positive feedback then sell it as a magazine. i do think that these days though, with pads, and electronic means of reading things, stuff like magazines will go away like the carved rocks people used to read. even newspapers are getting harder to sell because you can download those.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Self published e-book authors have found that giving away a sample (first few pages or first chapter) can draw in buyers.

I wouldn't make your magazine have a traditional date but rather "Issue #1", "Issue #2", etc so they don't become dated. A calendar of these images would be fantastic. Some PODs offer calendars.

I sell my book "the Quotable Westie" - http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Westie-Photographs-Edward-Fielding/dp/1481084372

on Amazon. Less than $10 and it sells a handful of copies each month. Created in CreateSpace the quality is such that it doesn't compete with print sales here, rather its more like an over-sized business card or marketing piece which can send people to my FAA offerings.

Its a mystery to me why you wouldn't sell prints.

In the MagCloud people can also see some of the photos from the shoot in the preview (the beginning), and the articles titles.

I have tried sell calendars and nobody have bought a singles one. Even relatives and friends who always tell me they like my work. They won't spend a penny on my stuff, it doesn't matter how high or low is the price. The same for postcards, prints and so on. At the end I give freebies without any return.


Mike, what you sugest is not as easy as it sounds.

Relatives and friends don't buy because they are not truly in the market for artwork. Or they know you'll eventually just give it to them.

Unless your friends and relatives are artists, the likelihood that they appreciate fine art is low. And if they are artists they probably have enough of their own art. This is why price has no effect. They are not in the market for art.

You could try mailing the mag to art gallery directors (if that's what they call themselves) with a request for them to represent your prints in their shop. I don't see how a magazine format for presenting work can become a money-spinner in its own right - not that I've looked at how you've handled the contents - but it could be an unusual marketing tool to mark you out as someone different in the minds of the middle-men.

nothing is as easy as it sounds. selling anything is hard. but sometimes you have to be different and try things. you'll probably burn money for the first few issues. family won't buy things. it's rare if they do. your the guy who knows how to do X - but in the same vain, do you ask them or buy things from them if they have a service? doctor, lawyer, dentist, insurance - do you use them? or pay for their services? probably not, i'm not sure many do that in the family. selling nudes, art nudes, etc is hard because it's so easy to get your own stuff online - for free. your magazine would need something different. even playboy has "articles". most of those have a centerfold as well.

i don't know if you can drop into a small store and see if you can peddle it there. but probably not, you would have to contact their head quarters and be able to distribute these things on a regular basis. you might be able to see these at a local book store however. it really depends on the audience your trying to attract. i don't think it would count as a coffee table thing, and nothing for a waiting room either. sometimes no matter how good it might look, if it doesn't fit the lifestyle of a person it may never sell.

calenders are the same, often expensive, most will get them free from the bank and stores. hard to compete with free.

maybe you can do a geek girl series. pose them with keyboards and such. then you may have an inner audience that may appreciate it because it would be different.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Edward, odd...funny that part of my frustration is that almost all of my sales have been to friends. I never wanted it that way as like all of us I think, I wanted to engage the public at large.

I have been working on the gallery route myself but as Marcio mentioned, most of them are barely making it. Marcio keep up the good work and good luck! I share your frustration and if I had a dollar for everytime someone told me they were going to buy a print,calendar, etc...........

I will try the luck by sending to publishing houses, some stores and galleries. I will see if anything happen.

Ted, thanks.

Edward, I don't mean my relatives and friends to be my actually customers but help me to spread the word.

I think a lot of magazines are really suffering these days. We have a locally-produced magazine where I live that is given away free and is paid for by the advertisers. It's quite popular. It isn't at all like yours but maybe you could get some ideas from it. I've been published in it a number of times and wonder if the publisher (Edmund, a really nice guy) might be open to communicating with you to offer some suggestions or just let you know how it works for him. http://www.zoomsunshinecoast.com/

Unfortunately just having talent isn't enough, as you know. Good luck!

I know it would be expensive, but I can really see your work as a beautiful coffee table book. Put in local bookshops up front...like you are already known. Your name is wonderful...love how you have it across the top. just my 2 cents. Maybe it is too nice for a magazine. These aren't glancing photos, these are pondering photos.

The problem dealing with local book shops, at least where I live, is that they don't accept self independent books, magazines (nor callendars or postcards) but only from their distributor.

I think this practice is not common in Germany, or at least not in the region where I live, because wherever I tried it they look at me as if they never had heard such thing. They don't even seems to be interested to hear about it. People are not very open to what is not "common" or "normal" for them. I think it's because its a region with only small towns. Usually in small conservative places people don't like to think out of the box.

But I am trying with clothes shops for alternative public (like rock in roll shop) or even where they are specialized on sexy lingerie. And of courser galleries. But alternative clothes shops is where I found people at least open to hear about.


Peggy, thank you.
I will have a look. :)

Marcio , nice magazine :).

I agree with you because friend of mine had similar idea on her local market without results.
Her magazine was great also but - no success.

You have right - not even one book shop wanted to accept independent magazine , and you have absolutely right- people don't like to think out of the box.

You have to understand and one more thing - even very well established printed magazines and newspapers these days have a lot of problems to sell their printed magazines , simply because time of printed magazines has passed.
We live in digital era - we read news on tablets/lap tops. mobile devices , we read magazines and watch images on tablets and lap tops.

I used to buy tons of magazines in the past , in my house I have thousands of them ( I keep them ) but to be honest I don't remember when I bought last time some printed magazine.
Simply because when I want to see great nice images or to read something I make coffee open my lap top or tablet and that's it- I have everything online to enjoy my free time.

If I was you ( who decided to go with that route ) I would go with some great online magazine .
First of all it is cheaper and you have in front of you whole world .
With printed magazine and with very modest budget you can work only on local market ( that's the the reality ) except if you invest tons of money on advertising and printing to make some well known name and to sell later printed magazine to all countries in EU or worldwide.
My opinion it is impossible these days in digital era even for very big fishes which are ready to invest hundreds of thousands dollars for that.

Instead of that for great online magazine you don't need too much money , you can start with very modest budget and "one man company "
You can buy some nice domain then to buy some great Wordpress magazine theme ready to use .
Wordpress is the very best for that because there are some very powerful plugins for SEO optimization and in very short time ( let's say around 6 months ) if you work clever with SEO you can reach online a lot of visitors .
Later when you have a lot of visitors you can sell banners, posts , you can work affiliate marketing - you have world in front of you- not only small local market with printed magazine.

For example have a look on these links :
http://www.designscene.net/
http://www.archiscene.net/
http://www.fashiongonerogue.com/

All of them started from nowhere and after hard work they became web sites/online magazines with tons of visitors, with great Alexa ranking , and when you have a tons of visitors every day -then you make money.

You can maybe start something similar with fine art story because there are no many great fine art magazines -there are a lot of fashion magazines but not too much great fine art magazines.
For example you can make interviews with FAA members , you can post their great fine art work with links etc .
You already know a lot of artists from here.
Everyone here will give you web files for posts , for interviews , on that way they will also have benefit , they will have links on web , they will have free exposure etc which is very important thing.

Just you have to make very serious fine art magazine with great design , for example have a look on ThemeForest ready to use magazine themes
http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/blog-magazine
And to take job serious with SEO optimization which is very easy to understand and to work because you have ready to use plugins for that with very powerful results.

Think about that if you already want to go with that route- with magazine.

Hope this helped
Best of luck

Wow, now that is some serious advice. Great detail.

Zorro
julio-lopez.artistwebsites.com

Thanks Milan,

There is the digital version and PDF version of my magazine available as well. But what I can see from the examples you show, is that the idea is to give the content for free and after get a considerable number of viewers try to earn money from advertise.Is that right?

I think I will have to try this path.

Thank you very much for the suggestion.

You are welcome Marcio,

Yes exactly like that you wrote.
Huge traffic on web site will bring you money through banners, posts and the most important thing affiliate marketing .

Friend of mine runs one blog with huge traffic and she earns couple of thousand dollars per month from her site.

If you decided for magazine try that route , if you already want to invest your time.

With printed magazine you can not sell advertising - I mean you can but no one will pay you for advertising if your printed magazine have only 500-2000 copies per month.
It is a waste of time - that is not serious for any advertising agency or company or whatever ( especially if you cover only small local market )

But once when you have 1000-3000 visitors per day ( or imagine much more visitors per day ) on your web site/magazine then you will become serious advertising machine.

That's why I gave you honest advise if you already want to invest your time and to work hard - do it on right way .

Best

I have already made some tests in my website to see how I can convert it in a online magazine. I use Weebly which I think is much more time saver than Wordpress that I have used previously. And they offer a very good SEO resources too.

I will see how it goes.