A smart move: taking a B2B publication online and flourishing

2 Jun 2015

When it comes to print publications, many have to fight off the unfortunate view that 'free' often means inferior quality. Mike Joubert, Editor and founding member of TechSmart tells us how he did so, and why TechSmart is now focused online...

Ever wondered how to make a success of a website? The key often lies in having traditional print roots, as is the case with TechSmart, featuring the latest South African-centric tech news, reviews and related content. It started in 2003 as a print publication, but a few weeks ago the decision was made for Smart Publishing to only focus on TechSmart.co.za.

Joubert tells us why they made this move after 138 free issues...

Mike Joubert, Editor and founding member of TechSmart

1. Why the decision to move online?

Joubert: Print advertising budgets are ever decreasing, while printing prices also kept margins low. For a publication like ours that is totally dependent on advertising, we had to change direction and online was the obvious choice. Luckily we didn't have to start from scratch to build visitors, since www.techsmart.co.za has been going since 2003 and contains a big archive of past articles and reviews.

2. That's good news. Give a brief overview of TechSmart's 12-year print history highlights.

Joubert: Certainly the start of the publication in 2003 was the most exciting. For us, it was very much unknown territory since the concept we worked towards - a good quality, free tech magazine with enjoyable content - was very new. We didn't have the backing of a large publishing house behind us, so the money had to be borrowed and a lot of blood, sweat and tears were sacrificed to get TechSmart going.

Apart from TechSmart becoming glossier as time passed, we also started TechSmart Business in 2013, focusing on the ICT business sector in South Africa. Once again the learning curve was steep, but it was a lot of fun putting a B2B magazine together and I thought we had a good thing going with it.

3. You combined quality content and advertising in a free publication - how did you fight off the unfortunate view that free often means inferior quality?

Joubert: It was a big problem at the start, especially since we originally printed on newsprint, so the publication looked like a folded newspaper. That luckily kept the cost down because at one stage we printed 100,000 copies per month, which was good news for the strong contingent of SME advertisers we had. Through the years we moved towards better quality paper and eventually the magazine appeared with a gloss cover, perfect bound. This was done to draw more corporate advertising after a decline in SMEs post-2008. The strategy worked, reflecting in clients such as Canon, Samsung, Nikon, Philips, BlackBerry, Dell, Huawei and Acer all advertising in the magazine.

4. Impressive. Has the decision to expand from purely tech content to also include lifestyle-related content, including movies, cars, games, comics and outdoor gear resulted in a larger audience?

Joubert: Yes indeed. Online you have to contend with international sites breaking the hot tech news first, while locally, sites such as MyBroadband are doing a great job at keeping the local techies hooked up. The move towards more lifestyle content was taken for the magazine a while back already, reflecting in what we are doing for www.techsmart.co.za. Our team involved in writing for the web also has a personal interest in the topics we cover, so it's very much a natural progression and doing what we're passionate about.

5. Makes sense. Give us a teaser of what to expect from TechSmart* in future - I know plans are underway to grow the site and TechSmart's presence in the industry...*

Joubert: While the magazines were going, we focused a lot on getting them out each month. Now we can concentrate on making the site more appealing, so expect a redesign in the coming months. With two high quality magazines on our CV counting as experience, we are also offering custom publication and copywriting services to companies. This is something we know we're good at, so it's only a pleasure to be able to help others with it.