An inside look: Magazines, advertising, and staying alive

Saffia, discussing the issue of magazines and marketing in a previous post, tossed me the figurative ball, to wit:  “One final word on marketing (although my colleague Diva Regina could handle this issue with far more grace and expertise than I can – and I hope she does).” I make no promises of grace or expertise, but the subject is worth discussing.

At Prim Perfect Publications, we heartily subscribe to the maxim that the first step to our sustainable success is to support the sustainable success of those who support us. (Got that? Good.) To do that, we need to provide benefit to readers so they will want to read and recommend what we produce. To that end, we work very hard to do the following things, often at the cost of sleep and some short-term gains:

• Produce a high-quality, professional, and visually enticing publication
• Set a high priority on providing direct benefit to readers by including rich content that informs, entertains and motivates
• Make it our business to support high-quality creators in numerous ways over and above the provision of visibility through advertising
• Maintain the highest standards of integrity. If we quote you a number, that’s the number. If we make a mistake, we withdraw it and apologize as publicly as we made the error.

We subscribe to an approach of abundance at Prim Perfect. We foster relationships of good will. We have offered and received many favors, we are committed to charitable support, we work hard to give a leg up to worthy new creators, and we trust it will even out in the end. But we are not easily walked over — if we try something and it doesn’t work out, we try something different next time.  We have found that the larger our network of good will, the more we can try and the more opportunities we can offer to our partners. In our book, this is success. It is also fun.

Because this is Second Life and not Real Life, and because we can’t just create something and put it in a vendor but have to create something new every cycle, this will probably remain a hobby rather than our primary work. But we are committed to approaching it with the same professionalism and commitment (including, Linden Lab willing, making deadlines) that we would for any job anywhere. If our advertising partners weren’t demonstrating confidence in our worth, we would know we were on a wrong track. If our readership wasn’t growing and sending us encouraging feedback, we would know we were off the mark.  But somehow, in the way this venture has evolved, we appear to be doing something right and we don’t intend to interfere with the recipe.

Perhaps the most important ingredient is, as our advertisers get tired hearing me say, our “commitment to helping our partners succeed.” So be it. If we didn’t really want that, we wouldn’t be here.