Thursday, December 06, 2007

Ta Daaaaa! again!

I thought after the first one the second one gets easier...But this one was harder!!!

Second edition of Just Femme is just out

We are still learning the ropes. The hardest part? To find "good" and "committed" writers. We had a few people who said they'll write and then backed out. There's nothing wrong in changing one's mind but the mad scramble one went through to fill in the spots...devarige preeti! Many thinks to all those people :)

Anyways it always feels good after bringing the issue out.

so people do visit the site and feel free to tell us what you think...there's a comments section there make use of it. While I go get some much needed sun!

7 comments:

Samba said...

Disclaimer: I aint one o those men who like the idea of secretly peaking into women's magazines. But the marketer in me aint too different from Mel Gibson of "What Women Want". Here are a few marketing perspectives.

Disclaimer 2: I aint sure what the objective of the magazine is. It could be anything from money to popularity to do gooder instinct to (I would hate to say) plain old pastime! Since I'm ignorant of the objective, my comments have a great chance of being irrelevant.

1) It ain't search engine optimized. Else, Google wouldn't have put in only one ad. It would be a good idea to at least use the right keywords that describe the magazine. It woulkd also be a good idea to promote it on popular portals, without having to spand a penny. That can be done on Rediff, Craigslist, Sulekha et al.

2) The offer to reward contributors with Rs 500 is good. But this kinda money can motivate only students if it can motivate anyone at all. Yes, there are writers, amateur as well as pro, who write for the love of writing and not for money. If you have managed to attract them to write, why spend even a penny motivating them? They are motivated anyway!

3) Writers don't necessarily read the magazine. You need a way to incentivize those (who can't interest in you as writers) to be your readers. Try doing a quiz. You can even organize a review contest - where the pieces on JF are reviewed by cotestants and one or more winners are chosen.

4) Make it viral. Introduce a points system where your readers can accumulate points to refer their friends. Once the points reach a critical mass you can let them exchange the poinst for a gift coupon. But you an't bank on this alone. The content has to be brilliant for people to refer their friends, which I'm sure it would be.

4)Let people chat, date, share pictures, vent their opinions, promote themselves et al. These features are commoditized and are easy to build into a site.

5) Put it on Facebook. allow users the ability to digg it, slashdot it, delicious it or stumbleupon it. Get your buddies to do these actions repeatedly and frequently for you. If you get on the homepage of digg, you are probably not many steps away from popularity.

6)It's great that you use your blog to promote it. But nothing should stop you from using others' blogs as well. Parasitize popular blogs, preferably those that deal with women.

7) Make a hilarious short film/ad about your magazine and put it out on youtube. Nothing's more infectious than humor. Assuming that you have what it takes to make one, you can count on youtube to give it the visibility it deserves.

8) Get yourself interviwed on TV9 "Ladis Club".

I have a feeling (fear to be more specific) that I might get killed if I offer anymore Gyan. Here I vanish.

Kannan said...

Hi, read the second issue. Getting better by the issues. I have some suggestions to make, though.
1. I think you need to increase the inset of boxes i.e. copies should not be too close to the box, there should be some gap. Ideally, it should be .3 pt (this in QuarkXpress). Same's case with pictures and the logos. See in the forward, the just femme logo and the main text should have some space in between. Same gap should be there between pictures and text.
2. I think you should have started this issue with new year wishes. Just the quotes, and the issue would have been really peppy.
3. I think, in forward you should not say that the editors had taken time off their busy schedules to bring out the edition. As a reader I need not know that. Felt like saying the reason why I should read the magazine is that you had strived hard to put things together. Readers dont care and you as editor should ask reader to judge by the quality of the articles not by the effort you put in. (I know this is pretty harsh for a magazine just begun, but felt that statement was a little out of place.)
4. Some avoidable spelling mistakes

Abhipraya said...

Oh I thought I already left a reply here! Anyway here it goes again

Kannan, thanks for the comments. We are working on maintaining the gap between boxes / images and the text. The tool we are using to do this being a little uncooperative :)I agree with your second point too. Here again there were some technical challenges we couldn't overcome hence the sloppiness! And about your third point. Well it was placed there for a reason but now I think it was misplaced. Will remember it.

Samba, All your points are relevant. But I have a few questions.

You don't think Rs 500/- is incentive enough for adults? I doubt that. And I do agree on incentivising the reader...but at this point of time writer is our problem.

All the other points are excellent suggestions and we will consider it :)

And how do you know about Ladies Club? I am a bit surprised at that suggestion :D

Samba said...

I won't be able to comment on whether the reward is exciting enough to attract enough writers, unless I know how it has worked for you. But here's my take. $12.50 might be acceptable if it's sureshot money. But it's a turnoff, if it only means "a chance to win $12.50. The only people whom it doesn't turn off are students, coz their time doesn't come with an opportunity cost.

Do you review the submissions that you get? If you do, here's what I suggest.

Increase the reward to a more attractive number, something like $50. To make sure that you don't go broke doing this, you can reduce the number of submissions that are actually published. But that will reduce your volume of content as well. To compensate for that, you can introduce blogs where people can write unedited content. You can let it stay unless you find something terribly outta place.

By the way, how do writers know that you have an offer for them? It would be a good idea to paint the town green. Advertise your offer aggressively at all places where you have a chance of recruiting writers. You can also try offering internships to students of journalism. If you talk to profs of these students, you might be able to get it done free!

I know Ladies Club coz I watch TV9 news every morning and this show gets acvertised. Do note that they have to run the show everyday and would need to scour the hell for interviewees. So you'd be able to fit yourself in someday in the near future. By the way, have you tried to get yourself written about in the supplements of English/Kannada dailies?

Finally, I'd suggest considering the idea of a Kannada version. I'll come up with the reasoning to do so in sometime. Till then, Kudos and wish you luck.

Abhipraya said...

Samba Rs 500/- is a lot of money here. We are not looking at $ value at this point of time. $50 per person is is Rs 10000/- And that's a LOT of money to give away for JF at this point of time. Blogs will come in the future. And we don't need a reason for Kannada version that's already on cards along with few other...one step at a time we are getting there :)

Abhipraya said...

Samba Rs 500/- is a lot of money here. We are not looking at $ value at this point of time. $50 per person is is Rs 10000/- And that's a LOT of money to give away for JF at this point of time. Blogs will come in the future. And we don't need a reason for Kannada version that's already on cards along with few other...one step at a time we are getting there :)

Samba said...

I didn't mean to look at Rs 500 with lack of respect. My thought was based on the assumption that you expect quality from your writers and anyone who can deliver quality and has proven the same will be turned on by Rs 500 simply becoz the market offers him/her more. They might choose to write becoz they like to contribute to your magazine. Given a chance, I would write for JF without taking a penny coz I believe it's an interesting venture with a serious purpose. (My writing skills are supremely lousy. But that's a different matter).

A small clarification - $50=Rs 2000, not 10000. and if your writers live in Bangalore, the purchasing power of 1 rupee is not a lot more than the purchasing power of 2.5 cents.

But I do respect your view that money is money and needs to be respected for what it is worth. My suggestion only had to do with finding the right demographic to lure with the financial reward.

Finally. I adore your confidence in "getting there". That's what takes any venture further. As a concept, JF has the potential to beat Grihashibha or Woman's Era a few years down the road