Quick Overview

Media veteran Mark Edmiston, former CEO of Newsweek and founder of the M&A firm The Jordan, Edmiston Group, recently launched a new publishing company that creates weekly magazines for mobile devices. Insider asked Edmiston to explain key elements of the new business model, including how they’re using browser-based, mobile-optimized websites instead of apps to deliver content. He also describes why they share 35% of subscription revenues with content creators. Plus, you’ll see how a Facebook sweepstakes was generating up to 1,000 new free trials a day.

Company Snapshot

Founded: May, 2010
First Four Publications Launched: January, 2011
Current No. of Publications: 5
No. of Employees: 14
Business Model: Subscriptions (launching ads in 2012)
Subscribers: ~30,000 free trialers, ~2,000 paid
Headquarters: New York, NY
http://www.nomadeditions.com

Target Audience

Nomad Editions targets mobile users looking for high-quality, magazine style content to read on their handheld devices — iPads and iPhones, Android phones, etc.

Each of its five publications target specific interests and audiences, which means each primary audience is different. Overall, current readership is 63% women/37% men — likely because three of the five titles cover topics that tend to attract more female readers (food, health, and movies).

Content Model

Nomad creates digital weekly and monthly magazines specially formatted for reading on mobile devices. The publications combine the hallmarks of print magazines (design, photos, original narrative journalism) with the web’s interactivity and multi-media capabilities.

However, Nomad’s weekly publications are NOT apps. They are websites built on HTML5, the newest version of the web programming language that lets publishers design feature-rich sites that can be displayed on any device with a browser. The Nomad team only has to create a single template for each magazine, and then a custom CMS detects which device a subscriber is using to access the site and automatically formats the pages for those devices.

Nomad currently offers five titles:

• BodySmart — a health, fitness, and diet magazine
• RealEats — a foodie-lifestyle magazine
• u+me — a magazine that looks at the cultural impact of social media
• WaveLines — a surfing lifestyle magazine
• WideScreen — a film magazine

Nomad looks for broad subject areas — such as food, health or movies — and then creates a publication with a particular point of view to appeal to a certain type of reader. For example, RealEats focuses on the sustainable food movement.

Rather than assemble large staffs for each magazine, Nomad relies heavily on freelance contributors and pays them in a unique way: The company sets aside 35% of each magazine’s subscription revenues to compensate freelance writers and editors.

“It’s very, very expensive to hire an entire staff — look at Rupert Murdoch with The Daily,” says Edmiston. “We felt that wasn’t a reasonable model when there really are a lot of people out there looking for work and willing to try a new model.”

Five percent of revenues are set aside for the editor of each publication, providing an incentive to help them grow their subscriber base. The remaining 30% of shared revenues are earmarked to pay freelance contributors. The company’s goal is to develop magazines with circulations around 50,000 annual subscribers, which would pay an editor about $60,000 annually and regular writers about $45,000 annually.

Because of that model, the company seeks proposals from editors who are passionate about a particular topic and want to create their own digital magazine. The team will review those proposals and the editor’s plan for developing a theme, identifying contributors, etc., to choose subsequent launches.

“The way we operate — though it’s not a direct parallel — is like a movie studio: We have the software, publishing infrastructure, and marketing capabilities, and we’re looking for good ideas for content.”

But to manage that production, the company uses two crucial types of full-time staffers:

– An editor-in-chief who oversees the company’s editorial model and managing editors who are responsible for up to five editions each. Managing editors work with each publication’s editor to help plan editorial, photography, and illustrations.

– Staff designers to create each edition’s look and feel. Nomad’s Design Director is Roger Black, a veteran magazine designer and consultant who developed a new template that automatically optimizes websites for the specific device that subscribers are using (see Technology and Vendors Used, below).

Revenue Streams

Nomad currently generates all its revenue from subscriptions, but is planning to sell ads in its digital magazines by 2012.

Subscriptions to all Nomad titles cost $6 for three months, and autorenew at the end of each three-month term. Edmiston says they chose the three-month plan for launch because it offered a low price point, but a long enough term to give subscribers a good taste of the magazines’ content.

“No one’s ever heard of Nomad Editions, but if they like one of these topics they might be interested in trying us out. Six dollars isn’t a big barrier, but $24 becomes a more serious consideration,” he says, noting the annual subscription cost. “So we’re letting people get to know us by offering a 30-day free trial, then a $6 dollar subscription, and then we’ll start promoting more heavily for longer-term subscriptions.”

Nomad also is developing an iPad/iPhone app to help promote its subscriptions. The free app will allow iPhone users to preview the latest edition of all Nomad titles. Then, if a user wants to subscribe to one or more titles, the app will link directly to the Nomad website to deliver each week’s new edition through that app.

Edmiston says that Nomad will pay Apple its reported 30% cut for subscriptions sold through the app. “Apple has 65 million credit cards on file, and we’re happy to work with them to get a piece of that.”

– Developing an advertising model

Nomad hired an ad director in January 2011 to begin developing an advertising model for the digital magazines. Trying to launch with advertisers onboard would have been a tough sell for a new, unproven product, says Edmiston.

“I expect that the first six months of year will be a lot of missionary work just to explain to people what we’re doing.”

Marketing Tactics

30-day free trial

The company created a 30-day free trial offer for all Nomad editions to introduce readers to the concept. The trial does not require a credit card at signup, but visitors must create a username and password to access the digital magazines. At the end of the 30-day trial, visitors are presented with an offer to subscribe to one or more titles for $6 for the next 90 days.

Edmiston says they’ve recently begun transitioning free members into paid subscriptions, with conversions tracking roughly where they expected. RealEats, BodySmart and the social media title u+me have the best free-to-paid conversions so far, while WaveLines is lagging their expectations.

Facebook & Twitter sweepstakes

Nomad developed a social-media sweepstakes campaign to promote its launch. The campaign works by asking Facebook users to “Like” Nomad Editions on Facebook in order to be entered into a drawing for prizes that include an iPad, iPods, or a Flip video camera. Alternatively, Twitter users who follow Nomad on Twitter and then tweet a link for the sweepstakes receive a bonus sweepstakes entry for each of their followers who also enters.

Registering for the sweepstakes enters players into the 30-day free trial program, and has gained more traction on Facebook than on Twitter. Nomad was seeing up to 1,000 new trials starting per day through the Facebook sweepstakes.

Social media outreach

Ongoing social media outreach includes regular blog posts on the Nomad website from editor-in-chief, John Benditt. Posts typically offer a behind-the-scenes look at launching a new publishing venture, news about new titles, or excerpts from current editions, such as copies of editor’s letters or sample articles.

In addition, Nomad uses its Facebook page (which has 7,713 “likes”) to promote each new edition of Nomad’s five titles. A typical wall post includes a cover image for that week’s magazine, teasers about the content, and link to the magazine website where non-registered users can sign up for a trial.

Individual editors also are encouraged to use their own Twitter feeds to discuss their work and promote new editions.

Technology and Vendors Used

Drupal: The open-source platform on which Nomad Editions built its custom content management system.
http://drupal.org

Wildfire Interactive: The social-media marketing platform that powers Nomad’s Facebook sweepstakes campaign.
http://www.wildfireapp.com/

ESP Computer Services: Handles subscription fulfillment for Nomad Editions.
http://www.espcomp.com/SubscriptionFulfillment.aspx

About Mark Edmiston

Edmiston is a 30-year media industry veteran whose resume includes such highlights as president/CEO of Newsweek magazine and founder of the media investment banking firm The Jordan, Edmiston Group. But he was inspired to create a new kind of publishing company after downloading and reading a few books on his iPhone a few years ago.

Then, the launch of the iPad and other tablet devices made him even more excited about the possibilities. “It’s an important opportunity, but you have to design things for a small screen like a smartphone that are actually a good experience,” he says. “It’s a way that people will start consuming more and more media.”

Subscription Site Insider’s Analysis

Publishers trying to determine their mobile strategy will want to watch Nomad’s progress carefully. Developing templates for each App environment (Apple, Android, BlackBerry) and every potential device (smartphones vs. tablets) is the kind of technology challenge that keeps us all up at night — and Nomad’s HTML5, browser-based approach that works with all platforms could be an elegant solution. The company’s Facebook sweepstakes also is a great example of how to create a custom Facebook landing page to encourage “likes” that are tied directly into a subscription-marketing funnel — in this case, a free-trial (For more information on this strategy, see Insider’s On-Demand Facebook Ads Tutorial in the Relevant Links section, below).

With the launch behind them, Nomad now could improve the marketing of its subscriptions. The Nomad homepage could do a better job explaining the difference between a browser-based mobile magazine vs. an app, perhaps using an on-site demo of the technology that lets visitors scroll through a magazine. Also, we’d encourage the site to make its pricing and subscription options more obvious, perhaps by shifting its 30-day trial option to require a card upfront, with some good copy and graphics detailing the $6 per 90-days plan that kicks in after the first month.