REVERSE RUNNING: MRH, the three-year-old wobbly toddler? Stepping outside the box with a contrary view to use for testing every issue. By issue three, we made our online edition available, meaning you didn’t even have to download the issue if you wanted to read it.
Reader Feedback (click here)
— by Joe Fugate
M
RH is three years old! It’s been an interesting journey so far, trying to get this new totally digital eZine for model railroading strong enough to stand up and walk on its own. Issue one was both a triumph and something of a minor disaster. We immediately found Adobe’s claims about Flash being ubiquitous were not entirely true. We got bitter complaints from Mac users that they could not read MRH. We quickly created the “Flashless” standard edtion using less “bleeding edge” technology, and we got a Mac
Page 113 • Jan 2012 MRH Reverse Running Commentary
The first year, we did four issues on a quarterly schedule. Come year two, we did six issues – one every-othermonth. And now as we complete our third year, we’ve doubled our annual output to twelve issues, one every month … whew! The good news is we’ve got a rhythm down now on how to do the monthly magazine thing. Hooray for that! And we’re growing as well. We hit an all-time record in November of 50,852 unique visitors to our web site in a single month. Plus, we’re adding 400500 net new subscribers each month. I say “net” because we do have a few who unsubscribe each month, mostly because they lose interest in the hobby. And every so often, we’re told a subscriber is deceased (fortunately, that’s infrequent, but it does happen).
And of course, we’re gaining advertisers as well – something that’s critical for you as a reader, since they’re paying the bills. The demise of Model Railroad News seems to have helped MRH get more advertisers now that those who were advertising in MRN already have an ad budget set aside. With the hole left by MRN, it’s an easy sell to move them to an ad placement in MRH. This is all goodness. But there’s also cause for concern. Three years old is an awkward age. It’s really easy to fall on your face if you’re not careful. It’s been great that MRH is all-digital, but we soon won’t be alone. The other hobby magazines are showing signs of providing a digital version. True, we do have the fact MRH is free. But low quality and free is no bargain. We continue to get positive feedback about how we make an article as long as it needs to be to explain the subject well. And readers like that we do our clickn-spin animations and that we put in video demonstrating techniques. Sometimes show is way more effective than tell, and our digital media
format allows us to easily include video content. But we never want to sit on our laurels, thinking what we’ve done is good enough. No, no, no! We keep asking ourselves how we can do it better. Yes, the tech behind MRH is cool, but that’s the sizzle, not the steak. Consider this – what if all the model railroading magazines were free and totally-digital? Would you still prefer MRH? That’s a question we keep asking ourselves in our MRH staff discussions. Being free and all-digital must never be the main reason model railroaders read MRH. We must produce such a quality product that even if every hobby magazine were digital and free our readers would still prefer MRH. If we can answer this question well by providing can’t-do-without-it-content, then being free and all-digital becomes just icing on the cake, as it should be! This is where you, our loyal readers, can help. What kind of content in MRH would make it a must-read for you, even if all the model railroading magazines were free and digital? Click the reader feedback button and give us your thoughts.
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