4 e-commerce magazine super-stars and how they did it

E-commerce strategies for magazine and niche media publishers are often overlooked. However, examples of publishers that deploy these strategies show spectacular results in a few categories:  books, courses, and self-serve advertising. 

Merchandise can also work if positioned in a way that does not compete, or if the e-commerce store is the core business, and the magazine is secondary.

Why we like e-commerce as one of the ten revenue models for niche media publishers: In most cases, e-commerce is a more convenient option for purchasers, does not require a sales representative,  and does not need to compete with or for advertisers.  One of the reasons magazine and niche media publishers shy away from e-commerce as a  model is to avoid cannibalizing their most significant revenue stream.

These three first niche media and magazine e-commerce models – selling books, education, and DIY advertising online – deepen audience engagement and help acquire content. They also give some fresh insights into how combined business models can work.

Here are some examples from the field:

1. Books

Taunton Press, which publishes several niche consumer brands that include woodworking, home building, sewing, crafts, and gardening, with titles like  Threadsmagazine.com and FindWoodworkig.com, also sells a full range of books online.

The family-owned business,  founded by Jan and Paul Roman in 1975 in  Newton, Connecticut, took a crawl, walk, run approach to expanding its franchise into these new areas. Paul Roman, was a woodworker, so that was the first title and produced the first books using their contacts with experts in the industry, including their own writers.

The Not So Big House, by architect Sarah Susanki, published in 1998,  “gave an early voice to the tiny house movement.”  TMater carpenter Larry Haun (1931-2011), a former contributing editor to Fine Homebuilding, wrote. The Very Efficient Carpenter, published in 1992.  As the titles expanded, so did book publishing.

Today Taunton  Press has 600 books in the archive after 30 years of publishing,  and new books every year.

2. Online courses 

Haun, the author of the book on carpentry eventually included companion videos on how to frame a house. The videos evolved into online workshops.

Today, FineWoodworking promotes its workshops throughout its website, and combines them into a premium membership package.

They now promote a course in the hero position on the home page of the magazine.

The landing page does a great job of selling the course.

The courses are a key way to attract paying subscribers.

An offer  of $19.95 for the first e month includes 12 emails, guiding the user through Woodworking Fundamentals, curated articles to use in the course, the FineWoodworking archive, the magazine, 100 digital plans, 70 videos, and 200 projects for $19.95 for the first three months.

A couple of decades of content production for the first title in their magazine group goes into the plan!

Threads Magazine, launched in 1985, now sells subscriptions for $59 a year, as the  “premier information and archival resource for garment-sewing techniques and fitting expertise.”

It also started selling books online in 1993, including Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire Shaeffer.

They produced the first e-learning course on  DVDs, a series called “Teach Yourself to Sew,” starring Judith Neukam, again, a  former executive editor and now a contributing editor at Threads.

Today, the media creates shorter videos on the website  – such as “caring for wool” that start with an ad for 20% off the more complete courses, which are created on Kajabi and sell for around $69.

The sale is a one-time “Guide” with three hours of instruction that includes a live Q&A and chat thread.

Another example of a company that sells courses to its audience is the employee-owned Wells Media, which publishes three magazines for the Insurance industry.

Its website includes a sister brand, The Academy of Insurance, with a full suite of video courses offering certifications,  which can be sold as a membership, or a la carte.

3. DIY Press release distribution

Several platforms provide DIY sales for events, directories, and various classified categories advertisers expect to purchase online. However, one savvy niche publishing company offers to distribute press releases for advertisers in its automated online platform.

One of the most successful companies in the B2B space, Industry Dive,  launched  26 magazines in ten years around a basic model, including sales of press release distribution, ads, content marketing, and advertising.

With $100 million in revenues, the company was acquired by Informa in 2022, ten years later, at double the valuation of Morning Brew. It rates as one of the industry’s success stories, and a model worthy of attention.

One of the exciting things about the model is how all the pieces fit together to grow revenues, audiences, and content contributions. So we are starting with the “library,” a feature on every magazine website: A channel that contains sponsored content in the form of webinars, videos, downloadable books, and whitepapers, created by a team, StudioID.  Created in 2020, StudioID is run as a partially separate entity based in San Francisco, with its own stable of clients.

Here’s an example from CyberSecurityDive:

All the content in the library is sponsored, and can be either Webinars, Playbooks, or Trendlines.  To obtain the content, visitors fill out a form and agree to receive emails from both the sponsor and the IndustryDive magazine.  So, the magazine’s email list is continually replenished.

The newsletter lists, in turn, are part of a DIY  sale of press release distribution. Advertisers visiting any magazine site, such as Cyber Security Dive, are invited to read press releases in a navigation bar above the main content navigation bar.

They find a page that looks like breaking news, with new posts every week or so.

A prompt to post a press release leads to online check-out, with a price tag of  $239 to $269 for three to 7 credits, with the promise to be distributed in newsletters – the same ones being replenished by content sponsors – and published permanently on the website.

We counted three to five press releases a month for CyberSecurityDive, multiplied by 26 magazines, and came up with an extra $324,800  a year in incremental revenues,  with no cost of sales.

In addition, in an entirely virtuous cycle, these clients provide a source of leads for more expensive sales, including content sponsors and print advertising. We also noted that the first promotional promise is that press releases “can be” included in the print publication, as the first key benefit, but it does make a guarantee.   So, the editors also receive a source of industry news, while the advertiser is reasonably sure the editors have at least looked at their announcement.

4. Selling merchandise 

Magnifissance, is one of a few magazine publishers that powers sales of luxury goods; based in Canada and published in English and Mandarin, the magazine focuses on “Chinese art, Japanese art, visual art, and performing arts” and advocates for beautiful clothing, and textiles. home interiors and self-care items. It was incorporated in August 2023, so there is little more information on its performance.

The e-commerce store is a high-end marketplace for other products and requires some logistical thinking regarding drop-shipping, and how to package e-commece merchandise with branded content ad/or advertising options. We can think of a variety of solutions, including adding a  featured story or image as an upsell to the e-commerce marketing package.

Hodinkee, an exciting superstar in the e-commerce space, is a high-end e-commerce store that started as a website that included both editorial and e-commerce and has evolved into a magazine and book publisher.

Since most of the sales are vintage and limited edition watches, it compliments rather than competes with brands selling new watches.

The NYC-based watch website mixes editorial and e-commerce. It was founded in 2008 by Benjamin Clymer, who took the  Czech and Slovak word for wristwatch. It acquired another company in 2021, and  “When Fortune wrote about the company last year, it had already processed more than 70,000 transactions and was growing at 60% annually, according to Fortune Magzine, which noted in 2022 that in one month Clymer  “sold 100 watches for just shy of $1 million in under 10 minutes. ”

The key has been a comeback in sales of super niche vintage watches, now in hot demand from speculators and celebrities, ready to drop $9,900 on a limited-­edition watch. Prices are so high, the discount for newcomers is $200.

The company now also publishes collectible magazines and books, a couple of times a year, in addition to the website blog, but the primary revenue model is e-commerce.

The company also acquired a tech company, Northern Technologies,  “that developed two mobile applications, Tiiny, which is a photo-sharing application,  and Watchville, an application that aggregates news from wristwatch blogs,” according to Pitchbook.

Hondikee was named one of Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies in 2022.