What Makes a Magazine Successful? (2024)

No matter what your ultimate aims and no matter how smart your design and engaging your content, unless you know for whom you are writing and how to reach that audience, you’re probably wasting your time. For that reason, we always recommend to start with market research. Market research is an often-misunderstood term and can put a lot of people off, particularly creative spirits who want to focus on their content alone. We get that, but we know that the most successful magazines are always based on researching the market first.

Market research is nothing to be scared about. It’s really very simple. It just means thinking about who you’re writing for, where they live, what age group they are, what work they do, how they pass their spare time, their disposable income, and a range of other demographics. Why? Because this will allow you to target focused content which they will love! If you don’t know for whom you’re writing, how can you know what to write? That’s why there are so many different magazines out there; each one targeted to a niche market demographic.

This is a little like the old conundrum of the chicken and the egg or the dog chasing its own tail. Which is most important, content or design? The truth is that without content you have nothing to design and without design no one will read your content.

Certainly, the two should complement one another. Exactly how you design your magazine — in terms of the color scheme, the materials, the artwork, the font, the layout, and more — will depend on your content and your readership. Likewise, your content must fit with your magazine’s overall design. Form and function are interdependent. So, give a great deal of thought and care to synchronizing your content and your visual design. It’s one of the major keys to making a successful magazine.

Whatever your niche or target readership, your audience will need to trust the information, the advice, the opinions, and the insights that they find within the pages of your magazine if it’s to be successful. How do you build that trust? On one hand, that trust is built through voice and style, making sure that they resonate with the natural interests, inclinations, expectations, and beliefs of your target audience. On the other, it comes through demonstrating authority in the subject or topic or niche.

What does that mean in practice? It means engaging the services of expert writers, or, if you are writing the content yourself and you are not an acknowledged expert in the field, taking care to cite authoritative sources for any factual information or claims you make. Combining these two is the best way forward. It takes a little more research, time, and effort, than simply “cranking out” content as some low-level bloggers do. But, if you do your due diligence, you will be amply rewarded as readers will know that they can trust content that your magazine delivers.

Successful magazines offer a sense of familiarity and consistency to their readers. It should be easy to find particular sections, segments, or regular features, so make sure they’re always on the same page and perhaps contain consistent visual elements which allow readers to quickly find and identify them. At the same time, readers like pleasant surprises and are always delighted to find something new and interesting to read.

So, the most successful magazines have regular slots which are unchanging combined with short series, guest writers, and news items which are topical, or unusual, or unexpected in some way. Always, of course, slanted toward your audience’s beliefs and interests.

This doesn’t mean you can’t be challenging. It depends on your readership. Many magazines publish controversial material and expect to host lively debate in the readers’ letters section! But for a successful magazine you should aim to combine familiarity and novelty so that your readers feel comfortable but remain engaged.

It’s very rare, even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, that your magazine will be “all your own work”. In most cases, you will need to engage one or more professional writers, a photographer, graphic designers, and of course, an offset printer (that’s us, by the way!) In this case, it’s vitally important to get everyone on board with a common vision of what the magazine is for, to whom it’s marketed, and the contribution it will make to the lives of its readers. We’ve seen magazines fail which had everything else in place but where the editors, writers, artists, designers and the printer simply didn’t communicate or weren’t on the same page. So, right from the outset, if you want a successful magazine, make sure that information, ideas, and creativity are shared in a team-like atmosphere which allows everyone to make a valuable contribution.

Thanks for reading this far. We sincerely hope that this is helpful to you if you’re thinking of setting up a print magazine. The information we’ve shared here is based on over a quarter of a century of experience working with businesses, nonprofits, and independent creatives of all stripes. We’ve seen magazines come and go like the wind. But those which have been successful and endured are those which have taken into consideration all the points that we’ve explored above.