I am getting way ahead of myself here but that's my ultimate goal. Has anyone done this, success, failure? I'd like to hear your story.
I almost did... the plan was to spinoff a free regional print mag of my indie music webzine about a year ago. In the end, it wasn't going to be worth the cost and hassle of the startup, because other sites and my consulting work were doing well enough as it was. Maybe if I increase the zine's traffic dramatically, I'd reconsider that kind of investment, but not in the foreseeable future. If you do run with it, NOLO has a good book on the subject (www.nolo.com) - it's called something like "starting a successful newsletter or magazine" - something like that.
People like to read tradtional magazines on a tangible format. An online magazine will not appeal to some because if you are going on a long journey you want to fold your magazine, relax and read it in your own leisure.
No one can even begin to answer that for you. It depends on a heck of a lot, like: 1. B&W vs. Color 2. Glossy or not? 3. Type of binding 4. Quantity 5. Anticipated distribution models (affects postage costs) 6. Writing it yourself, or hiring writers? 7. Designing yourself, or hiring designers? 8. Handling ad sales yourself, or hiring a pro? 9. Photography yourself, or outsourcing that? 10. Will you need to lease office space? 11. How big will the mag be? You'd easily be looking at thousands. While doing preliminary planning on the regional, full-color, glossy I was considering, it would have been around $15-25K to startup, with all of my options on those and other things laid out. At the same time, I recently read an article about a new large mag supposed to be launching with a startup cost of like $150million. It's not cheap, and it can take a while before you're earning decent returns, if any. If you don't grab a copy of the book I mentioned (you really should), at least look at some of these links: www.magazinepublisher.com www.magazinelaunch.com
I thought about it, but my niche are so competitive already. im considering taking my clothing store to paper catalog tho.
I have a friend that did so, but he makes almost 0 profit off of it. However he wasn't really aiming for that, merely trying to get the info out to the people, it sells pretty well though. When a new issue is released most of them are snapped up within a few days.