So you want to start and publish a digital magazine of your own? Having worked in a digital publishing platform for over 2 years as customer success, and the first touchpoint for many of our clients, Rafael and I have helped on-boarded hundreds of clients until their apps are published successfully.
For this article, Rafael and I decided to sit down and share a little bit about what we think needs to be prepared when you want to publish a digital magazine.
Kindly note that neither Rafael nor I are experts on this. This is something that we simply notice over the time since we started in MagLoft.
Content
Let’s start with the obvious! Of course, you can’t start a digital magazine without any content. However, we notice that a lot of people only have a vague idea without any specific details.
Many users come to us with questions like, “I want to start a ____ magazine, where do I start?”
You start with creating the content.
This is especially hard if you are starting the digital magazine all by yourself, without any team. Publishing a digital magazine is a lot of work. You need to come with topics and issues, writing the copy, editing, designing the layout, and many more.
It is also a continuous process, and you have to repeat it every week, month, or quarter. If you only have a vague idea of your digital magazine then you will easily find yourself stuck halfway through.
Branding
Once you have your content ready, the next step would be for you to come up with your branding. How do you want to promote your digital magazine? What persona do you want to project? Who is your target audience?
You might think that you can figure this out later when you want to do a marketing campaign. However, we believe that your first branding ‘task’ is to come up with the right magazine name and logo.
Of course, magazine names and logos can be changed anytime. We have seen clients who have rebranded their magazines over and over again by changing their names and logo. But if you are just starting out, this might confuse your potential readers.
This is not to say that you can’t change your magazine name and especially logo. However, we recommend starting out with a solid one that you won’t change while building your customer base.
Developer Accounts
Publishing a digital magazine means that you publish it as native mobile apps. Most likely, these apps will be published in Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and even Amazon Store. This means that you have to have a developer account ready and set up in these platforms first before you can build and publish an app.
We do recommend signing up and setting up your developer accounts as soon as possible, before you are ready to launch your magazine, as it can take a while to get the developer accounts ready.
We have encountered multiple cases where the clients come to us ready with their content, but have yet to create and set up their own developer account and their launch date gets pushed back for weeks waiting for the accounts to be ready.
Pro tip: When enrolling in the Apple Developer Program, we recommend choosing or upgrading to an Organization/Company account if it’s possible for you. It costs the same as the Personal/Individual account, but you will need to provide your company’s DUNS number. Having an Organization account will be easier for you to invite and manage users and roles in the account without having to provide your account credentials.
Tax & Banking Information
The tax & banking information step related to the Developer Accounts. Aside from acquiring a DUNS number, this is the longest step to complete when setting up your developer accounts.
However, it is an important step. Especially if you want to offer a paid subscription or paid issues with your digital magazines. Just make sure you have all this information readily available when you’re signing up for Developer Accounts!
Ready to Publish a Digital Magazine?
Check out our blog for more tips on digital publishing. If you think MagLoft might be the one for your digital publishing partner, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via live chat (should be available on the right bottom part of your page) or send us an email at support@magloft.com 🙂
