Tablet devices such as iPads and Kindles can be seen nearly everywhere. People use them for work and play. Many young children, even toddlers, now have their own tablet device.
The iPad is known for being the most elite of the tablets, with its $700-$1,000 price tag. Apple is reported to have sold over 84 million iPads through October 2012. Since the release of the lower-priced iPad Mini, there are estimated to be more than 120 million iPads in circulation at the present moment.
So how can small and large businesses tap into this growing iPad trend?
Consider creating your own iPad Magazine.
With the iOS app store, there are millions of games, business and productivity apps already published that you have to differentiate from. But with iPad Magazines, there are currently only a few hundred magazines that have been published and made available through the iPad Newsstand app.
Yet there are 120 million+ iPad users who are looking for content to read and things to buy through the Newsstand app. This sounds a lot like the Wild West.
If you capitalize on this opportunity early on, you could take advantage of the goldmine that can be leveraged to create greater income and credibility for whatever type of products and services that you sell.
Let's take a look at a few different strategies you can use to make money from your own iPad magazine, plus a unique program that makes creating and publishing magazines easy.
Strategy #1 - Sell Magazine Issues And/Or Subscriptions
A great way to monetize your iPad magazine is to sell the magazines. You can make money by selling auto-renewal subscriptions to your readers, and/or by selling individual issues. Apple collects the money for you and just keeps a 30% commission for managing the transaction.
Strategy #2 - Sell External Products
You can also make money from iPad magazines in several other ways, even if you prefer to offer your magazine for free to get more exposure. For example, you can sell external products from within your magazine, such as your own products or affiliate products.
Strategy #3 - Sell Advertising
There are also a few different ways that you can monetize your iPad magazine through advertising. For example, you can display Google ads or iAds within your magazine, and be paid when readers click on the ads.
You can also sell advertising directly to other businesses that want to place an ad on one of the pages in your magazine. As a digital publication, these ads can also link to your advertisers' web sites and order forms to help them monetize the ad even faster.
Advertising is the revenue model that print magazines use, so it is certainly a viable one to consider for the digital magazine world too!
Those are just three ways that you can make money from having your own iPad magazine. And that doesn't even count the credibility and brand exposure you can get from being able to advertise that you have your own magazine.
So How Do You Pull This Off?
That all sounds good in theory, right? But you may still be thinking that there is no way you could create your own magazine because you're not a great writer, you're not a graphic designer, you're not a technical wizard, and/or you can't afford to hire people with those talents.
In terms of the writing, you can just repurpose content that you have already created, or approach other authors and experts in your field and ask if you can publish their articles in your magazine. Experts in your industry would be crazy to turn down your offer to publish an article from them for free in your iPad magazine.
Regarding the technical issues, I too used to think it would be difficult to create your own iPad magazine, and that it would require a lot of technical knowledge to create the proper file formats that Apple requires for the magazines.
But the good news is that you don't have to do all the complex work on your own. There are programs that can make this process super-easy. Let me give you an example.
I was recently attending a conference called "I Love Marketing" that was hosted by Joe Polish. One of the presenters was a guy named Ed Dale who gave a demo of his program called MagCast.
Ed explained how he designed MagCast to make it easy for anyone to create and publish their own magazines using tools that they are already familiar with.
For example, you can use Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Apple Keynote to create your magazine. You then save the magazine to PDF and upload the PDF into the MagCast portal. The MagCast tool makes it easy for you to then add final hyperlinks, embedded videos, and opt-in forms, if you desire.
MagCast even comes with pre-designed templates for Powerpoint and Keynote so you can create a fancy-looking magazine without needing to hire a graphic designer. If you can use a template, insert images, and type text, then you can be in the iPad magazine business.
I was so impressed with Ed's presentation on MagCast that I approached him about doing a review on the product. Ed agreed to give me access to MagCast so I could review it and report my results to you here.
I will be posting an in-depth review on MagCast in the next few weeks to report back on how well it works and what I think about it. I'm using MagCast to help me create and publish my first iPad magazine. I'm hoping my new magazine will make its way to the iPad Newsstand for the July issue.
So, if you have an interest in publishing your own iPad magazine, make sure you stay tuned for my upcoming MagCast review where I'll show you how it works.
DISCLAIMER: As I mentioned above, I was given free access to MagCast for purposes of doing a review. I will not be compensated if you check out MagCast through the above link.
Follow Denise Gosnell on Facebook: www.facebook.com/thrivingbiz