Posted: May 05, 2011 7:30 pm
Mr.Samsa wrote:DanDare wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:Interesting idea, DanDare - I'm not sure why you haven't received any feedback yet. Do you have any idea of how successful the authors of the short stories have been so far, or is it still a very new site that's trying to take off? If so, then how successful are you hoping for it to be - i.e. do you think the writers will be able to make any real money from contributing or will it likely only be a bit of spare change and a bit of fun?
We have only really been running for a couple of months and don't yet have a large presence. There are about 200 readers and some authors have received small payments.
That's what I figured - what are your plans for the magazine though? As in, how much would you expect a writer to make? I mean, obviously you'd hope for it to be an international hit and everyone involved will become millionaires, but realistically, what would be your projection be for 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, etc?DanDare wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:With all that said, if you thought it was going to be a serious venture and there was a chance of making some realistic money from it (i.e. more than just $10 a week), then I'd probably be interested in submitting articles. If there was little chance of making any decent amounts of money, then I'd still be willing to submit articles but it just depends on whether I can spare the time or not.
I envisage eventually having a readership of 10k+ readers paying about 5 to 50 cents an article, depending on its length. It could take over a year to build up that kind of readership though.
Indeed - but market it well enough and you could certainly take a reasonable crack at reaching those numbers within the first year. By hitting the big websites, like RatSkep, RD.net, ScienceForums and JREF, you could easily scrounge up a few thousand readers.
I think these are the one subject so I have stitched them together here.
Rather than chrystal ball gazing lets make a statement of intent.
I estimate a start up phase of 6 months where the first few articles come in and the magazine finds its feet. During that time readers are likely to be interested but not committed. I would hope to grow sales over that period to perhaps 500 unlocks per article. There might be about 1 or 2 articles a week.
The following 6 months the general form of the magazine should be stable and there should be a regular stable of contributors. That is the time to concentrate on marketing the site. The goal would be minimum regular sales of 1,000 unlocks per article. I would push for 3 to 5 articles a week.
The following year there should be a budget for extensive marketing, and the word of mouth network should be running well. That's when we can expect to get the bloggers to start contributing their in-depth articles rather than give them away. During this time the target would then be to grow regular sales to 10,000 unlocks per article. I don't know how many articles a week is sustainable since it depends on what's happening out there but we could get as high as an article a day.
Doing some maths now:
Assume that, after the fraxion payments margin is taken out, there is about 0.85 cents per fraxion.
Assume an average of 10 fraxions per unlock, i.e. 8.5 cents.
Assume on average 80% of that goes to the author and 20% to the magazine and editors etc. That's 6.8 cents per unlock to the author.
So:
500 unlocks = $34.00
1,000 unlocks = $64.00
10,000 unlocks = $640.00
When try to estimate life time income for an article consider the fact that they never go off line, and older articles are likely to be referred to by newer articles.