Aspiring Spirit

Is writing your passion? Create an online magazine about a topic that you are interested in.

The key here is that you are willing to spend writing and research time engaged in the topic that you will write about in your Internet magazine. A successful online publication will consistently be updated with fresh and informative content so that readers will bookmark your online publication and return often. Quite frankly, if you are bored with the topic that you are writing about, it is likely that your efforts will eventually die because you will be looking at more interesting or possibly more lucrative things to do with your time.

In both the initial set up stage and ongoing publication stage of your online magazine, you will need to research your subject on a regular basis. It is important that you know what is happening within your niche so that the material that you publish will be credible for your readers. This is a critical step that many people often forget.

Your research might involve discovering the needs and wants of people already involved in your niche topic. A way to find this information is to read the posts in various online groups such as groups.google.com and groups.yahoo.com, as well as some of the smaller community-oriented websites. For instance, if you want to create an online magazine on parenting, go to Google Groups and search for parenting groups and you’ll find a number of related subcategories. Some of these include issues involving raising autistic children, split families, foster parenting, and so forth. This can generate lots of ideas and help you focus on the content that you want to write about. The messages posted to the groups will reveal the issues that your intended audience will be interested in learning more about.

Obviously, you will want subscribers to your online magazine.

One way to generate interest in your Internet publication is to publish an electronic newsletter or ezine. Your ezine will include condensed information that will entice your readers to subscribe to your online magazine which, by the way, can involve a monthly fee. Depending on how you want to create your business model, the electronic newsletter can be free while the in-depth online magazine would involve a subscription fee.

You might also want to publish short articles in third party ezines rather than creating your own electronic newsletter. Ezines that accept articles can be found through the search engines and there are software programs available that will submit your articles to multiple ezines within your niche.

Regardless of whether your online magazine is free and supported by advertisements or whether it involves paid subscriptions, it is important to add new content on a regular basis. Announce blurbs about your new content in your electronic newsletter or third party ezines. You can also publish condensed versions of your articles in blogs, article directories, and other online resources. Obviously, there’s a lot of writing involved … so that’s why it is a good idea to select a topic that interests you.

Unknown Resources is a great place to get your online publication known. Simply post blurbs from your online magazine at http://www.unknownresources.com for indexing and announcements. It is fun and free. Visit Unknown Resources to discover how you can contribute your article snippets.

- Urbain Beck