Dear Bassin’ Advertisers,
The primary objective of Bassin’ is to be a fishing magazine for today’s avid bass angler. Bassin’ is made for fishermen, by fishermen.
One of the most frequent comments we receive is “I like your magazine because it is not just full of ads”. It has always our goal to be under 50/50 – ads to editorial. If our ads exceed our editorial then we will add editorial at an overall loss. Since we maintain this less than 50/50 ratio, the readers like anything they see related to fishing – editorial or advertising. When this ratio is out of balance, the magazine reaches a point of saturation and causes a negative impact. The reader takes note of this and is turned off.
While our primary interest is to make sure that Bassin’ editorials service the readers’ interests, we also want to make sure that we are serving our advertisers’ needs. We do this by making sure that we deliver a highly qualified audience to our advertisers. When given a choice, we choose quality of circulation over quantity, EVERY TIME.
Every effort is made in newsstand marketing to make sure that the magazine achieves the maximum distribution and longevity on the newsstands, while maintaining an acceptable sell-through percentage. Pushing more copies out the door, without an eye on the number of copies sold, doesn’t do the publisher or advertisers any good.
Direct to publisher subscriptions continue to evolve every day with the internet and social media. However, direct mail is seemingly still the best (and largest) source of direct-to-publisher subscriptions. Unfortunately, there are not many “fishing” related mailing lists available. This limits the number of direct mail generated new subscribers that any fishing magazine can solicit. Bassin’ focuses marketing effort on the best direct-to-publisher sources to maximize the number of qualified subscribers for advertisers to reach.
Although circulation could be expanded dramatically by using low-quality subscription sources such as field agents, bulk sales, and gracing copies, these sources are avoided. At Bassin’, we know that if the source isn’t profitable for the publisher (with an acceptable renewal rate), then it won’t be profitable for the advertiser.
Our business plan at Bassin’ is simple...Produce a quality product and charge newsstand buyers, subscribers and advertisers a fair price.
Sincerely,
Brad Uhl - Publisher