# Oppinions on my free photography magazine?



## JHolt (Mar 25, 2009)

About 3 months ago I decided to start my own Photography Magazine.
With 0 budget to speak of and a bit of extra time on my hands I started hunting for stories and writers.

This is what came out of the first issues hunt.

Home Photography Magazine

We have had 5000 visitors in the first week of the first issue and the response I am hearing back is quite good.

I am planning on adding a review section (this coming issue) and possibly a gallery.

If you are interested you can submit your own stories or images for our gallery. You will find the contact info on the website.

I really look forward to hearing from all of you.

Thanks for your time

Justin Holt


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## rufus5150 (Mar 25, 2009)

Why a flash interface?


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## Olcoot (Mar 25, 2009)

Justin,

I just check out the magazine and I am impressed, I signed up and think you have a real winner here. Great Job!:mrgreen:


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## stsinner (Mar 25, 2009)

Wow!! Really nice..  I love the way you can zoom in and just move your mouse around to navigate without having to use sliders.  And it's very professional looking...

(On page 11, the writer wrote that something was, "Nesseled," when it should have been, "Nestled," and, "had got," is used instead of, "had gotten," but if grammar is on the writer, then hey...  It's on them.  But I think it reflects on the magazine.  You really should peruse the articles yourself to ensure quality articles..)

Edit:  As I read on, I found many grammatical and punctuation errors, and this is really bad for you if you want to be taken seriously..  I've come across the word, "over joyed," which should have been overjoyed, and the word, "misshap," which is mishap when spelled correctly..  From what I've seen, most photographers are pretty smart and into speaking and typing correctly..  Articles like this need to be right on, especially when these are very elementary mistakes-not even easy misses..  This author even says he gets a lot of crud, "In the sensor.."   Now that would be a feat!

Oh, boy..  While I love the layout and think you have a great idea, I'd hoped that the grammatical trainwreck was limited to that one article.  However, as soon as I start the next article I'm greeted with this:







You have a question mark and the start of a new sentence right in the middle of a sentence/thought...  Very poorly written..  You have the graphics ability, but you really need to get the grammar rules and punctuation rules down in order to be successful to any large degree..  It's just hard to read.

I don't know who wrote the articles, so I'll just say you, as it's your magazine..  Here, you use past tense and then use future tense all in the same sentence..    You also hyphenate highlights, which is one word, non-hyphenated.






It just has to get better than this..  These are very simple, very elementary mistakes that turn people off..  I know that the people I associate with could be reading the plans that tell you how to live for eternity, but if they were written with such poor grammar and punctuation, they'd rather not read them..  It's just the way it is..  Grammar and punctuation are important.


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## JHolt (Mar 26, 2009)

I let go the editor we had as she didn't actually have her heart behind the project. Everything should be cleared up by the next issue and I have made some modifications to this issue and this will be corrected for the back issue copy.

I may even have a chance to upload it this weekend.

Thanks


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## stsinner (Mar 26, 2009)

JHolt said:


> I let go the editor we had as she didn't actually have her heart behind the project. Everything should be cleared up by the next issue and I have made some modifications to this issue and this will be corrected for the back issue copy.
> 
> I may even have a chance to upload it this weekend.
> 
> Thanks



That's great, as the graphical interface is very nice, and the idea is awesome!   Thanks for taking the time to do this for free!


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## JHolt (Mar 26, 2009)

No thank you for pointing our the problems.
I was able to fix most of them this morning and have uploaded and linked the new version.

We had a great day yesterday with over 500 visitors and puts us on track to reach 10 000 hopefully by this weekend (fingers crossed)

Your comments  saved us!


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## chadsdphoto (Mar 26, 2009)

I haven't read very closely yet, but I'm impressed for a first issue. Nice job, you got my subscription. :thumbup:


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## Overread (Mar 26, 2009)

hmm a few thoughts from my quick gloss over the contents;

1) it might be well worth your time making a non-flash version of the mag for people with slower internet connections. Flash is all well and good but for some people their connections are just way to slow and they will avoid flash material unless very heavily recomended to them. Also  if you do this don't hide the other version away in a corner - make it an easily noticable choice

2) adverts - ok I know you need them and that ( I strongly suspect) you will be adding to the content and length of the mag as it gains popularity - just keep a check on the ads and how much of the mag they take up - its also slightly better to gather than nearer the end of the mag than to have them nearer the start (but don't bury your articles in ads otherwise they will get missed)

3) Please please please decide on your editing advice position for photoshop - I see so many mags that aim at the beginner or the amateur which will go into great details about editing processes - almost all of which need £500 worth of photoshop - which most people just don't have. Instead do try to aim things at the simpler programs - elements for example - and also don't forget that there some some great addons for things like elements which can enable some of the more advanced editing features (such a link could be part of a more advanced article allowing the elements users to benefit as well - just remember anything you link to must be fully tested by you first of course)


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## 2ART (Mar 26, 2009)

Good work! It looks very interesting. I hope it's a continued success.


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## Overread (Mar 26, 2009)

just a point but it might very well be worth adding a "meet us" page to the site where you can introduce the staff of the project as well as a bit about them and such - let your readers see the faces behind the project.


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## rubbertree (Mar 26, 2009)

agree on the grammar and spelling, even your title here has a typo.
Did you really get all those advertisers (Manfrotto, Lensbaby, Tamron, BaLens, etc) or are you just lifting ads/copy?


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## JHolt (Apr 9, 2009)

We are about to release the newest issue of Home Photography Magazine.

To answer some of the questions the editing on this issue is much better and our new editor is much more strict on these issues.

As for ads yes we got these sponsors and no we didn't lift any ads.
Why would we waist our time putting fake ads on our website/magazine?

The companies we are dealing with are absolutely fantastic and we are very proud to have them on board. We are working on as many things as possible right now but please remember this is a free magazine. We can only do what our budget allows us to every month.

As for writing about editing using the cheaper software.
If we can find some one to contribute about using the less expensive software we will add that in for sure.

Thank you all for your comments and support!
With your help we have been able to reach over 9000 viewers to the magazine this issue!


PS. We have just added a user based gallery to our website and a very simple forums.


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## caveman (Apr 24, 2009)

I think it's a great idea and certainly has potential. Is it 9k unique subscribers you have or page hits - makes a big difference.

Is it just photography tuition articles you want contributing or can people submit anything related to photography?

Keep up the good work!


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## DefaultArtist (Apr 24, 2009)

JHolt,
   your project looks very interesting. I think it has good potential as far as online webzines go. Keep up the hard work. As someone who is also in the middle of his own on-line photography business endeavor, I'll try to list my thought and thoughts and hope they are constructive. Good luck friend ;D

The Mag:
1. Well for one, the stories are interesting and the content is solid. Like some have said, you need to fix the typos, but the stories themselves, are enjoyable to read.
2. I love the magazine layout, and the controls for viewing experience.
3. You should do a story about ShutterCal.com ;D

The Website:
1. It seems you have had a good start with finding sponsors. Just don't over do it. Why make visitors click past a sponsor to get to you community? That part was a little confusing for me, and seems like it might discourage some.
2. I see a daunting task in building up your community because it is very broad. It offers all the broad options every other community offers. Why not build the user experience more around your magazine?
3. Are your editors and contributors on there? They should be.

Questions:
1. For a small project, you seem to have the sponsorship thing down very well. Care to share how you did this? cold calls? connections? luck?
2. What's your biggest goal for this webzine? Is it just a hobby? or do you see it as a growing business?

Thanks for Sharing. I will definitely be keeping an eye on this this project. Magazines like this really help smaller web-projects grow!


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## JHolt (Apr 26, 2009)

The 9K at the time was unique visitors not page hits.
Our main concern is our unique visitors.

The reason for the ads on the way to the community pages was just to test out adsense. Every little bit helps as our costs are about $250 a month for our server, 35 in other maintenance based stuff. $500 A week in advertising.

Now our Advertising will not always be so high we just want to get the word out to as many people as possible. We have found now that about 42% of all visitors come from word of mouth so we will start backing down the advertising a bit.

It was all done with cold calling.
Just explained who we were and what we were doing and what the future plans for the magazine were going to be. Our advertising rate in the first month was 70% less then print and is around 50% now. 

Although we do offer discounts for newer sponsors.

As for magazine advertising not sure if you noticed but the way we have put it together is 1 ad after every article with no half page or box advertising in the articles. This always did bother me reading print magazines.

The income potential of this really makes it so it can't really be a hobby.
There is a lot of room for growth and if we develop the magazine in to a company we can offer a lot more to the readers.

Other then the missed spelling errors in the first issue we have had nothing but positive feed back and makes the word of mouth marketing pretty easy.

We are working our way to 10 articles or more per issue now and we should have enough people submitting great stories that we won't have to worry to much about content for a while.

Thanks for reading and your support!

Justin

PS. Hey Caveman didn't for get you. For articles we take anything in and then choose what will work the best for that issue and archive any others for later magazines. Our editors also have a big say depending on writing style. Exampe: If an article is to hard to edit due to content then it may not make it in the magazine.

We really want the communities stories.
The magazine was created for Photographers to help photographers.
Not another "Look what I did arn't I great" but a Look what I did, here is how I did it") I found there was to many kinda snobby magazines out there and it bugged me enough to start my own.


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## dxqcanada (Apr 26, 2009)

Very informative mag.

Great read.

The only thing I could negatively comment on is the quality of the images if a reader wanted to zoom in to see details.


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## JHolt (May 7, 2009)

Quality seems better in the downloadable pdf


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