This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What are your favorite magazines? What kind of magazines do you like to read? Or maybe for some people I should say what were they? Because these days the only magazine I read consistently is The New Yorker. This is not an ad by the way, I'm just talking about magazine subscriptions.
I like to read The New Yorker. It's also the only magazine I subscribe to in print. If we go back a ways in the dinosaur years, I had a ton of magazine subscriptions. It was always fun when new issues would show up at the house. But now just about every subscription I have is digital.
So I started thinking about this because our caller today, our listener, misses the days of print journalism, specifically magazines, specifically, specifically, they wanna start an old school magazine about old school business. That is their idea, they're gonna explain more, but in short, what we are looking at here is the business model of this potential business magazine. Welcome to suite of social school. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I always love to hear questions from our listeners, ideas, love to know what you're working on and what you're thinking about.
Hopefully this can help sharpen the process of your business ideas and your plan to make those ideas reality. 'Cause ultimately that's what it's about, inspiration and action. Okay, question is an old school magazine about old school businesses. That question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Renee and I've been following the show for a couple of years now.
I'd like to start a magazine and I don't mean a digital one. I'm thinking old school, print only with just a very minimal web presence. My topic is advertising and business advice from the 1930s to the 1940s. I know it might sound crazy, but I actually think there's a market for this and I definitely wanna do it this way. Print only and sell it through the mail.
I imagine relationships with distributors and a grassroots network of supporters. My friends say I'm behind the times. Can you settle the bet for us? Thanks. And looking forward to what you have to say.
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Hey Renee, thanks for calling in. Thanks for the question. Thanks for being out there. And I am going to agree with you in this case. In this case, I'm not gonna agree with your friends.
I'm gonna disagree. I actually think there's room for something like this. And I was trying to think what is a good comp? Like what is a good comparison product and other magazine subscription we could look at. And I think there is at least one other premium print magazine to analyze.
It's called Kinfolk, which has been published quarterly since 2011 from my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I think they were published in Denmark for a while. Not sure what they are now. But Kinfolk has 75,000 print subscribers. It's sold in a hundred countries and also published in four languages.
This is just a little boutique magazine all about hipster life and I don't know, things associated with hipster life. Not sure how to describe it. But just to give you an idea, I said 75,000 print subscribers. Each issue costs $18. Okay, so a lot of money there, right?
Even though they have a digital strategy, they've really kind of focused on this print subscription. So there are probably others, but that's a good start. I would go and look and see what Kinfolk has done. And I also like the subject matter that Renee proposes here, old school business, looking at what was it advertising and business advice from the 1930s and 1940s. I think it is potentially the right fit for this kind of thing.
If the subject matter was something about technology or anything else that could be considered modern, then the print only idea would be a harder sell. But, you know, as it's described here, I'm on board or at least I'm interested in hearing more. So Renee, let me know where I can subscribe, keep us posted. And listeners, if you have a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're gonna feature so many of them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects.
Wherever you are in the world, I'm cheering you on, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts, new episode every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
