Jeremiah Tolbert

For my own ben­e­fit as much as any­thing else, I’d like to run through the mod­els that I am aware of that can be used to finan­cially sup­port a magazine–whether it is a print or an elec­tronic mag­a­zine. Here’s what I got. If I miss any, please let me know and I will con­tinue to update this. These are not mutu­ally exclu­sive. Many mag­a­zines use a com­bi­na­tion of these.

Subscription/​Pay Model

Giving the con­tent in return for a sub­scrip­tion fee or a cover price. Generally sell­ing a bun­dle of stories/​content. Example: tra­di­tional print magazines.

Advertising Model

Selling access to your read­ers to adver­tis­ers, and plac­ing their adver­tis­ing among your con­tent. Example: most tra­di­tional print mag­a­zines sell adver­tis­ing as well.

Patron Model

Supported by a sin­gle per­son or small pri­vate group of peo­ple from pri­vate funds. Example: The Fortean Bureau was pri­mar­ily our pri­vate money. (If you ever donated? You are my hero).

Donation/​Fund Drive model

The NPR model, as I’ve heard it referred to. Regular requests for funds from read­ers, with no set amount. Example: Strange Horizons is the most suc­cess­ful exam­ple of this. I believe Escape Pod does this as well, but I haven’t seen any fund dri­ves from them.

Full Site Sponsorship

A sin­gle cor­po­rate entity, for what­ever rea­son, sub­si­dizes the mag­a­zine. Example: SCIFICTION. I seem to think Chizine as well?

Premium Content

Special access to spe­cial con­tent. A kind of sub­scrip­tion model. I’m not sure about this one, what do you guys think? Is it dif­fer­ent enough? Example: Salon used to do this, but I am not sure if they do anymore.These mod­els are irrel­e­vant as to whether a mag­a­zine is non­profit, hobby, or for-​​profit. Many of these mod­els are con­sid­ered fail­ures. Which ones do you think work or don’t? Perhaps the best solu­tion for a sus­tain­able mag­a­zine (online or off) would be a com­bi­na­tion of 3 or more?

I am not sure that the sub­scrip­tion model is work­ing very well any­more. As Chance pointed out in the com­ments of the Triad post yes­ter­day, com­par­ing Escape Pod to the Triad isn’t a good com­par­i­son because Escape Pod doesn’t have a cost to sub­scribe. I argued that just because the one has a dif­fer­ent model for sup­port than the other doesn’t mean that they can’t be com­pared as “mag­a­zines” with readerships.

Steve, I know you some­times read this– could you tell me or pro­vide me a link to where you might talk more about the fund­ing model behind Escape Pod? Chance argues that Escape Pod is your hobby, as another rea­son that the sub­scriber num­bers can’t be com­pared. I’d like to know more about how Escape Pod affords to func­tion, if you’re com­fort­able talk­ing about it.

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Tags: financial models, markets, My Writing, SF