Zinio has over 50 various magazines being offered for digital subscriptions both available in MAC’s and PC’s. Among the popular magazines are the Business Week, PC Magazine, Seventeen, The Sporting News, and Science for reading. Zinio provides subscribers an extensive package. Included in the package is the user’s software for free reading, digital content delivery, reply cards that are digital, back issues, advertisements and articles that are in hypertext links, and other features that are not offered in the print version.

Advantages of using Zinio

1. Keyword search. The print version or hard copies of the magazines will not be able to allow users to easily search articles by keywords. With Zinio, you have the tool for searching articles by objects, keywords, or phrase.

2. Sharing by email. You will be able to share an article instantly to other people via email. You don’t need to go through the hassle of photocopying or scanning the page of an article or articles to be able to share it with other people. Zinio makes it easier for you.

3. Highlight and sticky notes. With digital or electronic magazines, you can easily highlight and paste in sticky notes to your digital articles.

4. Saves you space and storage. If you do collect magazines, one issue that you will encounter is the storage space or where to put them without accumulating dusts. You can save your digital articles or issues in your hard drive, USB, CDs instead of looking for a space in the closet or attic.

The iPad magazine dive

The initial success of WIRED’s launched in iPad, sales have dropped down on its subsequent editions where it dived down to 22,000 (October) and 23,000 (November). Other magazine publications have also seen a fall in sales – GQ’s sales of its digital magazines slumped from 13,000 to 11,000; Vanity Fair’s e-magazines plunged down from 10,500 to 8,700; and Glamour’s digital magazine slide down from 4,301 to 2,775.

The real issue

The first release of the iPad digital magazines has been successful because people were intrigued with the new concept of an e-magazine. As time goes by, people didn’t find much difference whether they are reading it on print or online because of the price. One significant factor that became the downfall of the electronic magazines is its cost. They have been charging users with a slightly higher cost than print which is not acceptable by the public. If the people behind this online publications would not do something about this then sales will not pick-up and people will lose interest by the day.

What to do?

Since price has already been determined as one of the causes of the slowly fading of iPad’s e-magazines, publishers and magazine owners should find an alternative solution in keeping the cost high. They can make flexible payment options that will suggest a lower subscription fee or other payment options that will entice people to subscribe again. They may also provide additional features which are not found in print which give it more value that will be worth the price.

In the design and layout stage, one must take into account some issues about usability. The increasing popularity of reading digital magazines is relatively a fresh concept and there are some tips that will better enhance digital contents to submerge it deeper to the online world.

Test, measure, and adapt. Everything starts from experimenting and trying new layouts and designs. Do not be afraid to test out this new concept and get feedback from the reader. In featuring an article, place it in the publication with different positioning or placements. The reader’s feedback will be your way of measuring what design or layout have gained the most positive response. Any negative feedbacks or comments should be taken constructively and use it to improve the areas you need to enhance. Adapt the one that strikes out most attention from the readers.

Time is of the essence. Do not lose your reader’s attention or interest by keeping them on hold. People are reluctant in waiting because there are other available options that they can go to. While it is important to raise the quality and standard of your digital magazine, you must also be able to balance loading speed.

Heighten scanners. People have a different way of reading online magazines or digital content as opposed to a print magazine. In online reading, readers normally scan for keywords or information containing phrase or objects that cater for scanners. On this matter, you should be able have your articles be scanner-friendly by emphasizing sub-headings, lessening word count, breaking-up articles, putting up bullet points or lists, and even attaching audio/video alternatives.

Some magazines have had trouble getting advertisers to commit and as the printing costs and postage costs increase, printing is an option that is the harder one to take. Also, a large percentage of the market get most of their information on the internet and would rather not subscribe to magazinesor go to the newsstand to get magazines.

In response to this, some magazines have closed down due to increasing production costs and decreased revenue while some have adjusted to the changing habits of their readers and have actively participated and implemented ways to gain new readers using the existing technology and information regarding people’s habits in getting information they want.

One of the advantages of going digital for magazines is unlike in the print format where the content and length of articles are restricted by space, in the digital versions of the magazines this is no longer the case. In addition, going digital means that more articles are being digitally published in real time and as more articles are published, the more times readers visit the site and the higher the probability to catch their attention for marketing purposes. In addition, this has become a boon for writers especially freelance ones, because this shift in digital publication creates more opportunity for them to write and their portfolio of digital clips now carries as much way as that of print.

E-zine is derived from electronic magazine. The first large e-zine is Salon and was reportedly published in as early as 1984 by a group of hackers called the Cult of the Dead Cow.

E-zines have a wide range of topics. Because of their comparatively low costs of production, e-zines can afford to be more choosy and specialized compared to their big budget counterparts in the print media. There are a lot of e-zines whose topics may be perceived as odd and caters to the most specialized and specific albeit small niche in the market.

When e-zines first appeared, a lot of people were uncertain about their purpose and potential. However, as time went on more and more people and businesses have begun to see their potential as marketing devices. E-zines have continued growing and these e-zines can be made more effective if complemented with a content delivery system that allows for interaction as well as an advertising piece that adapts to the changing needs of the business and the target readership.

E-zines are usually updated whenever there is a new article that can be published electronically. Unlike the typical print magazines that are published on a regular schedule, the e-zines’ constant update allows readers and potential customers to view the magazines everyday to check out the e-zine as soon as a new article is published or posted. Since the readers visit more often to view the new content, this creates more opportunity to capture their interest and increase the e-zines’ marketing potential.

The first thing you need to do to ensure that your business is marketed well using ezines is to capture your users email. Make sure that you have a box to capture people’s emails on your website’s front page. Also, make sure that people have reason to sign up such as getting an important and useful free report after they sign up.

To make sure that your emails are delivered properly to your target readers’ email inbox, avoid using the word “free” as unwanted email and would automatically place those emails in the spam folder. Also, try to ask your ezine readers to white list (a white list is a list of email addresses that the reader or recipient deems as solicited sources of emails) your return address to prevent your ezine articles from being blocked.

Also, make sure that the subject lines of your ezine articles are compelling to get your readers’ attention. The subject line should have variety to prevent your readers from thinking that the email is a duplicate. Try to put in your receiver’s name on the subject line as well to personalize the message.

Lastly, the content of your articles must be fresh and informative. This keeps your readers interested in you and your business.