Model Railroad Hobbyist: A New E-zine for the Modern Era

[Blog retroactively published January 11th, 2009 to preface a review of MRH upon release]

A new kid on the magazine block arrived last fall with great aspirations to lead the way in developing the e-zine format for the modern era. This particular publication will cater to the model railroad community, but it could be applied to any magazine already in existence. This magazine will go further then any print magazine has previously foraged into using modern technology, an innovative leader in a community of luddites. We shall have to see jsut how this experiment works out!

This new magazine will be entirely free to subscribers; in order to subscribe, interested individuals simply need to visit the MRH website and create a user account. This account will then give them access to the magazine two weeks in advance before the public, in addition to providing access to other online content including discussion in both public forums and private blogs. The public forums cover general topics and serve as a catch-all for questions and comments about the organization, the hobby, or any other technical issues concerning the website or the publication. The user blogs serve as a place where individual subscribers may publish their own content directly on the MRH website. This should serve to bring more modelers closer together then ever before.

But how on earth will MRH support itself if the magazine is free to subscribers? Funding will be achieved solely through the sale of advertisement space within the magazine. MRH aims to save most publishing expense by only publishing each issue electronically, leaving it to the individual to purchase printers and papers if they so with to have a print copy. The format of this magazine in particular allows advertisers to submit ads that include richer embedded information such as videos, sounds, and direct links to their websites. This information should then create more traffic on manufacturer websites, translating into increased sales revenue. At least, that is the idea; we will have to watch and see just how this model pans out.

MRH has a goal of achieving 5000 users by the release of the first issue on January 10th, 2009. To boost model railroad enthusiast interest in the site they have had a monthly sweepstake for $1000 dollar shopping sprees and a couple people thus far have walked away with quite nice prizes. A number of people who have joined the site have taken the time to further create blog entries and enter the discussion forums, leading to the establishment of an entirely new model railroad community not much unlike the many other communities that already exist. The only difference here is that this particular host will be publishing the first entirely free magazine and distributing it through the web, the first publication of its kind in the model railroad field.

To further increase traffic, the editor relies on using email notification to reach members. Joe Fugate explains the use of email notification in a recent blog concerning the move to Google notification. First, response to this notification allows the magazine board to establish which accounts are active and which need to be removed. While there are many subscribers, the actual contributor traffic on the site is quite small compared to the number of people who have visited the site only once and created an account. Traffic to the site has gone up exponentially on each of the days MRH has sent out notification.

In the world of e-commerce, traffic is the all-powerful gorilla in the room. Even if a site has 5000 registered members, this core membership does not illustrate the entire picture of who is using the website. Indeed, Internet traffic takes into consideration those who are lurking on the site and those who visit but do not log in or open accounts.

Advertisement based upon traffic rate banks upon the law of averages. In this medium the theory would go something like this; the more people who visit a website, the more likely one of them will click on the advertisement. The more people who click on an advertisement, the more likely one of them will buy something from that website. Even if the rate is only one half of a percent, that still means 5 visits out of 1000 generated a sale. If a website has 100,000 unique hits each month, there is a potential for 500 unique customers each month. While this might not seem like much, in a niche hobby like model railroads this figure could support a number of cottage industries. MRH hopes to capitalize on this basic principle and emerge as the leader in model railroad publications.

Time will only tell if this model will work with both publishers and hobby enthusiasts. There are hurdles, as this hobby is primarily filled with older people who may still be on the dark side of the Digital Divide. Joe Fugate remains confident that this model will be effective and so we await the first issue and all that it brings with great anticipation. If this model does indeed succeed here, there is no reason it will not succeed elsewhere, and thus lead us into the modern era of e-zine publishing.