Topic: Do you own a bitcoin business? If so... - page 2. (Read 4388 times)

Finished another advertisement for one of the clients in the magazine. Showing it here for other businesses to understand the level of quality we're working towards.

We're now down to only 4 full-page slots and I'm pretty confident they will be gone by tomorrow.

One more full page advertisement has been paid for (3-months worth). I'll post it here when it's sent to me. They seem to have their own design they want to use.

I think I'll let our competitors figure this one out for themselves.

How do you plan on getting over 650 non-Bitcoin users (33% of 2000) to pay $3-6 in Bitcoin per magazine for the first issue?

nice work

Finished another advertisement for one of the clients in the magazine. Showing it here for other businesses to understand the level of quality we're working towards.

Looks great

This is pretty cool.  Planning on a "preview" of sorts? Just to see what it's like. 

Finished another advertisement for one of the clients in the magazine. Showing it here for other businesses to understand the level of quality we're working towards.

This is of course true, but only works if there is guaranteed advertising space. If the bitcoin world wasn't so small, I would tend to be a little more confident on the advertising part of it. Again, we're not talking about not being able to produce it-- most anyone in the bitcoin world could afford to do a magazine where the only lose money, but it would be futile and businesses don't work or grow that way. Bottom line, if no one is interested, no one is interested. Our job as I see it, is to provide as many opportunities to both interest people and keep them interested as possible. Beyond that, you can't change figures, and those figures lean towards the magazine not being sustainable by advertisements alone until the readership is at or above the 50,000 reader mark. Obviously could be wrong, but it's what I honestly believe at present.

Our Marketing Director, Mihai Alisie had proposed this to me, and we considered it long and hard, but being able to pay for the magazine's necessary printing eventually won out.


I appreciate that greatly. Your support will help us get closer to the point that the print issue price drops and delivering it digitally for free will be a possibility. I also agree with your sentiments. This glossy, thick and high quality magazine will be printed to industry standards. Any business that advertises with us will claim a place in history as all back issues will display their advertising as well. Who wouldn't want that, even if it were a message that said "Hi Mom"?

Again, good idea but in reality doesn't work too well considering we are unable to pay for printing supplies and services in bitcoins, and the market volitility is too high at present. (What would happen if you paid 1BTC for an advertisement and bitcoin's value halved the very next day when we went to pay for printing fees? The magazine would not survive.)



The codename is "BitTalk Magazine", as a release of BitTalk Media who also owns BitTalk.TV. The published name will be different based on what country it is published and marketed to, and that will be released at the time of printing. Right now you can refer to it as "BitTalk Magazine".

I'm still designing the cover (usually it comes last, after all the other articles are finished and arranged) and I will put it as well as a sample of some of the internal pages in a separate thread when they are done.

I truly appreciate all the questions and I am here to assist in anything regarding the advertisements or subscriptions anytime.


Matthew

I totally agree that digital copies should be free.  I think that you will get much more exposure and the advertisements will pay for the magazine, you shouldn't need to charge for downloads.  Or you know that service that let's you download a file if you tweet it.  Like this, this way everyone needs to tweet the message in order to download the magazine, so they are contributing a little but. 

I will definitely purchase an ad slot, probably the 1/4 page.  It would be awesome to be in issue #1.  You should list your advertising prices in Bitcoin...

What is the magazine called?  Can you share a picture of the cover?

If enough businesses feel the way you do and can sustain advertising, we will gladly open up the digital version for free.


I believe we are planning on releasing the second issue digitally for free as a promotion. I don't think it's cost effect to do so in the first month however. At least not yet. Things change daily and we're constantly exploring more opportunities. If you have any suggestions, I openly welcome them.

Digital is cheaper, but in both price and quality. We will not reach the masses without a print representation, of that I am absolutely sure. If simply digital were enough, we wouldn't need a magazine at all, we could just make a website and spam it across the globe. No, I'm afraid we need educational institutions, businesses, government organizations and consumers alike to spend their already set-aside funds for publications in order to help seed this process of global education. This is one fact I'm sure of. Paper has as long of a life left as it takes for us to produce unhackable e-paper at the same cost.

As to your feelings on advertising, that's honestly up to your ads. I am confident that an advertisement I make will get the message across in a much more memorable way than some text link or flashing banner.


We're exploring all the digital release options, but one of the reasons we are using our own app is due to the payment method of bitcoin. If there is a 'coupon code' feature for these services that we can arrange, then delivering it in any market for USD and simply selling the coupon codes for BTC will be the best solution I think.

If you'd like to help support this initiative, help us gather together enough advertisers to fill these slots above. If we can sell all the slots, I am convinced we can afford to release the digital version for free.

I would gladly pay double the advertising price if the digital issue was free.

I would also suggest to make the first edition free for the digital version. This will bring you a lot of attention and free viral marketing.

I would also question a paper copy version from a cost of producing perspective as bitcoin is all about digital. As a potential advertiser a digital copy with direct click link to our offer increase the conversion rate.

You might also think about an eMagazin paid version for kindle (amazon) or iBook (apple) rather than investing in a own APP (again saving on the cost factor).

For me and i guess also to others in our generation <50 paper is simply dead!   

Our first readership is expected to be 66% existing bitcoiners. By the second issue, we will aim for the opposite.

The way I figure it is, we need to establish a base before jumping mainstream or else we are 'nobodies' in both places. 

What kind of demographics do you expect for your readers? Will it tend to be people already familiar with bitcoin or a new audience?

You make a good point that has been discussed in great depth amongst the team. It was a hard decision to make, but for the first month there are certain limitations we need to place for our budget in order to insure that the magazine production goes smoothly. I believe there is room in the future for discussion on making the digital version free, but certainly not before there is significant revenue from both advertising and print sales to supplement it.

Here's some food for thought;

Somewhere in the world right now there is a similar 11 member team working everyday collaborating to bring a high quality magazine to print and release the digital download for free. Everyone downloads it instead of buying the print version and the magazine is unable to return their month's investment, cease production.

I strongly believe our publication is too important to the future of Bitcoin to make such a wreckless financial decision. That said, there's always room for solutions. I hope to hear any alternatives you can think of, because it's a problem as old as digital downloading itself.

Let me know if I can be of any service on anything else.

Matthew

If you're only focusing on quantity, $60 for a full page ad can be a bit pricey, but let me ask you a serious question-- when you're putting an advertisement into a locksmithing catalog that only locksmiths read, would you feel the same way?

It's entirely up to you what goes into your ads, but we have the right to refuse if the content is vulgar or it lowers the overall professional image of the magazine (I'm sure we won't have that problem much as we'll be helping create the advertisements for most of our advertisers), but yes, the advertising space is yours and you are free to divide it as you see fit so long as it does not affect poorly on the magazine's internal design (please coordinate with us before creating a design).


Our first print will be sent out to 2,000 readers. We expect to grow to the entire bitcoin community throughout 2012.


When we have reached a readership milestone of 50,000, we will reduce the price of the digital version to $1 (in BTC), as well as reduce the print version a significant percentage as well.

Myself an Android phone, tablet and iPhone user, I can sympathize. As an artist and a part of a team of individuals working hard to provide high quality material on a shoestring budget, I'm afraid I would have to insist.

We will make it easy however by allowing users to download our iPhone/Android application and pay to read the magazine with Bitcoins.


Matthew

We're planning on a publishing date 3 weeks from today. You may submit an advertisement as late as 2 weeks from now if you need to.

Also, since this is the first issue, I will be here to facilitate the advertisement design process as well for any full page advertisements ordered.


Matthew