While it may look like AutoSpeed has had a smooth, steady rise from its beginnings, that ain't necessarily so.....
An Idea
AutoSpeed came into being almost by chance. Having worked as the editor of a national Australian modified car magazine for 2½ years - until the publisher changed and the new publisher no longer wanted the same staff - I felt that I'd the skills and experience necessary to run the editorial (ie content) side of a magazine. However, being able to run a magazine - and being willing to finance a new mag - are very different things. More magazines fail than go on to reap a sustainable future, and the thought of borrowing (and then very likely losing) something like A$500,000 didn't do much for me. In fact, the magazine that I'd previously edited had been offered to me, but coming up with the cash to buy it wasn't to my liking.
So what's all this about money? Many car magazine readers don't seem to realise that a magazine is a business, just like any other. To survive, it needs to make a profit.
The owner of the magazine - in smaller companies at least - is the publisher. He or she comes up with the three or four hundred thousand dollars necessary to employ the staff - editor, deputy editor, layout artist, advertising salesperson - and to buy most of the content. The publisher also pays for the printing (which is normally done by another company) and the distribution (ditto). The advertising salesperson approaches many businesses, most of which are reluctant to spend money in a magazine that they're never heard of: advertising revenue of a new magazine is very low indeed.
After the publisher has gambled all of this money, the magazine goes on sale and then he or she needs to wait months and months before (a) they find out if the magazine sold 15,000 - or just 2,000; and (b) before the money from those sales that did occur actually makes its way into his or her coffers.
In Australia, a new modified car magazine might have a print run of 20,000 copies, with the first issue selling about 5,000. With advertising revenue tiny, and with all of those up-front expenses outlaid, it doesn't take much financial acumen to realise that the publisher has already starting losing money hand over fist. It then goes on and on - will the sales start to rise, how long before a break-even point is reached, should the print run be increased or decreased....? Many of these decisions for the second and third issues have to be made before the sales result of even the first issue is known!
Having been-there-and-seen-that, I have nothing but admiration for the sheer financial guts of a small publisher who starts a new paper magazine. I know one thing: I wouldn't do it. If ocean yacht racing has been described as ripping up dollar bills while standing under a cold shower, starting a new modified car paper magazine is a bit like feeding money in through an engine air intake while being deafened by the roar of horsepower.....
But what about on the Web? To my knowledge, no-one had ever attempted to produce a regular performance car magazine on the WWW. Sure, there were car magazines, but most seemed to be either lame offshoots of print mags or very irregular, grab-bag collections of cheap material. But would people be prepared to pay money to view an on-line car magazine, one where they did not receive any tangible hard-copy? In my previous role as paper magazine editor I'd received lots of email, so I did a survey of those people - would they pay money to view an on-line magazine? The results were a resounding 'yes!'. OK, but who would drive the Web end? There was simply no way that I could learn how to publish HTML and all the rest of the stuff - and put together a magazine as well.
I approached two web-literate people that I had come in contact with. One didn't return my calls, and the other was interested. We communicated by email and phone, and even came up with a provisional name - AutoMods - but after a while doubts started arising. He seemed a nice enough bloke, but he had another job and I wondered how well he could devote himself to publishing a magazine. Advertising revenue also needed to be organised, and I approached the ad rep from the paper magazine that I'd previously worked at (he'd lost his job there as well). He was mildly interested, but concerned that building up a readership would take too long. (Not enough readers = zero advertising dollars = zero advertising commission.) At this time of uncertainty I posted to an Australian car newsgroup a question about on-line car mags - more of my market research on how people would view an on-line mag.
Amongst the replies received was one by email - from a bloke named Brendan.
I read your posting in the newsgroup and, due to the commercial nature of my reply, thought I should contact you directly. We operate AutoWeb, Australia's largest car buyer service and automotive resource on the Internet and attract over 65,000 visitors to our site each month. At this stage we do not specifically cater for motoring enthusiasts to any extent beyond our automotive news service, however, we believe this is an area of great interest that has been largely overlooked on the web, or as you pointed out, been addressed in an amateur manner.
We are keen to expand our content areas through partnerships with others like yourself. I can't say I know you or know of your expertise, however I expect if you are investigating taking on such a challenging project, you at least consider yourself capable of producing quality results.
I would like to discuss further with you the possibility of developing your idea in partnership. Basically we can provide the technical skills and most importantly the traffic required, while you would provide the content. Revenues generated through that section of the site from advertising would be shared. We'd also develop a regular newsletter/e-zine specifically for the type of enthusiasts you are targeting. Our experiences with our own newsletter have been great. In a fairly short time we have built our subscriber base up to well over 5,000 and have found it an excellent tool for keeping in touch with our users.
To take this matter much further I feel we should either meet or at least talk on the phone. We are based in Melbourne (not sure where you are) but I'll be in Sydney later this month. Give me a call.
Regards,
Brendan Taylor
Managing Director
AutoWeb Pty Limited
http://www.autoweb.com.au
OK, I thought. So here's someone who has the track record of producing a successful web site, and who also seems commercially aware. The next step - to look at AutoWeb. Hmmmm, not much unique content - most of the material reproduced from new car pamphlets and press releases - but well organised and very useable. Hmmmm. I went back to the advertising rep. Would you come on board if you were guaranteed a heap of visitors per week? Yes!
Getting Started
In my mind the whole time that I had been considering starting a new web magazine was the question of staff. The ad-man would be commission-only - no dollars retainer for him. But I'd also need another full-time editorial staff member - someone who would produce material under my direction, someone who could be paid less than it would cost to buy each article from a freelancer. My friend Michael Knowling had contributed some articles to the paper magazine I'd edited, and I'd been keeping him right up to date with web magazine developments.
I suggested that he come along when I went to Melbourne to meet Brendan and the other AutoWeb guys for the first time - after all, he'd almost certainly be part of a team if the new magazine went ahead. And we could also do some stories in Melbourne while we were there - stories like the Nissan RB26DETT dyno story that ended up in one of the first AutoSpeed issues.
The meeting went smoothly, everyone realising how much was depending on the outcome. By the time the business part of the meeting was over - and the booze had been broken out - a new web magazine was a goer. The only real change that Brendan suggested to my concept was to make the magazine free - technically easy and with the potential for much greater growth.
You need to realise that at this time, capital (ie dollars and cents) was non-existent - there wasn't any money to buy ten or twelve magazine feature articles, or to employ a few more editorial staff. But we needed some column writers and I approached Matt Cremer and Dave Rubie. Neither of these guys I had actually met - and nor have I still, for that matter - but I'd enjoyed their web writings and thought that they could write innovative and interesting columns. But would they be prepared to do so on just a promise of potential future financial earnings? They were - and I remain very grateful.
The provisional name - AutoMods - gave us some problems. Because I had been a fair way down the path of starting the web magazine with another person, he felt that he had the rights to the AutoMods name. He also intended starting his own web magazine, and using that very name. To avoid any further problems, we changed the new magazine's name to AutoSpeed.
Hard Times
So we launched.
In the first few months things went pretty well. The work effort was very high - other magazine editors simply can't believe a weekly output as great as ours with so few editorial staff members - but everything seemed to be going smoothly. Of course, the principals - Brendan, Ed, Ian and me - literally weren't earning a cent but the advertising revenue was covering Michael's salary and some freelance payments. And advertising dollars being generated from modified car businesses and workshops were sure to rise, weren't they? Unfortunately they didn't.
It's worth going into the reasons for the lack of advertising revenue, if only for the quirkiness that this disclosure will cause historically. We were targeting all of the traditional modified car performance companies, but they didn't like it much. Close analyses showed that many advertisers weren't bothering to answer email requests for more information, and that many readers (a higher proportion than in a paper magazine) weren't lifting the phone or extracting dollars from their wallets anyway.
After about five months of earning less than would cover even his expenses, the advertising man left. Now there was only one option - to charge subscriptions and to adopt Internet-standard advertising banners. At least we now had a very substantial audience - even if we lost many readers, we should still have enough subscription income to keep AutoSpeed going. The enormous amount of work in completing a total revision of the site - to allow the downloading of PDF files, to have passwords and the ability to conduct financial transactions on the web - was carried out by Brendan, Ed and Ian in double-quick time and with very, very few problems.
But what about my financial situation? I'd been paid nothing for six months, surviving only by selling freelance work to other (paper!) magazines. While the other guys were earning at least something from their other web site - AutoWeb - I was doing it tough. Was it worth selling my cars - perhaps my house - to keep AutoSpeed going? I didn't think so.
Instead I got a job as a car detailer, cleaning cars for four hours a day, editing and writing AutoSpeed for four hours a day, writing freelance material for four hours a day, and for another four hours a day completing a book that I'd been commissioned to write .... About this time, as I grew deeper in debt (how about buying lunch every day on a credit card?), AutoSpeed readers started complaining that progress on the AutoSpeed project car Nissan EXA had stalled.
When was it going to start again? What turbo was I going to fit? How about buying an E16 engine? How 'bout a good management system story - covering the complete buying and fitting process? I'd bought the EXA soon after launch, confident that a salary would soon be forthcoming. But by now the chance of the EXA (out of rego and insurance) even moving out of the garage was zero. It was more a battle of whether I could afford to hold on to it for another month.....
In fact, the car detailing job was (just) not paying the monthly lease payment amount on my Skyline GT-R - and I simply wasn't going to sell that.....(The fact that I did end up selling the car was not based on a lack of money - something that I'm proud that I achieved...) But the financial hard times were stressing and depressing - finally, something had to give. I rang Brendan. "Sorry mate, I'm getting out. I can't handle doing this for nothing - you're great to work with; I've got no problems at all with the magazine or any of the team, but I simply can't keep doing it for nothing. Sorry, but gotta go." He was dumbstruck. Would all that we had built up be in vain? To cut the story short, we agreed on a change in AutoSpeed ownership, with AutoWeb taking up the greater part. They'd then pay me some monthly dollars, and everything else - especially editorial direction and control - would be the same as before.
Success
It was the day that we ranked the second most popular automotive site in Australia - ahead of every car company website and behind only a multinational media conglomerate - that I decided to quit cleaning cars. The increase in Web awareness over the last 12 months has been startling - no longer do people look puzzled when I tell them that I edit a modified car magazine that's on the Web. Many feature car owners have their own websites, and all realise that their cars are to be exposed to a worldwide audience. Recently in Australia one ad agency representing major automotive, tech and communications companies ploughed more than $10M into Internet advertising, with DoubleClick - the company that handles our and 11 other web sites' advertising - the lucky recipients. And no, that doesn't mean that we were just given a cool million bucks, but it does show that we're over the hardest part.
Over the last 12 months Dep Ed Michael Knowling has worked incredibly hard. In one memorable eight hour day, he researched, interviewed, photographed, wrote and delivered to me a story on straightening bent alloy wheels, something that most magazines would require two people (a photographer and journalist) two or three days to get together. Brendan works from 9am - 6pm, and then a second shift from 10.30pm - 2 or 3am, every single weekday. On weekends he just works the middle of the night slot...
It's been a hard slog. I am grateful to those of you who have been with us since the beginning - you probably realise now just how grateful! - and I am now supremely confident that AutoSpeed will monthly grow to bigger and better things.
But no, now that you ask, I still don't feel sufficiently flush with cash to re-start on the EXA - perhaps next month......
Next week: Doing the stories
AutoSpeed - The Story! Part 2
AutoSpeed - The Story! Part 3
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