JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Performing Songwriter

I doubt many people will care about Internet Only Mags. I think having a print version actually increased the credibility and stature of a publication. Online you're just a websearch. People don't feel and touch you so to speak. And I say this as someone who exists on the web and uses it to communicate almost exclusively. We do try to supplement it all face to face in ways most others don't do (i.e. Roadtrips and Chapters) but I always wanted to have a JPF Magazine. But I know the cost of making an issue is tremendous and the technical requirements (page set up, design, color choices, photos, licensing of the content, fact checking because you only get 1 shot to get it right, etc.) were overwhelming to understaffed and underfunded entities. And when people stop running those expensive full page ads, you're dead meat. I can say though, as someone who ran a million bucks worth of print ads in my former life, they never really paid off to sell products. They were fantastic for product/name recognition and validation in the marketplace, but I always thought they felt far short when it came to call to action type of motivation. Of course email is nearly useless to do any of that either. Your best bet is to partner with entities that people use and trust (like JPF) and understand that a long term relationship is the answer versus a short term advertisement. I think that every member here would at least check out our sponsors when the time came to need their services and our long term relationship with most of our sponsors bears fruit in ways often short sighted folks miss completely. There no longer is a great resource to run "call to action" sorts of advertisements. Only long term relationships where you get your name/product/service in front of someone on an ongoing basis so that when they need arises, they are the name that people think of and check out currently work in my opinion. Magazines were always laying around. But now the net people are only in one place long enough to jump to the next. Communities like ours where people hang out long term are perhaps the new future homes to the magazine crowds. Hopefully we can attract more regular readers of mags like PS to hang here with us and get much of the same content just by hanging around.

The net is a great thing, but the unintended consequences keep adding up.

Brian