Feature: Internet Magazine Market Reaches Saturation Point
The internet magazine market gains a new entrant tomorrow when IPC Media launches Web User, a straight-talking guide to the web for beginners. It claims to have no immediate competitors due to its unique frequency for this sector – fortnightly – and its down-to-earth, no-nonsense advice.
It enters the market at a time when this sector as a whole is suffering a downturn to mirror that of its subject matter. In the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), many titles were down compared to the same period last year. Market leader The Net from Haymarket lost almost 12% of its circulation, which now stands at 52,600. Its nearest rival – Future’s Business 2.0 – scored a circulation of 50,800 in its first reporting period, just overtaking its sister title .Net, which fell 10.5%. Emap’s Internet was the only title to remain steady, with sales of 46,680.
Further down in the market the picture gets grimmer with many titles showing circulations of less than 30,000. Paragon is struggling to stay in the sector with all three of its titles suffering major falls: Internet Made Easy fell 26% to just under 26,000, while its smaller titles Web Pages Made Easy and Practical Internet both have circulations under 20,000.
Future is by far the most dominant publisher in this category, owning 60% of all titles and currently experiencing downturn. The group, which also dominates the volatile gaming magazine market, has recently sold off a number of its magazines, and is considering the sale of Business 2.0, in order to stave off further debt.
As the internet as a medium grows, the market for magazines covering the subject, particularly beginners guides, is reaching saturation point. The sector took off in 1999, when new launches pushed it from a total circulation of just over 100,000 to 330,000, a figure which has remained more or less static since then as new titles launch and others close.
The flourish of entrants in the last few years were banking on the universality of the new medium; they jumped on the bandwagon with what is a relatively easy publishing idea. Now these titles are beginning to cannibalise each other and the sector is likely to take further casualties in the near future.
Readers of how-to magazines are also a limited audience; learner magazines for the web become increasingly redundant as more people become au fait with online.