Make Sure You Found Some Magazines

With luck, you have found out what magazines target your market niche or a closely related one. If you haven't, please go back to the Magazine Gold Mine task and try once more. Finding existing magazines is so valuable that it's worth making an extra effort. Not only will the magazines give you many ideas, they will give you tested ideas that will save you time and money spent on testing them yourself.

If you just cannot find anything, you may want to consider choosing a different niche, especially if this is your first web business. When you're first getting started you need the boost that magazines will give you and it's not very practical to go on without it.

Your 20 Minute Task

For this 20 minute task, your goal is to get some recent issues of the magazine or magazines you've identified. If you cannot find some that you can keep for your own, then borrow some. Ideally, you'd like one recent issue of at least three different magazines. Failing that, you could try for three different issues of the same magazine.

Here are places to try:

• Your local bookstore
• The public library
• A friend or acquaintance who may have copies
• Online at Magazines.com.
• An online bookstore such as Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.

If those places don't work, try these techniques:

• Check the magazine's web site if it has one. (Use your favorite search engine to find it.) You may be able to order a subscription there or find out which local retailers carry issues.
• Call the publisher to ask for a rate card. A rate card tells you how much it costs to advertise in a magazine. It breaks the rates into categories based on the size of the ad, where it's located in the magazine, and whether it's in black and white or color. You'll find the phone number for the magazine's advertising department in the materials you copied from Standard Rate and Data Service and Writer's Market if you researched them. Phone them and say that you'd like a copy of their rate card. Most magazines will include a complimentary issue so you'll know what their magazine format is. If they ask what your product is, and you don't know, say that you're a new start up and your product hasn't been announced yet but you'll be happy to send them a copy of the press release when it is.

When you're gotten some copies, put them next to your "Niche Characteristics" folder where they'll be handy for your next 20 minute task. (Or, if you're at the library, you may want to go straight on to Search for Problems.)