How do e-magazines make a profit?

Multimedia magazines, or electronic magazines, are becoming the new favorite of venture capitalists. Along with this upsurge, the content providers and distribution platforms of multimedia magazines have proliferated. From the end of last year to the beginning of this year alone, more than 20 e-magazine publishing platforms appeared in two months.

A very optimistic view is that in the next three to five years, multimedia magazines will replace traditional magazines on a large scale. But from the perspective of making money, the profit source of multimedia magazines is nothing more than three points: first, advertising, second, distribution, and third, value-added services. The first profit point involves merchants, the second profit point involves readers, and the third profit point involves both merchants and readers. So far, these three profit models are not very mature and are still being explored. They may be "bubbles" or "blue oceans".

Advertising is still the main source of profit.

At present, advertising fee is almost the main profit channel of multimedia magazines. Even so, among the thousands of multimedia magazines that appear at present, no more than ten can get advertising revenue. On the one hand, multimedia magazines have just started, and advertisers have not realized their value. On the other hand, there are few flagship multimedia magazines.

POCO is one of the earliest websites that make multimedia magazines in China. At present, it is not only a publishing platform, but also a content provider of multimedia magazines. Yao Hong, CEO of POCO, told China Business News that POCO's e-magazine appeared to meet the needs of POCO community users, which is the main difference from other e-magazines. "We don't make electronic magazines for the sake of making electronic magazines."

Several magazines of POCO are published in this way. For example, there is a photography community first, and then there is a photographer's impression of multimedia magazines. The film multimedia magazine Premiere and the food multimedia magazine Taste are all made in this way. POCO's flagship magazine POCO Annals combines photography, movies, travel, food and other elements. All four magazines advertised.

According to Yao Hong, the monthly advertising amount of POCO now exceeds 6.5438+0 million yuan, of which the advertising amount of electronic magazines accounts for about 700,000 yuan, and its monthly growth curve "shows a 45-degree line trend". At present, the brands that advertise on POCO are mainly fashion and IT.

Liu, editor-in-chief of Faye Wong, told the reporter: "The advertisements of multimedia magazines are often closely combined with the content, and even ordinary consumers will not think it is an advertisement." Generally speaking, IT is those IT and fashion brands that dare to eat the first crab. On the one hand, they are easy to accept new things, on the other hand, their customer base is very consistent with the target readers of the magazine.

One advantage of multimedia magazines is that advertisers of multimedia magazines can even know the general background of people who read their advertisements and how long they have been exposed to their advertisements.

Although the website of Wanzhong Media has not been officially launched for a long time, Han Guoqiang, its vice president, thinks that the feast of multimedia magazines has not really started. First, there is no flagship multimedia magazine that can compete with traditional media in China, and there is still much room for development in the form of multimedia magazines; Secondly, advertisers have begun to pay attention to multimedia magazines and are very interested in their special forms of expression. It is expected that there will be big moves to join and follow up in the second half of the year.

"Money Way" of Future Issuance Fees

Fees are the second largest source of income for multimedia magazines. China has a long history of paid electronic magazines, the most famous of which is Long Yuan International Famous Magazine Network, which has collected nearly 1,000 electronic editions of domestic and foreign magazines. The electronic version of these magazines is often much cheaper than the paper version, but according to the reporter, the business of these websites is not very good, and not many readers are willing to pay for electronic magazines.

At the beginning of March, Wanzhong Media, the largest original multimedia magazine platform in China with 16 original magazines, acquired the Magzone website and changed the previous domain name Magarden to Magzone. Before it was acquired, Magzone was a content provider of electronic versions of traditional magazines, with nearly 700 paid electronic magazines. Han Guoqiang said that Wanzhong Media still retains this content, but does not expect this content to become the main source of profit.

Wanzhong Media has a team of more than 40 people who specialize in producing multimedia magazines, including several senior Internet players and post-80s writers. Han Guoqiang believes that the competition of multimedia magazines is still "content is king". They have the most powerful multimedia magazine production team and the most original magazines in China. Despite this, he said that Wanzhong Media's main focus now is content creation, and there is no plan to make money through distribution for the time being.

The flight network once made a similar plan. At the end of last year, two best-selling magazines in Xing Fei. Men's magazines Me and Love Me try to charge readers two yuan for each download. Chen Bihan, editor-in-chief of Amy ME, thinks that it should not be difficult to download a beautiful electronic magazine at the price of a multimedia message. But the result backfired. So far, these two magazines are still free, although they are all marked with prices.

As you can imagine, as long as there are thousands of free multimedia magazines online, it is difficult for readers to form the habit of paying, unless they are high-end multimedia magazines with exclusive copyright. Yao Hong told reporters that POCO is also planning to launch a paid magazine to "charge for some very good quality content", but he did not disclose more detailed plans.

Multimedia magazines still adhere to the principle of "content is king". In an era of scarce attention, it is not easy to attract readers' "eyeballs" and make them willing to pay. Xia Hong said: "At present, not many readers are willing to pay for multimedia magazines. At least in the next two or three years, reading fees will not become mainstream. "

In this case, helping enterprises to make multimedia magazines is a good way to make quick money-more and more enterprises are beginning to realize the value of using multimedia magazines to promote products, and some enterprises are beginning to use multimedia magazines as a form of internal magazines.

"Blue Ocean" of Value-added Services

Providing value-added services for readers is the most uncertain profit point in the business model of multimedia magazines, but it may also be the biggest business opportunity.

This is determined by the advantages of multimedia magazines. Because multimedia magazines are often more subdivided than traditional magazines, the readers they face are also more "differentiated". In addition, multimedia magazines have the function of interacting with readers and feeding back readers' information in time, so multimedia magazines have become a weapon of "direct selling".

Xia Hong, general manager of domestic e-magazine publishing platform X-plus in China, told reporters that he often wandered around IKEA some time ago. He didn't go to IKEA to buy things, but went there to find the business inspiration of "one-stop service". Although he did not disclose the content behind his ambitious "one-stop service", some people speculated that it was a huge plan. Simply put, this is a concept fusion of multimedia magazines and e-commerce.

Yao Hong seems to have found this feeling. He told reporters more than once that e-magazines are only a small part of POCO, and he values the community of POCO more. Users in this community have high loyalty and strong purchasing power, and it is entirely possible to explore new business opportunities among these people. Although POCO's e-commerce has just begun, he believes that this platform has been set up.

Han Guoqiang is also full of confidence in this work. In his view, Wanzhong Media's profit model goes far beyond advertising and distribution. Although he was born in traditional media, he said that he would not use the ideas of traditional media to make multimedia magazines. In his view, multimedia magazine is not only a new media form, but also a very powerful interactive marketing tool, so it is natural to combine it with e-commerce.

If this can be done, it will be another version of "Click and Mortar" in the first Internet wave at the beginning of this century. Here, multimedia magazine is not only a content media, but also an interactive marketing media.

Example:

Almost all electronic magazine manufacturers in the industry are worried about profit, but Gogosun has found a new way, making a profit of 20 million yuan in the first year of its establishment-

When the company was founded in 2005, the net profit of Gogosun (Beijing Sunshine Navigation Network Technology Co., Ltd.) was about 20 million yuan.

And this is not enough to make CEO Cheng Hong excited. The entrepreneur of this new media magazine predicts that Gogosun's sales revenue this year is expected to be around 200 million yuan, and the profit return will exceed 50 million yuan.

For this figure, many people in the industry think that there is too much water, because almost all electronic magazine manufacturers in the industry are worried about profit, and it is expected that the industry will be profitable at the earliest one year. For the doubts in the industry, Cheng Hong often laughs and doesn't answer.

Content producer

Unlike most e-magazine manufacturers, Cheng Hong chose to be a content provider.

Gogosun currently mainly provides two types of products, one is to cooperate with enterprises to make multimedia magazines for these enterprises to make profits; The latter mainly provides multimedia magazines introducing TV programs for end consumers.

Cheng Hong positioned Gogosun to provide broadband multimedia information navigation products and services. But there is only one kind of self-owned content, that is, the navigation magazine of Sunshine Satellite TV, which is also the "main source" of Gogosun's profit. This magazine is published once a week, and each issue is about 120 pages. It is aimed at ordinary consumers' families and provides multimedia TV content program guides and information.

Li Qiong, deputy general manager of Gogosun Company, told the reporter that in order to provide accurate content, the company signed 500 domestic TV stations and channels, and selected key content from these channels every week to make electronic magazines and distribute them to its users.

Among the audiences of these magazines, young women around the age of 25 account for the majority. "The time for users to read magazines for the first time is about 30 to 40 minutes, and then they mainly browse briefly." Li Qiong introduced.

Before Gogosun was founded, Cheng Hong and Li Qiong were both managers of Securities Star website. Millions of free users don't excite them, because those users can't generate actual cash income. On the contrary, financial websites with hundreds of thousands of charging users took the lead in becoming Nasdaq listed companies.

Fresh in my memory. Before choosing to enter a new field, Cheng Hong led an entrepreneurial team to inspect the e-magazine market. He found that many electronic magazines still develop users through the traditional free mode of Securities Star, and take the platform channel construction as a potential way of profit. Paid magazines are rare in this emerging industry. After a year of careful consideration, Cheng Hong decided to take the "old road" in the financial field: from the first user, he had to charge.

"This magazine does not adopt the usual free distribution method, but adopts subscription distribution. The regular version is 98 yuan every year, and the VIP version is 228 yuan per year. "

In August 2005, Gogosun was founded and made a profit three months later. The number of employees has also expanded from seven to dozens, but the profit is not from subscribing users, but a new profit model based on the discovery of paid magazines.

Sell magazines like fast-moving consumer goods

Because Gogosun's products are more like fast-moving consumer goods than traditional new media magazines.

Cheng Hong introduced the marketing mode of FMCG into this new media, and abandoned the traditional mode of downloading multimedia magazines for free and relying on advertising and value-added services to make profits. He set up dealers in many provinces and cities across the country to attract some large enterprises to develop group buying.

Soon, a beer company from the north expressed interest in Gogosun's products and decided to buy the magazine's products for 6,543.8 billion yuan, which also caught Cheng Hong off guard.

According to a senior manager in Gogol, the mode of cooperation with beer enterprises is: Gogol provides 20 million point cards for beer enterprises, beer enterprises provide point cards for their VIP users free of charge, and VIP users can download Sunshine TV navigation for two months with the point cards.

"The 20 million cards are paid by the beer company, which is different from competitors, because it makes his VIP users experience a unique magazine content."

The following cooperative enterprises also include giants in the fields of food, insurance and real estate.

In the face of more and more enterprises coming to the door, Cheng Hong concluded afterwards that the company's products have brought more value-added experiences to the other users, giving them richer connotations. And this so-called value-added experience comes from the company's unique content.

Compared with the production team of only five or six people in other companies, Gogosun's investment in production is somewhat shocking: there are more than a dozen text editors, dozens of audio-visual production teams, picture editing teams, and several professional composers, music producers and voice actors. There are more than 200 content personnel.

Gogosun's production process is more like an assembly line.

Although the number of Gogosun employees has expanded from the earliest 7 to nearly 300 now. However, Cheng Hong has repeatedly felt that the company is short of manpower. In order to further expand the strength of content production, Cheng Hong plans to build the world's largest multimedia production center in one of the five cities in China and recruit another 400 professional content production teams.

Like all e-magazine manufacturers, Gogosun received a total of $2,000 in venture capital from Softbank (China). The second tens of millions of dollars of venture capital will arrive at the end of July at the earliest.