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Who you know September 15, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Magazine , trackback

It’s not who you know… it’s whom you know.

None of our current progress would have been possible without other people’s help.  Craig and I have gotten really frustrated at times because there’s so much to learn about publishing and we’re coming in at ground zero.  Yesterday we talked to a professor at Northwestern who told us that advertisers won’t even talk to us until we have 200,000 subscribers.  How are we supposed to get 200,000 subscribers?  With a 5% response rate, we’d have to send out 4,000,000 pieces of direct mail.  We don’t have $4 million dollars! 

Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur founded the magazine Mental Floss while they were still students at Duke.  We talked to Will this afternoon about the business side.  Will pointed out that the traditional magazine model is becoming outdated.  Traditionally, magazines give away their magazines for next to nothing, building a huge subscriber base to sell more advertising.  Will had some great insights into the new magazine paradigm he sees - basically creating content good enough that people are willing to pay for it.  They have hardly any advertising and grew organically through guerilla advertising rather than huge, expensive direct mail marketing campaigns.

Then this evening Mangesh happened to be in New York City so I met him for dinner.  Both founders in one day - not bad!  Mangesh gave me some great info about the editorial side - developing the voice of the magazine, finding freelancers, and creating content.  I learned we need to get an attorney and an accountant soon.  It’s also time to order Samir Husni’s book.

Comments»

1. Not Hardly - September 15, 2006

If you think you need an accountant already, you better just go ahead and get a business bank account and a business credit card. If you are careful, most of your purchases will be “start up expenses” and non-taxable. It’s very easy to keep track of this with dedicated accounts, credit cards. If you use your own cash/CC, you can still do this, but the accounting gets ugly very quickly as you attempt to trace the flow of money from here to there and everywhere. Trust me on this one, it’s a huge hassle.

If you have’t started a journal, it’s time. I keep mine on google spreadsheet, sharing with board members. Remember to track your travel separately, especially vehicle mileage, tax rules slightly different. Once you have a journal, moving ledger items into a double entry system (or whatever) is easy.

Make sure to check IRS for appropriate tax rules for quarterly filing in your situation. Q3 due tomorrow, of course.

Have fun. :P

2. Niels - September 15, 2006

Oooh, good advice. And fast! Thanks, nameless stranger!

We’re in the process of incorporating now, we’ll get the bank account and credit card very soon.

3. Not Hardly - September 15, 2006

Yeah, it’s a process. Like pickup. Learn to enjoy it, because as soon as you figure one thing out, someone with more mojo changes the rules. Nolo Press is your friend. When you get back to the left coast, getting their stuff from their store gets you a nice discount. Careful choosing your 3rd board member.

4. Niels - September 16, 2006

Ahh…*wink*

I’ve been using some of Nolo’s stuff already. I’ll be back in sunny CA in a month; I’ll load up on some more.