Business Idea: Subscribe to Tagged Magazine Articles

by Sam on January 21, 2008

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Darren Herman has a nice post asking someone to help him start a new website featuring RSS headlines tailored to individual subscribers. Darren’s post reminded me of an idea I had last week…

One industry that clearly falls under the long tail effect is the magazine industry. While many magazines make some of their content free available online, for the most part I have stopped subscribing to print magazines because there are few I read cover to cover. Nevertheless, magazines are still proliferating and some B-list mags, like blogs, occasionally have great articles I would love to read. The problem is – I never hear about them.

My Idea.

I would love to create a website where magazine publishers submit all their article and image content, tagged, into a big database. Users then pay a monthly subscription to “subscribeâ€� to tags that interest them. Then at anytime, a user can log into their account and access that month’s articles tagged with the keywords they subscribe to. Articles could come from any magazine source. Personally, since my interests are so varied, I might subscribe to keywords such as: mountaineering, entrepreneurship, red sox, venture capital, starbucks, and brooklyn heights.

Such a website would be great because users would be exposed to a ton of fresh, tailored content from sources they otherwise might have known about. While one could argue that subscribing to Del.icio.us tags accomplishes the same thing, subscribing to a heavily tagged phrase in Del.icio.us like “social media� produces too many irrelevant links.

Monetization.

The owner of the website benefits via revenue split with the contributing magazines, plus offers advertising on the users’ homepages.

Magazine publishers benefit from a new revenue source (people who otherwise would not subscribe, are essentially now paying for individual articles). In addition, the magazine publisher extends their reach and in the process may build the subscriber base as users are increasingly exposed to new publications. Also, in order to view the article, the user might be pushed back to the source website.

Thoughts?

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  • It's like Lexis Nexis but for the consumer. Lexis Nexis is very corporate gearing towards lawyers and business people.

    This would be more consumer drive and event something bloggers might use as a way to archives magazine articles they might use. I know at school with have something similar for text books, the system isn't user friendly or easy to search. The average consumer would be the ideal users of this at the end of the day.
  • @Duane True, Lexis Nexis is very corporate.

    Also LN doesn't kick people back to the original source...I wonder if there
    is room for a LN competitor who kicks people back to that source article
    which may be more visually appealing and consumer focused? What do you
    suppose publications companies make through LN distribution deals as opposed
    to having the eyeballs on their own websites and getting advertising
    revenues?
  • It's hard to say.. without having any real numbers to work with. LN is like a movie theater in that they give the publication a cut of the users fee (movie ticket). I doubt it's a 50/50 deal. I think the deal goes one of three ways:

    1. They would get a share of the profits once all the expenses are paid off
    2. LN pays the publication a flat fee every month regardless of the number of subscribers they have.
    3. Similar to number 2, but it's a percentage of revenue and or subscribers.

    Most publications look at it as an additional revenue source then something that competes with their ad dollar, IMO. I think you would almost have to go global at this point. The world is more now then ever viewed as a global economy. Maybe you start out with English but at some point you have to include other language as more people speak something other then English in this world.
  • Hey Sam

    That actually sounds like a pretty cool idea. I know I don't read magazines anymore because of what I can find someone, but sometimes not everything makes it online. Pricing would be an issue, but if it was right this could work as you get a good variety of magazines involved from a global perspective.
  • @ Duane...Getting global magazines involved is a great idea!

    I wonder if this is too similar in concept to something like a Lexis Nexis?
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