Comments on: Building A Magazine Publisher Financial Model

By: Bill Wink

Bill Wink — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:38:27 +0000

Great article. One line item which should be watched closely is sales commissions. These are paid on advertising and sometimes on subscriptions (e.g. if you use a distributor such as Synapse). But commissions are not necessarily a bad thing as it really depends on the incrementality of the obtained revenues.

My company has developed a service to help manage the commissions statement presentation and distribution to payees from excel ( check it out here: http://www.oneclickcommissions.com/xf.html )

When evaluating sales channels and ad reps (and the corresponding commissions or variable cost of sales), look at their “assets” (i.e. a business list that you could not access before or special relationship with coveted and new advertisers) and whether the revenues they bring to the pub are truly incremental.

By: Kevin Roberts

Kevin Roberts — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:18:32 +0000

Is there an example of this model that can be viewed?

By: David

David — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:39:58 +0000

Thanks for the informative article. It has discussed in a good detail, Typically a print magazine like ‘The Economist’ which has built its name through many decades, offers dynamic content online while the print issue remains periodical. Clearly the popular model in magazine industry is the ‘Bricks and Clicks’ model. This is critical to consider while building a financial model because

1. It changes the revenue model. The magazine may sell separate subscriptions for their online content which brings in additional revenue. The magazine may also make money through targeted advertisements or through google ad-sense.

2. It also increases the cost structure as a high-end server would be required to be bought or leased to handle online traffic. Since the online content has to be dynamic, more reporters and editors could be required.