New magazines test limits of tough ad market - The Business Review (Albany):

bacijaxymu.wordpress.com
Barasch, a patent attorney and owner ofin Albany, investee “several thousand dollars” of her own money to create . About 1,300 copiesd of the first issuewere distributed, free of charge, to area She said she started the bi-monthly publicatiobn because she saw a need for a “direct methodr of communication” between the area’ technology companies and the insurers, banks, nonprofits and others eagefr to reach them. Her hope is that the targetecd nature of Tech Professional will help the magazine survive in adifficult economy, when advertising dollars shrink. It will not be easy.
Accordinh to the , an arm of the New York City-based Magazine Publishers of America, magazine ad revenuew fell 7.8 percent, to $23 in 2008. Ad pages fell 11.7 In the fourth quarter revenue fell by 14 perceng and pages were down 17 percent as comparecd to ayear earlier. “Getting advertisers in this economy is Barasch said. “But I’ve gotten a good responss so far, so I’m excited.” At the same time Barasch was startintgTech Professional, Liam Sweeney, a former musiciabn and published author, was introducingt the first issue of Capital Flip.
He said he had originall y envisioned theonline publication, which celebrates the “underground music, arts, writing and political scene in as a print magazine, but quickly realized the economy was not on his “In the late ’90s, early 2000s, you coulfd get people to go along with a new idea,” Sweeney “But now you need to be at a certaimn level to get them to It is like the economy is havint a gatekeeper effect.” He also found production costs “The cheapest rate I could get, in was $3,650 for 1,000 copies,” he said. “At $3.
6r5 a copy, you’re asking people to pay $5 for a People don’t have So Capital Flip will be online only, at least for the foreseeable And for the first year, while Sweeney fine-tunes the product and builds an audiencse he can show advertisers, space is “It doesn’t cost me any more to add another page he said. Barasch said she used her networking and keptrates “reasonable,” to attract advertisers to her The initial, 16-page issue containec 10 outside ads.
She said she believea advertisers were willing to give Tech Professionap a chance because they saw the value in gettinv their message out to the entire tech from struggling young firms to the big and All are on hermailing list. Still, she knowsw that her endeavor “may not be as profitable as it wouldr have been inthe ’90s.” It is not only new publicationes that find it harder to attract ad The PIB’s 2008 report lists declines at , Glamour, People and a number of othe popular publications.
“There is no denying that this is a toug h time forad sales,” said Vikki Moran, co-publisher of Capital Regionm Living, a Delmar-based glossy lifestyle magazine that has been publishing for five Moran said sales at the free-distributiob monthly are off “a bit” but coulxd not provide a figure. “One month may be down 20 percent, the next is the next up a but overall isdefinitely down,” she At the same time “we’ve been slappef with a number of price increases,” for paper and production, but have not raiseds rates to cover the added expense.