The revolutionary iPad 2 has reached an interesting point and companies are enthusiastic about working on iPads and developing apps for their products, websites, blogs and magazines. Digital magazines for iPads are becoming quite popular in US and UK and people love the new enhanced reading experience. Digital and iPad magazines are popping up everywhere and now available for every genre kids, teens, women’s and men on various platforms.
If you are planning to launch your own magazine on iPad than first you should learn about some steps which can help you in launching an iPad app for your magazine. I am going to explain some steps which might be helpful for you during the development process.
1. Offer your Magazine app for FREE
If you are going to develop an iPad app for your magazine than offer it for FREE. People love apps that are available on the App Store for free and it will get more downloads and hits. You can later fix a price once it’s popular enough.
2. Don’t Offer the Magazines for FREE
You may offer your magazine app for free but don’t ever offer your magazines for free. You can run contests like buy 3 issues and download your favorite magazines for free. Running contests always work. You can run contest on your blog or via Facebook events. But I would also suggest you to always offer something for free to keep engaging your readers like offering old magazines issues for FREE etc.
3. Contact Magazine Publishers
Sometimes it happens that Apple don’t approve your app because you don’t meet the specific requirements. If you can’t get your app approved or even if you can’t afford to develop and launch an app than it’s always better to talk to other iPad magazines publishers like Other Edition and Zinio. Currently both of them are leading publishers of digital magazines for iPad. You can contact them and use their newsstand for your magazines. They are offering many popular magazines on their newsstand and they offer it for a very reasonable price.
4. Embed Videos and Slideshows
While going digital from printed … always try to use videos and attractive slideshows for pictures inside your magazine. They can be easily embedded in the magazine and user can also enjoy and watch videos while reading their favorite magazines. The best thing people love about digital magazines is the appearance of the magazines on the multi-touch, colorful and vivid screen of their iPads.
Today there are only a few magazines (8-10) who are going quite well as compared to other so I think beating 10 magazines in the apps store isn’t a tough deal. You need to analyze the market and keep in mind all the fundamental requirements for the launch. Once the app is launched try to make it available for download on your website and allow user to download the app without going through a complicated process. Always use easy to use GUI.
Guest post written by: Taimur Shehzad is a Blogger and Internet Marketer and also the founder of Xyber Bites (A Techno-Entertainment Blog) which covers technology, entertainment and internet. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter or contact him directly.
That’s all fine and dandy…but, what about us folks who don’t know where to start? Do we hire someone to write the app? If so, who writes the magazine?
I am afraid Jasmine that its of no use to you. This article is specifically for Magazine Publishers.
Thanks for giving us another means or way to reach our audience Taimur Shehzad. IPAD is simple one of the best and ever booming way to do it.
Welcome. I am going to write more stuff on iPads which will be quite helpful and useful.
This seems to be quite useful for people who are much aware about the iPad magazine publishers and I hope to utilize these tips for another applications.
Yes that is true “Don’t provide magazine free of cost”, otherwise business will lose their profit 🙂
Thanks Taimur for these interesting points of view. Looking forward to reading more stuff on iPads from you.