Advertising… Sold Out!

When RodMaker was launched in early 1998, there weren’t a lot of advertisers willing to jump on board.  In fact, it took four or five years before the industry really caught on to what they’d been missing. Since that time, the majority of the most important companies in the rod building industry have taken advantage of the truly broad circulation which RodMaker offers them. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing…

 

In the past year as even more advertisers have come on board, we’ve simply run out of advertising space. Sure, I could dump some content and replace it with advertising, but at some point the readers wouldn’t be getting the amount of information they’re paying for.  Granted most magazines are at least 50% to 60% advertising, but I’ve always kept RodMaker at no more than 25% advertising, which is the maximum that I believe a publication should carry if it wishes to offer its readers the greatest value in terms of actual information.

 

Why not just add more pages? Well, if only it was that simple.  Publications are printed in something known as signatures and in RodMaker’s case a signature is 8 pages. So to add any more pages I’d have to add at least 8, and due to the high quality paper we use that’s a lot more weight that requires additional postage fees. Thousands of dollars a year more in postage fees to be exact. Even if 2 or 3 of those pages were advertising, the magazine would still come out behind on the deal. And no, I have no plans to raise the subscription price in the near future to cover such a postage increase.

 

So for now, no more pages and no additional advertising. I suppose having more business than you can handle is an enviable position to be in these days but I do regret not being able to get more companies into the pages of RodMaker. I plan to keep searching for an alternative solution but for the time being, RodMaker will remain composed of mostly rod building information with less than 25% advertising.

 

Tom Kirkman

 

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