How Magazines Make Money

The main goal of a magazine is to make money. The two main ways that magazines make money is advertising and selling the magazine itself.

·         Commercial media producers rely mainly on advertising to get revenue which will play a major part in their overall profit that they will make

·         There are some commercial magazine producers that do rely on the revenue from subscriptions alone. However, these are a minority as advertising creates a lot more revenue than subscription revenue on its own.

·         Many magazines including lifestyle and music magazines would not be able to persist and survive if it was not for advertising.

Below is a table that shows estimates for the magazine Marie Claire. It shows you how much money is made through advertising in comparison to the circulation of the magazine.

Marie Claire Magazine Estimations
Total whole pages of advertising	90
Cost of full page add	£17,807
Total advertising revenue	£1,602,630
Circulation	283,000
Selling price (cover price £3.70- Selling price £2.70	£2.70
Total revenue from circulation	£764,100
Revenue from advertising	68%
Revenue from circulation	32%

An aim for many commercial producers in the magazine industry is to try and ensure that their revenue is balanced and that they get roughly the same amount of money from each of the three groups advertisement's, circulation and readership. To show this they use a diagram called the Commercial Triangle.

Rate Cards

Rate cards are documents that detail the pricing for ad placements in media outlets. It is usually the maximum price that someone would pay to put a advertisement in the media outlet. In relation to magazines this was be a document showing the prices of companies putting advertisements into a magazine. The rate of the placement of the magazine will vary depending on the placement of the advertisement, how big the advertisement is e.g. a whole page or a small section, whether or not it is in a premium space e.g. on the glossy cover. Another thing that may alter the pricing of putting a advertisement in a magazine could be colour. However, many magazines offer this in the pricing e.g.; NME.

For my magazine I have had to estimate the circulation and readership in order to create my rate card.

Gatsby Magazine Estimation
Total Circulation	10,800
Female	11%
Male	89%
Selling Price	£2.99
Total revenue from circulation	£32,292
Total whole pages of advertising	26
Cost of full page add	£2,000
Total advertising revenue	£52,000
Revenue from advertising	62%
Revenue from circulation	38%