If you know a lot about a niche, or are always up to date on the latest news in a certain field, then creating an online magazine style blog can be a great thing for you to do. You can build a community of readers who you can engage with and share ideas, you can show off your writing, video or photography skills to a wide audience, and you can even make some money if you monetize your site once it has begun to be a success with readers.

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Starting an online magazine isn’t hard by itself – there are plenty of tools like WordPress that can help you to create and run it yourself. However, making it into a professional looking website your readers will find and love can be more of a challenge than some people expect when they start out. Before you get started making and promoting your online mag, here are three things to think about and decide on:

What Will You Publish?

For a site to be a success, you need to publish unique content. This means that you can’t just source interesting posts from around the web – you need to create new and interesting things. You’ll need to write up stories, find images you can legally use with them or take your own pictures, and make sure you always have something new to add. Decide on the scope of your magazine – which categories within your niche are you going to cover? Decide what kind of content you want – do you just want written articles and pictures, or do you want video or podcasts as well? How regularly do you need to post to keep your news fresh and your site appealing to visitors?

How Will You Market Your Site?

No matter how much work you put in to making great content, it won’t be any good if nobody comes to your site. You will probably want to learn SEO or hire a good specialist (you can find good Sioux Falls SEO here). You will also probably want to create a Twitter account for your website. But what else will you do? Are there other social media platforms that can help reach your target readers? Do you want to run paid advertising on Facebook or Google to get some initial interest?

What Is Your Brand?

A good magazine needs good branding. This doesn’t just mean your name and logo, but everything that makes your site recognizable, such as the WordPress theme you use, the color palette, and even the tone of voice your writers or vloggers use. Branding is what stops your site being just another blog, and makes readers form an idea of it in their minds which they will remember, so put some time into thinking about what your brand is like, and how to communicate that on your site and in your marketing.

Nobody should be discouraged from starting a web magazine if they have a great idea, but put yourself ahead of the competition by making these decisions before you dive in!