RE: Legendary Ford from Editor Jeff Ford
February 10 2010 at 5:08 PM Jeff Ford (Login LegendaryF0rd)
Members


I think it is time for me to have one big post that deals with LFM as it stands now.

Why are we internet only?

Our print bill was $15,000 an issue. Our ad revenue starting at the end of 2008 was $10,000-$12,000 in issuewhich works on the assumption that the advertisers are all paying their billsrenewals and new subs were making up the difference and BARELY making salary. Starting February 2009 some of the advertisers got spotty with payments. Note the upside down nature of the cash flow on the ad side. It got worse.

Dont get me started on the newsstand peopleall Ill say is that we never made a dime off of the newsstand copies; they made good money though.

We made a mistake and printed the Mustang 45th book. It sold not at all. I still have 25 boxes in my garage with 25 mags per box. Colin and Di have more (Im thinking of using them for firewood) but we had to try; and it failed. We should have done a mailing for LFM with that money. Wed counted on the revenue from the Mustang book to boost revenue and instead it tanked us. The revenue never happened. The ads in it didnt even cover the cost of printing the thing. We should have stopped then but the decision was made to keep going. Surely the advertisers would paysome of them never did. Thus, we were saddled with an extra print bill on top of the one we already had every other month. If I could point to a single thing that cost us the deal, it was the magazinesomething that two years before would have been a winner.

Then the economy stopped and renewals dried up. Where we were getting several a day we were down to one or two. Oh and the print bills were still there.

When there is no money, we cant do mailings to our customers for renewals or any other thing we might need to inform them about. Mail cost money.

Phone calls to 10,000 plus reader cost time and moneysomething we didnt have with only three people. Just an example folks: Im doing layout, writing, photographing and some planning. And thats just me. Di and Colin are not any less busy.

Nor are we big enough to go to a bank and ask for money. We have nothing that they want. I dang sure aint going to put my house up in this economynot that it would be worth anything right now anyway. So, unlike large corporations we have no assets to put into it, our only asset is our knowledge and time. Worthless to an investment banker.

So we went online. It was the next best thing to not having a magazine at all. We have worked without pay for six months. We have taken freelance work to make ends meetand in some cases the ends arent meeting at all. That is why the publication dates arent current with the actual dates. We have to make money some how.

We decided to risk giving away our work (via downloadable .pdf files that you can print) in order to make it portable. Why? Because we like reading in the crapper too. It was the next best thing we could do to printing.

Does this suck? Well yeah, I mean if YOU think it sucks, come over here and see it from my chair.

Do we want to go back to a print magazine? Sure! But right now we cant and wont.

Do we need your support in this time of crisis? Yeah. Heck if you go to the site Ill set up a subscription that charges your card $1.41 a month so your risk is small.

If you are a current subscriber and dont want the online experience, I honestly dont know what you tell you. Were broke. There is no money to be gotten from the three of us.

Will the magazine be around in any form at all. If we get some support, yes.

Now I have work to do to get the next issue stories up...

If you are a current subscriber, contact me at the e-mail below and I'll get you rolling with the on-line book.

Jeff Ford
Editor
jford@legendaryfordmgazine.com