Niche publishing is the future

Whether you are approaching things as a writer or as a publisher, you need to spot a niche and exploit it.
Specialise as a writer and your income rockets, because those you write for know you are an expert in your field.
Hit the right untapped niche as a publisher and you get the same effect.

In the clip, David Howell advises that, if you are starting out, pick a specialism. It may take you a couple of years to build a market and get the connections you need, but it will be worth it.
Contract publishers are the only guys making any money, he says. Those publishers who are paid to produce everything from Sainsbury’s mag through to a specialist newsletter on fibre optics are where the growth is.
They have a bigger freelance budgets, so go for that market.
David says: “If you have a specialist knowledge there is a market for it, there is a magazine or a newsletter out there – it's just finding it.”
See the rest of David howell's Masterclass in Magazine Publishing at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk

The key to successful freelancing: broaden your horizons

David Howell believes many freelance journalists are focused too much on a narrow part of their potential market. You need to broaden your horizons, avoid being blinkered.

In the clip he says: “Writing for newspapers, specialist magazines, websites is actually a tiny percentage of who you could be writing for,” and he reveals where that wider market can be found.
And what about all the publications you could produce? Too few journalists ever consider becoming publishers. David looked at what he had an interest in, a passion for, and the right skills for, and set about creating publications that played to to these strengths.
He says publishing has never been easier, with ink on paper no longer being an essential requirement for many titles.
His experience echoes what Adam Westbrook advocates in the opening overview of Masterclass 12 at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk
Find David's full Masterclass on Magazine Publishing here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/749

Entreprensurial Journalism Masterclass: How to become a magazine publisher

David Howell is a freelance journalist who has become a successful magazine publisher. In this extract from Masterclass 12 of Multimeda journalism: A Practical Guide he shares his experience of how to create, publish and sell a magazine.
He also gives his tips on how to be a successful freelance.

1 How to become a magazine publisher

First of all, you must identify your market, and determine what sort of publication will serve that market’s needs.
David Howell got into magazine publishing as part of an effort to develop a business that was less reliant on him as a writer, and less identified with him personally: he wanted a business that he could, potentially, hand on at some point.
In the clip he explains how he did it.

David began by identifying a market that was not currently served by a magazine, and hit on homeworkers, the hundreds of thousands who work from home and whose need for advice and support he discovered was not met.
With the success of that project he looked for a second area that was not served, and discovered that the self-publishing industry also didn’t have a magazine dedicated to it, and Publish Now! was born.
Publish Now! Includes practical advice for those publishing their own magazines, books, and websites, and guides readers to the tools and technology driving the rise in self-publishing.
David says: “I saw self-publishing coming of age with the likes of Lulu and now the iPad, electronic books, and it had no support”, so he set out to create a magazine that would support the market he had identified.

Find our more about how to Build Your Own Job here

How to build a journalism business: free interactive course

Yoodoo is a free, interactive learning website that takes you through the whole process of deciding what your business should be, testing and refining your concept.
They do it with short videos and quizzes, taking you through 40 steps to hone your ideas. It’s an impressive free programme that gives you all the material you’d normally expect to pay for in a business manual or ebook.
You could use it to go through the steps that entrepreneurial journalism students at City University New York complete as they begin a business (details here) but while Cuny is about starting the business, Yoodoo goes further along the path and looks at running it as well.
In addition to identifying your product or service and finding your customers, it deals with the nitty gritty of budgeting, sales, marketing, accounting, costs and break-even, Vat, employment law, finding offices and much more.
I’ve taken the course. Here’s a video taster of what they put me through, in a segment about web marketing, and how I got on.

Working on your elevator pitch

You'll find a full outline of how to create that all-important elevator pitch, and your own journalism business, in Masterclass 12 of Multimedia journalism: A Practical Guide here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/711

What should be taught about entrepreneurialism

J-Schools that teach entrepreneurialism - how to build your own job - are few and far between. In Masterclass 12 of Multimedia journalism: A Practical Guide, we look at those that do, and what we can learn from them.

City University New York is a pioneer.
At Cuny they set out to tackle the fact that journalists didn’t understand their own business by establishing a course in which students must create a business plan for a sustainable (which they define as profitable) journalistic enterprise. Cuny won grants of $100k to give as seed money to the best of the ideas students come up with, as decided by a jury of experts.
Here’s what students learn:
How to create a plan for a sustainable (profitable) journalism business
That plan includes

• An elevator pitch – how to sell the idea briefly and effectively
• A needs statement – why does the world need this business?
• Market research and analysis – deciding who their customers are, and talking to them about the idea
• Competitive analysis
• Product plan – what is it?
• Revenue plan – how’s it going to make money?
• Distribution/marketing plan – how will people discover it?
• Operations plan – how will it operate? What will that cost?
• Launch plan– what are the phases and milestones?

You'll find out much more about entrepreneurialism, building a job, and creating a portfolio career here

Can any journalist be an entrepreneur?

Yes, says Adam Westbrook, they can. "It’s a mindset thing. Get that mindset and you can do it."

This clip is extracted from Masterclass 12 of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, which is an in-depth look at how the modern-day journalist can use multimedia technology to build their own job.
But being a successful journalistic entrepreneur - and creating a portfolio career -  is not something you can achieve overnight.
It took Adam 18 months to two years of thinking about it, reading, researching. Eventually he realised it was something he could do, and later that it was something he really wanted to do.
Some think its not journalism. They don’t want to be running a business, but infact, says Adam: "It's actually a really creative process".
And the recession has proved that there is very little job security in big publishing corporations, so the risk of branching out is much diminished.
There's much more about entrepreneurialism, portfolio careers and building  your own job in Masterclass 12 at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/704