Have you ever wanted to publish an online magazine? Maybe you do but you’re afraid it’s too hard, whereas publishing on print may seem a littler easier.
You can’t afford to limit your audience
However, if you’re not publishing and promoting your content online, you’re missing out on an audience of potentially billions of people. Yes, you’re probably not going to reach the entire planet, but why sell yourself short when you could serve and reach more people?
Maybe you’re thinking..
“If I get a website for my magazine, I’ll need a million dollars and be stuck having to pay expensive web developers..”
But here’s the deal: you, yes you can publish an online magazine.
You can publish an online magazine
You don’t need a big budget or a web developer for an online magazine. You can publish and manage your online magazine with a WordPress magazine theme. You can also operate on a budget of less than a dollar a day. Try finding a coffee shop selling anything within that budget.
Even “expensive” web developers like cheap solutions
You know that “expensive” web developer you’ve been trying to avoid? That’s me! I’ve been “expensively” designing and developing magazine sites which took weeks and months to produce. But now I’m able to replicate the weeks of work now in a matter of hours, and I’d like to share with you how to do it.
How to publish an online magazine without touching a line of code
Here’s a checklist of what you need to setup an online magazine:
- First you need to create a basic plan for your website:
- WWW: Who is your audience, what do you want them to do, and why
- Spending plan: The good news here is you can start with under a dollar a day.
- SMART goals: Specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and timely goals for your site.
- Second, brainstorm and organize your primary content categories. If you’ve already got a print publication, this should be easy.
- Create a basic paper prototype so you can sketch out how the site should basically look.
- Install a local Testing site and try out some of WordPress’s free magazine or news themes. You’ll want to use your test site for experimenting and learning the user interface before you launch your live site.
- Setup filler content on your test site so you can experiment with how the test site works. If you’ve already got content from a print publication, great! If not, follow the steps I show in this video for using filler content or you can create your own Lorem Ipsum equivalent.
- Purchase domain and hosting from a reputable provider like BlueHost, JustHost or GoDaddy.
- Install WordPress with your choice of a free magazine theme and any plugins you may need.
- Put real content in your live site. If you already put content in your test site, you can used WordPress’ export tool to copy it over.
- Setup backups of your site either through VaultPress or using BackWPUp plugin.
- Launch your site!
It’s really that simple!
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