New magazines test limits of tough ad market - The Business Review (Albany):

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Barasch, a patent attorney and owner of in invested “several thousand of her own money to create . About 1,300p copies of the first issue were freeof charge, to area businesses. She said she started the bi-monthlhy publication because she saw a need fora “directy method of communication” between the area’s technology companies and the insurers, banks, nonprofits and othera eager to reach them. Her hope is that the targetedd nature of Tech Professional will help the magazinde survive in adifficult economy, when advertisingv dollars shrink. It will not be easy.
Accordingf to the , an arm of the New York City-based Magazine Publishers of America, magazine ad revenue fell 7.8 to $23 billion, in 2008. Ad pages fell 11.7 percent. In the fourth quarter alone, revenue fell by 14 percent and pagesa were down 17 percent as compared to ayear “Getting advertisers in this economyu is difficult,” Barasch said. “But I’vde gotten a good response so far, so I’ m excited.” At the same time Barasch was startingTech Professional, Liam a former musician and published author, was introducing the first issue of Capital Flip.
He said he had originallty envisioned theonline publication, which celebrateas the “underground music, arts, writingf and political scene in as a print magazine, but quicklg realized the economy was not on his “In the late ’90s, early you could get peoplse to go along with a new Sweeney said. “But now you need to be at a certainn level to get themto advertise. It is like the economy is having agatekeeped effect.” He also found production costs prohibitive. “The cheapesy rate I could get, in Canada, was $3,650 for 1,00p0 copies,” he said. “Ag $3.
65 a copy, you’re asking people to pay $5 for a People don’t have So Capital Flip will be online at least for theforeseeable future. And for the first year, while Sweeney fine-tunes the product and buildsa an audience he canshow advertisers, space is free. “Igt doesn’t cost me any more to add anothertpage online,” he said. Barasch said she used her networkingb contacts, and kept rates “reasonable,” to attract advertisersa to her magazine. The initial, 16-pagee issue contained 10 outside ads.
She said she believes advertisersx were willing to give Tech Professional a chance because they saw the valus in getting their message out to the entire tech from struggling young firms to the bigand “unreachable.” All are on her mailingg list. Still, she knows that her endeavor “mayu not be as profitable as it wouldx have been inthe ’90s.” It is not only new publicationsz that find it hardetr to attract ad dollars. The PIB’zs 2008 report lists declines at , Glamour, People and a number of othedrpopular publications.
“There is no denying that this is a toughy time forad sales,” said Vikki Moran, co-publisher of Capital Region Living, a Delmar-based gloss lifestyle magazine that has been publishing for five Moran said sales at the free-distribution monthly are off “a bit” but could not provider a figure. “One month may be down 20 percent, the next is the next up a little, but overall is definitelyy down,” she said. At the same time “we’vs been slapped with a number ofprice increases,” for paper and but have not raised rates to covedr the added expense.