How to Make a Magazine: Build Your Dream Magazine Business in these 2 STEPS

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm answering a question from one of my Facebook readers, Godson, who wrote in saying, "I wanna go into the magazine publication business and I don't have any capital of my own to start off, but I need your advice on how to go into magazine publication." So thanks for the question and it's great to see you on Facebook. I love, uh, my Facebook readers. 2 quick tips for you. First, I would look at going to find a job working for somebody who's in that business. If you haven't had any experience in the magazine business before, go try to work with somebody else who's already doing what you want to do. It'll do a couple things for you. First, it'll teach you about the industry, so you'll make some contacts, you'll learn how the ropes— what the ropes are, you'll learn how to do the business, you'll be able to see, you know, how to basically run the day-to-day operations so that when you do go out and start your own business, you know what to do and what not to do. So you're basically getting paid to make all the mistakes and learn on somebody else's watch. The second thing it'll teach you is, do you want to do this business or not? So sometimes we get excited about companies and excited about business ideas, but then once we get into it, we realize, hey, this is a lot of work, or this isn't what I thought it was gonna be. You know, it was a great dream, but I really feel like I should be doing something else. And that's okay. It's good to start small, test, see if it's for you or not. So by going to work for somebody else, you get those contacts, you get the experience and the connections, but it also teaches you if you should be doing this business or not. And again, you're doing it all on somebody else's dime, uh, and so you're not spending your own money yet to do it. That would be my first tip. The second thing is I always love as much as possible to try to create a business without spending any money. So I'll invest my time, energy, effort, blood, sweat, tears, but not my money into starting something new. And so I try to encourage entrepreneurs to do the same thing. So your long-term goal may be to create a magazine publication as your business. That's awesome. How can you start that off on a smaller scale where you're not spending any money. And one place you might look to is the web. So create a web version of whatever magazine you're trying to do. If it's a lifestyle or sports, whatever it is, create a website. You're gonna need a website anyway for your magazine, and a lot of magazines are even going to the web and shutting down their magazines because it's hard to keep up with the economic model of having a print magazine. But start online and you'll start making connections and start getting some good story ideas out there, and it doesn't cost you a lot of money to create a website, or hopefully any money, compared to actually creating a physical magazine. And that will help you start to grow the business. And if you can start charging some advertising rates on there, make some money, and then pour that profit back into your business, you will be able to expand into hopefully your magazine publication. So just those two quick things. Those are my quick tips for you, Godson, to get you past the hump. One, go work for somebody else who's already done what you're trying to do, to learn from them and see if this is the type of business that you want to do. And two, figure out a way to start small without spending any money, I would personally look at doing it online to start. You may find other ways through partnerships or through working with another company at the same time to launch a magazine, but again, without spending any money. Try to figure that out, bootstrap it up, and then you can be able to expand from there. One last thought. A lot of entrepreneurs do try to go out and raise capital for their business, and it's great. It's a great potential idea. The two things to keep in mind: first of all, it takes up a lot of your time. So raising capital, especially if you're going for angel capital or venture capital, almost becomes a full-time job, and that takes away from you being able to actually run your business. So I'd rather invest that time into making my business run and launch instead of just having an idea on paper that I'm pitching around to investors. The second thing is, if you're at the really early stage, you're gonna get killed on your valuation. If you go to a bank, you're gonna have to pay really high interest rates. If you go to any kind of other investor, equity investor, they're gonna take a big chunk of your company. Just because you have an idea and you haven't actually launched your business. So the more you can get momentum building, some real customers coming in, even if you're not making a lot of money, but you're making some money, then if you need to make money to go out to expand and get some angel or venture capital investors involved, you'll get a much better valuation because you have a lot more of a track record behind you. So hopefully that helps, Scottson. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. Makes me want to do more videos for you. I'd love to hear what you have to think. If you wanna leave a comment under the video, or if you have a question for your own business, I always love hearing those. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.