How to find opportunities in print media – with Sarah Tayler

Sarah Tayler: You can’t start and say, ‘I want to create a print product that looks like this with this content, these images. This is where it’s going to go.’ You have to start at the other end. It has to be goals. What’s your goals? What does a successful magazine look like? What do I want someone to do when they open this magazine?

Rachel: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives. 

Lynne: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

Rachel: Hi, Lynne. How are you? 

Lynne: Oh, super busy. Super, super busy. Beyond busy. 

Rachel: I’m always scared to ask you that question. But we have a really interesting episode today. I think we’re really in the age of the custom publication a lot more than when we were both working mainly in consumer mags. Do you reckon?

Lynne: I think so too. I actually don’t even know how many people use the term custom magazines anymore. It’s more sort of like content, whether it’s print or not. 

Rachel: Yes. 

Lynne: And there are so many brands and businesses putting out these sorts of custom publications these days.  It’s actually a great way for journalists to pick up work, and often well-paid work. I do quite a bit of that sort of work. And what about you? 

Rachel: Me too. I work for a lot of custom publications, at different times of the year, because some of them are seasonal and all of that sort of stuff. But it is, I agree with you, I think a lot of journalists think, ‘Well, no, I can only work with consumer titles.’

But really, there’s can be quite a lot of work to be had on the other side as well. 

Lynne: I don’t actually know that they don’t want to work it, they just don’t know the opportunities out there. 

Rachel: Exactly. But anyway, yes, we have a great guest on to talk to us about all of this. It’s Sarah Tayler from Tweed Coast Media, and she basically handles all the nuances of producing custom publications from concept to content planning, writing to editing, and even sales and distribution.

I hesitate, but I want to use the word unicorn because amazing doing all of that, all of the above. And she actually took a publication and increased the print run by 300%, which is crazy. 

Lynne: Pretty amazing in this day and age. And she’s passionate about print and thinks it’s far from dead. In fact, her superpower is starting or reviving print products in a sustainable way for an organisation. 

This is an episode that anyone who works for custom publications or wants to will all want to listen to. 

Rachel: Absolutely. Well, let’s get her in the hot seat. 

Welcome, Sarah!

Sarah: Hi, ladies. 

Lynne: Welcome. 

Sarah: How’s it going?

Rachel: It’s good. We’re so happy to have you on. 

Sarah: Oh, thanks for having me. 

Rachel: In your pitch, you called yourself a professional word nerd, print stock connoisseur, which we’re going to go into later, and queen of wild ideas. And it sounds like all of that started because you grew up on the factory floor of your dad’s print company.

So, tell us a bit about what those days were like and how it fostered your passions for print. 

Sarah:  So, it all really started actually with my granddad. He had his own print business back in the seventies, and then all of his kids at some point ended up working for him and then went on to open their own print businesses as well.

My dad started out with a big print factory, but then as the internet sort of developed, he moved more into the graphic design and the web design side of things as well. And then he opened an art gallery in our town. 

I grew up in London. And so, he had his little design studio in the back, art gallery in the front and me and my sisters would be in there at the weekends helping him, folding brochures for his latest run or whatever he was doing. And then when I got a bit older, I worked on the front desk and chatting to people as they came in and doing a bit of Photoshop and stuff for him in the background. Doing cutouts and things, but to us it’s pretty much a defunct skill now because your phone can do a pretty good job of that stuff. But back in the day it was quite a specific skill. 

Lynne: Yes.

Sarah: It was awesome. Like, having a creative parent is so nice, and we always had a craft cupboard full of old print samples and things that we could use. It was just, it’s really nice. 

Rachel: Wow. 

Lynne: Oh, wow. We mentioned in the intro about your fabulous success with growing a publication’s print copies.

Tell us a little bit about that title and the first changes you made when you stepped in. 

Sarah: Yes. So honestly, like it sounds a bit outlandish, but these sorts of increases aren’t that uncommon for publications I’ve worked on. All it takes is a fresh set of eyes and someone who’s interested in the how’s and why’s of everything to kind of delve into what’s been happening and why.

It’s normally a lot of small changes that create a sustainable growth rather than one big change, to be honest. I started working with this particular brand, Continence Health Australia. They’re a not-for-profit based down in Melbourne. I started working with them in 2023 on their academic journal, and that needed a bit of love because it had been moved from a print-only members journal to an online-only open access.

All they’d done is just plonked it on a website, which, they hadn’t done any of the back-end work, which is really what you need for a successful transition from print to digital or digital to print. So, once I started working for them for a while and we changed publishers for the journal and really got that flying, it’s doing really well now, which is so nice to see, but then asked me to step into the consumer magazine as well.

So, in the end of 2024, I started working on Bridge. Again, that started about twenty years ago as a print-only publication. But then, at the end of COVID and with budgets and things, they decided to put it online in around 2022, but it just wasn’t transitioned very well considering their audience and their business goals.

So, I just came in and kind of had a look around, to see what was going on, and tried to make some suggestions. It’s never a one-person job, this sort of thing. Change management is a huge part of the skill it takes to run a custom publication well. It takes a whole business buy-in to make it part of that process and part of the product.

Moving the digital mag hosting, was one thing we did. We moved it. It was on Issuu, separate to the website, and we moved it onto the actual Continence Health Australia website using a product called FlipHTML5, which is about a third of the price. It gives you a better customer journey, helps you build domain authority, all of these really great things.

Issuu’s great for some projects, but not for this one particularly. So again, it’s just coming in, seeing what’s happening, and making these changes to make sure that it’s really hitting all the business goals that they need. 

Lynne: Wow.

Rachel: Wow, and you have that knowledge, that honed knowledge of what works for certain publications and stuff like that, which nobody would have.

Sarah: You just have to really not be afraid to try something and then say, ‘Oh, that didn’t work. We have to pivot. We were wrong. That isn’t going to work for us.’ For example, with Bridge, when I came in, it was sitting at around 500 print magazines an edition. With the changes we made internally, it took, it’s not just you. You’re coming in to work on the print magazine, but actually you’re going to end up involved in all parts of the business because it doesn’t exist on its own. It’s got to be fully integrated for it to actually be successful. For them to get the results that they want. 

So, we made a lot of changes, and then we ended up increasing the print run from 500, to 2,000 subscribers and then at the same time as that, so building our subscriber list, we were also working with a distribution partner, because the CEO, had a very specific audience in mind that he really wanted to target. This partner seemed like it would be a great fit for us to get our magazine in front of those people.

We ended up by the end of the year, we were doing like an 8,000-magazine run, which was huge compared to the 500 at the beginning of the year. But then once we got back after Christmas, we were having a look at the results, and it just didn’t really do what we wanted it to do. The partnership didn’t work; it wasn’t a good fit. It wasn’t getting the results that we wanted, like the return on investment. So, we’ve actually now, the print run we’ve just done, we took it way back. 

So, we’re back to about just over 4,000, magazines being printed now and we’re using that money in a different way to get those magazines in front of the people that we want to get them in front of because you can’t just keep doing something that’s not working. It’s all well and good having a lovely glossy magazine, but if no one’s going to read it, it’s not helping the business and it’s not sustainable. That’s why I think people are afraid of print, is because there’s a lot of people that would just keep doing the same thing, because they’re like, ‘Hey, look, I produced this magazine.’

But, if it’s not giving you results and it’s not getting you phone calls and sales and conversions, then it’s not working. 

Rachel: I want to delve into something you said a bit about; all aspects of the business being involved in these kinds of projects. And so, I’m just thinking of like the average person listening to this who might have similar skills to you and want to go in and revive a custom magazine or start one from scratch for a company. What do you need to understand about the business in order to do that? 

Sarah: I think coming in with an open mind. I mean, what I do, I think a lot of people in our industry could do this. It just is you have to have an open mind. You have to think backwards.

You can’t start and say, ‘I want to create a print product that looks like this with this content, these images. This is where it’s going to go.’ You have to start at the other end. It has to be goals. What’s your goals? What does a successful magazine look like? What do I want someone to do when they open this magazine?

When they open it, should they call a phone number? Should they scan this QR code? Should they be entering my competition? What do you want them to do? Where do you want them to go? How are you going to track it? How are you going to make sure that the people that inside the business that are paying for it know that the increase in business is coming from your magazine?

How are you going to show that? How are you going to show you’re working and make them aware of the contribution that your print product is making to their business? I think as well when you’re coming in, you’ve got to understand that actually asking someone what their business goals are is a really hard question for a lot of people. And some businesses have been going for thirty years, and if you ask them, they’ve got no idea what their actual goals are, strategic goals. It’s a really difficult question. So, you might not get the answer from one person. You might have to talk to lots of different people within the business and slowly tease out what exactly it is that they’re trying to… What are their pinch points? What individual pinch points do the people or the departments have within the company that you can help with the magazine? Is it that the user journey kind of comes to an abrupt stop at some point? Can you bring in your content and close that circle? Keep those users going round within the brand and I’ve sort of almost forgotten the question you asked now, I’m just chatting. 

Rachel: No, it’s really fascinating. 

Lynne: No, it’s good. It is. 

Rachel: It’s so fascinating to hearing all that.  

Lynne:  So, from the company’s perspective, how do you convince a company that print is worth investing in?

Sarah: I think when you’re talking to internal stakeholders about the change required to go from either print to digital or digital to print, most if not all of them will be thinking about the possible extra work it means for them. So, the best way, really, to convince them to get on board is to give them specific examples of how it can make their job easier.

Show them how working with you can actually lighten the load rather than give them extra work. And I think when you’re starting with a new client, you really have to think flexibly. Print is amazing and I love it, but the company has to be ready for it. If they’re tossing up print versus digital and they’re more comfortable with the digital or they don’t have an appetite for change, perhaps print isn’t a right fit for them at this moment and pushing them down the print road if they’re not ready and it doesn’t fit isn’t going to end up in a successful product.

Having said that, if their goals will be better served by a print magazine, I always advocate for it and lay out how it will work and all the alternatives, educating them on the actual costs and the risks and benefits. One of the biggest obstacles often is the myth that digital is cheap or free.

People have it in their heads for some reason that print and distribution are expensive, and if they produce digital content, it’s free to distribute on their website or social media, but without appreciation of what really goes into getting organic web traffic or growing and maintaining your engagement on social media.

So, as the freelancer or the consultant or, the person coming in to run the custom magazine, knowing the workflow of digital things as well as print things is really important so that you can educate the internal stakeholders as well with that sort of stuff. 

Rachel: Wow. I would love to know because you do all the parts of these kinds of projects. How do you cost that for yourself? How do you go about putting a price on that? 

Sarah: It’s really tricky and it works differently in every single project. For example, for Continence Health Australia, who I do Bridge for, I’m actually employed by them three days a week just because at the time when I was starting to work with them, that’s the best way it was going to work. But other people, I have a day rate or I have a whole project rate, and sometimes if I’m kind of dipping in and out because, one of the things I like to do, and it was a realisation I had recently, when someone was asking me, ‘Oh, you’ve had so many different jobs and so many different roles.’

I was like, my goal every time I walk into somewhere new is to work myself out of a job. I want to set them up so well that they don’t need me anymore. I want to set them up, educate them, lead them down the right path of just getting this process that is so well run that they don’t need me. They know everything now. They can do it themselves and they can grow it the way they want to grow it. Day rates, hour rates, it really depends. Like I said, I do three days a week for Continence Health Australia, and then I have my other projects bubbling away on the side and things. So, it really depends. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Rachel: That’s tricky.  

Lynne: Now, you mentioned in your pitch to us that you use editorial sort of opportunities to grow business partners. Do you want to take us through how that could work? 

Sarah: So, a custom publication, unlike your social media platform, is something you have complete control over, and it’s something not everyone has.

So, if a brand that you sort of are approaching relies really heavily on, say, Google Ads or Meta Ads or something for their traffic, and then those companies make changes to their pricing or their algorithms or, for example, what’s happening with these AI summaries, it’s driving less and less traffic to people’s websites, companies can lose huge numbers overnight.

So, approaching a business that you want to work with and flattering them by asking them to be interviewed for an editorial is a really great icebreaker, rather than going straight into asking for advertising. Once you get to know them and they see what sort of results you can get, and then you can go on to discuss paid advertising for future campaigns.

Once I’ve done an editorial with someone, I always like to offer them the opportunity to do a paid social campaign on the brand’s channels. For example, on Continence Health Australia’s channels or in the past I’ve worked with a property magazine who, we used to do a lot of list articles, so for example, the five best rooftop pools in Brisbane.

And so, we would approach, five different developers who had excellent plans coming up with rooftop pools. We would do the article, it would get published, and then afterwards we would go to them and say, ‘Hey, this article’s been so popular. Would you like to do a campaign, a paid campaign with us to promote the article to get more traffic to your development?’

Nine times out of ten they’re like, ‘Oh, what a great idea.’ And it’s just a win-win because it’s audience for them, audience for us, engagement, growth. It’s a really nice way to start that relationship without going to them and asking for something straight up. You’re offering them something first, so it builds that relationship. 

Rachel: I love that idea. And so, when do you know that you should sell space, or is it just a given that there are those opportunities and it’s just about finding them and sort of leveraging them, I suppose. 

Sarah: Yes, it’s a really great question.

I think depending on the publication, it will depend on whether advertising is a good fit. You have to think about the company you’re working for. Are there advertisers that are going to match with their brand values? Will the brands be interested in print advertising? What is their budget likely to be?

All of those things will kind of come into those sorts of decisions. At the property magazine I just mentioned it was run by a tech company, and it was all to sort of get a business to their tech company in the end, but the sort of magazine was the icebreaker, if you like.

So, we would sell the front cover, the back cover, adverts inside the magazine, and not just to developers as well as we got going. It was people with similar audiences, so luxury car brands, high-end cosmetics, things like that. All the audiences go hand-in-hand, so it worked really well.

They had budget, we had a platform, it was just a natural fit. Whereas for something like Continence Health Australia, where to start with there’s a lot more regulation around advertising because the Therapeutic Goods Association with medications and treatments and, it’s all a bit trickier.

And also, because all of the content within, Continence Health Australia, the Bridge magazine, it’s not only we’re normally interviewing a health professional, but then it’s clinically reviewed by two other health professionals after that. So, the advertisers have to also have a very similar message that our clinical reviewers would want to push.

So, all the advertising gets clinically reviewed before it goes out. It’s just a much more complicated process, and we’re much more selective with who we would have advertising which obviously narrows your pool down a little bit. 

Lynne: It’s interesting,  

Rachel: Very. 

Lynne: I do a lot of work with builders and building supply companies, and we often do collaborations between, and shoot a project of a builder’s project using the company’s materials, and then everyone benefits from that, and it might go in different publications online or whatever. Those sorts of partnerships and most of the companies really working with their, offering value to their customers too.

Sarah: Definitely. I think that’s… when you pitch it like that and it is a win-win for everyone. It just makes sense, and it helps, like you said, that when it comes from a place of genuinely wanting to help people, I think that’s when it really works. Another thing is, I guess, being a bit conscious of how ad heavy you want it to feel because you flick through some magazines and you’ve got six pages of adverts before you even get to the contents page or the editor’s note or whatever, and that works. For some magazine that’s okay, but for others, you don’t want that. So, you’ve got to keep an eye on the editorial to adverts ratio.

With Bridge we always keep it around 12% to 15%, because we don’t want it to feel ad heavy. But then because of that, we also offer different products. So, not just our print products. We’ve got EDM banners, we’ve got sponsored advertorials within our EDM, we’ve got web banners – those sorts of value adds. 

Again, so it sort of closes the circle. It’s not just print. Once the user comes onto the website and they might go to read another article, you’ve got a web banner there to remind them of the advert they’ve just seen, and it’s just closing that circle and making sure that the user’s getting as much information…

Rachel: Exposure.

Sarah: Exposure as you can.  

Lynne:  What I see is that you’re really deeply passionate about the print product, the paper, the stock, the printer. Maybe that’s your heritage, the feel of the magazine. Why does that tactile side matter so much do you think? 

Sarah: I think with so much vying for your attention in the world with screens and mobiles, something has to look and feel nice for you to put your phone down long enough to even read it.

So, especially with smaller publications these days, they go straight out to the readers or the distributors without you actually seeing them. No one’s motorbike couriering proofs to anyone anymore. They just get a digital one online, and you’ve not seen it physically before it goes to someone, so you have to trust the stock.

You have to trust the printers and the packers, because if they cut corners and they don’t pad the boxes or they don’t put a cover sheet on the top, your top few magazines are going to be trashed by the time they get there, and that’s just not the first impression you want when someone opens their delivery box.

So, I think picking the right printer, knowing that they’re not going to cut corners, and doing things – I always encourage people, if it’s a magazine that’s going to be sitting in a waiting room or a cafe or a hairdresser’s, pay the little bit extra for the cover and get a glossy coat to make sure that by the time it gets there and it’s been read by five people, it doesn’t look terrible. 

Rachel: Trashed. 

Sarah: Just protect your brand and have a bit of pride in what you’re doing.  Just spend that little… It’s not that much money, and a good printer will tell you that as well.

Rachel: I love that. Let’s talk a bit about data. So, what kind of data or metrics do you collect to prove the worth of the print product itself? 

Sarah: It’s a really tricky balance with that stuff because you don’t want it to feel like it’s just one big advert for your brand.

It has to be giving the user something. It has to be interesting to them. So, I guess the first question you have to ask yourself is what do you want them to do? When someone’s reading a magazine and they flick through it, what call to actions are you going to have? What do you want them to do when they get to the end of the magazine? You have to decide that. You have to make your content work for that, and then you have to be tracking the actions. So, each time someone does the action that you’ve set up, that would act as a conversion. This could look like a tracking phone number, so having like a specific phone number that’s only advertised in the magazine.

It could be a promotion or a discount code. It could be tracking URLs, using a shortener, like Bitly is the one we use at the minute, or tracking QR codes. It could be setting up a competition that people can enter or using like a sort of user-generated content, tag us in this or use this hashtag, and you only advertise that in the magazine so then you know it’s coming from that source.

I always like to use the kind of teasers, the read more online, so that’s a way to bring people back to the website and then obviously expose them to the rest of your products, not just the print one that they’ve come across.  And then hopefully that would lead them down to signing up for your mailing list and that sort of thing or purchasing something if that’s what your end goals are.

But you have to be able to track them to the next stage of the journey to attribute it all back to the print product. And, it doesn’t have to be money. I think that’s the other thing that people think, oh, well, it’s a free magazine, so, how are we going to track this? Well, it doesn’t, a conversion doesn’t have to look like dollars. It can look like a lot of different things. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

What about when you’ve got a really limited budget? How do you get growth for your mag in that sort of situation? Where should you focus your first, your major efforts, do you think? 

Sarah: It’s difficult because obviously everything costs money in this. Nothing is free. Like we said, even with digital, it’s not free. But you can look at things like what are they already paying for that you can jump in on? What campaigns have they already got planned? What money are they already spending on marketing or advertising that you can adjust or hone to also include your print product?

What are they paying for that you can make cheaper to free up budget for more growth? What is it? What can you cut, or what can you say, ‘Hey, that’s actually not a product you need.’ For example, when I first came to Bridge and they were on Issuu – Issuu’s great for some things. I love it for some things but not for other things. It just it’s expensive, and it doesn’t drive people to your website. It drives people to their website. So again, they’re not then in your brand world if you know what I mean. 

Lynne: Your ecosystem. 

Sarah: They’re not in your ecosystem. It’s just not a good user journey. It feels very separate, and it feels very segregated, so really that’s what I was saying in the beginning, like bringing the magazine completely inside the business.

So that’s what one of the things we did for Bridge is bring it inside. It sits now actually inside the website itself, and that saved us a lot of money. So, then we’re like, ‘Great, we’ve got this $3,000 a year.’ This already is like a great little nest egg of money that we can then put towards, growth in other ways because it wasn’t being used very well.

And again, it’s so hard when you come into a business because you don’t know the history. You can’t just start saying, ‘That’s no good. Change this, change that.’ You have to find out why. Why is it on Issuu? Why is it set up like that? Why are you spending money on this?  And again, it might not be a one-person question because staff change, people change, goals change. You might have to chat to a few different people. So don’t just storm in and, and say, ‘This is wrong.’ It’s not wrong, it’s just how it was in the past, and it probably had a good reason, but that reason might have changed and now it’s no longer fit for purpose.

Rachel: Well, you mentioned as well, spending a little bit more money on the cover so that it doesn’t get trashed when it actually reaches its destination, but are there anything, corners that you shouldn’t cut when you’re putting one of these magazines together? 

Sarah: Yes. Research and proofing are my two big areas that you absolutely cannot skip and that you cannot cheap out on.

So, for return on investments, you have to know what your target audiences look like, you have to know where to find them, and what you want them to do. What does a conversion look like? And like I said before, it doesn’t have to be money. Once you know that, then you have to figure out who your competitors are going to be, what’s already out there in this space, and who will be competing for their attention.

The content then works backwards from those specific goals. Rather than starting with content and then deciding, how it’s going to work inside the business. It’s not going to end in good results. So once your content works backwards from those specific goals, that’s when you’re going to see the success.

The second thing not to cut out on is the proofing. As anyone will know has worked on a large document with several stakeholders, it can be a process that involves a lot of back and forth, a lot of changes. If you’re researching, writing, and editing, and subbing your own copy, you absolutely cannot do your own proofing.

You’re way too close to it by the time it gets to that point, and proofreading is also a really specific skill. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with clients about the benefits of using an actual experienced proofreader rather than just relying on Barbara from the front desk who’s really great at spelling – that’s not all it is.

So, money on a good proofreader it’s worth its weight in gold, I think. 

Lynne: So interesting. 

What sort of internal obstacles do you face when you’re trying to produce a custom publication? 

Sarah: So many things pop up and, especially when I was starting out, but with more experience I tend to see them all lumped into one big thing on my to-do list, which is managing expectations.

When you’re transitioning a business to integrate a print product, there will be things you need to help educate them on. Like, ‘No, Dave, you can’t unapprove this after it’s gone to print,’ or, ‘Yes, you can add a double page spread in this edition that goes to print tomorrow, but unless you’ve got another six pages up your sleeve, it’s really going to massively increase your cost per copy because you need eight pages.’ That’s just it. 

Lynne: It’s the way prints work. 

Sarah: Exactly. That’s how print works, but it’s not how digital works. It’s different and it’s just a bit of education. It’s just a bit of handholding to start with, but like I said, my goal is always to work myself out of a job, so by the time I’ve been there for a year or two or even just a couple of editions, Dave will know that’s not a good idea. We won’t have to have those conversations again, and they’ll start to really appreciate that knowledge, and that’s where the trust comes in, I guess. The next time you suggest something or the next time an obstacle does come up you say, ‘Okay, let’s take a step back. This is why we do it a certain way. You can do it that way, but this is what, this is the risks and the benefits, this is the cost, this is what it’s going to look like.’  

So, just managing their expectations and just making sure everyone’s on the same page. And I always like to under promise, overdeliver. It’s really cliche and cheesy, but it’s just people like to be pleasantly surprised, not unpleasantly surprised. 

Lynne: Yes. 

Rachel: Well, knowing that there’d be lots of people listening who would either want to be doing a similar kind of project to this or would like to be writing for those magazines, where are those opportunities and how can find them and land them, I suppose?

Sarah: Yes, in terms of writing for these sorts of magazines, I guess even if someone doesn’t advertise that they work with freelancers or that they accept pitches, it’s always worth contacting them and reaching out because even if it’s not something they’re doing at the minute, it might be something they need to do as they grow.

So, for example, for Bridge, last year I was researching, writing, editing, subbing, everything. Whereas this year, because it’s growing, it’s not possible for me to do that anymore, so now we are starting to use freelance writers. And I was talking to you, Rach, a few weeks ago about setting up a pitch form so that people can pitch to me, but then it’s not overwhelming, because that’s another thing I need to manage my own expectations is that I can’t sift through several pages worth of pitches. I haven’t got time, because I only work three days a week, and I’ve got two publications going on, so I guess ask the question. You never know.  

Rachel: Okay. And what about for, picking up these kinds of bigger projects, should you go to the associations and go to the not-for-profits and say, ‘I see you have a magazine. Are you looking for help?’ Or ‘I see you don’t have a publication. Is it something you might be interested in learning about or starting?’ 

Sarah: I definitely think, if you come across something and you’re like, ‘Hey, this needs… This has got potential.’ For whatever it might be. You might be in the hairdressers, or you might get junk mail through your letterbox or something. I always sift through the junk mail. It’s fascinating what people will spend money on printing without really thinking about it. Some of it’s terrible, some of it’s great. But it’s interesting for me. I’m a nerd, but there we go. 

Rachel: I’m with you. 

Sarah: So, I think, just having the conversation, but also not going in there, again, like I said, guns blazing, being like, ‘This is terrible. You should do this. You should do that.’ Maybe it works for them. You don’t know what their goal is. From the outside, you don’t know what the goal of that magazine or that custom publication is. 

Lynne: Yes.

Sarah: Ask questions, be curious, contact them, let them know what you can do, give them examples of stuff you’ve done before. Just see if they’re interested. I think that introducing yourself and just asking questions is a really good way to start. 

Rachel: Amazing. 

Lynne: It sounds like you’ve learnt a lot from this whole project with Bridge magazine. Are there some lessons that you reckon that larger media businesses could take on?

Sarah: Yes, definitely. Specifically with Bridge magazine, I think the main lesson I took away from it was that the process is more important than the product. So, if you don’t get the process right, it won’t be successful.  The final product is probably about 25% of the work that goes into it. The actual magazine itself is not the whole thing.

The backend, the setup, the process, the research, the integration into the business itself is more of a work to make it successful. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Sarah: So, I think taking that away, it can be applied to any product. It can be applied to a podcast. It could be applied to some digital campaigns that you have.

If it sits separately to your business and it doesn’t integrate and bring users into your whole user experience, it is not going to work. I think if you, again, if you start with the final content with no workup, it won’t convert, whereas if you start from your goals and work backwards, the content often ends up writing itself.

Another reminder that this project definitely gave me is that you can’t be precious if you want to get great results. Don’t be afraid to say, ‘All right. Well, that didn’t work. Back to the drawing board. What next? What else should we try? Because that didn’t work.’ And you can’t have an ego about it. You can’t be like, ‘Oh, but it was my idea, and I think I’m so great.’ 

It’s not about you. If the numbers aren’t there, they’re not there. Something else. It’s just what it is.

Lynne: Wow.  

Rachel: Wow. So fascinating, seeing this because I think, another section of potential work that might be overlooked. I don’t know, but it’s just really fascinating seeing how it all works. 

Lynne: It is interesting. 

Sarah: Definitely. There are so many people involved as well, it’s not just the person orchestrating it all. It’s the designers, the illustrators, the proofreaders, the subs.

I think people forget often about subediting. I’ve done a lot of subediting in the past, so I do it for this magazine, but a lot of people have never done subediting. Or, they haven’t worked directly in InDesign files, so that’s above their pay grade. And so, they need someone to… There’s so much involved and so many people and processes that there’s definitely room for more freelancers to get involved in these sorts of projects. 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Rachel: Very good news for everyone listening.  

Lynne: So, we’re now ending the podcast with our fast three questions. Are you ready? 

Sarah I’m ready. 

Rachel: Okay. Okay. First question, favourite tools of the trade you can’t live without. 

Sarah: I use a visual timer all the time, because it’s a little clock and it goes up for an hour, and you can set how long you’re going to work on something for. And I tend to go down wild idea rabbit holes, and I just need that alarm to ping and remind me to move on to the next task, so I don’t just lose the day Googling random things.

Lynne: That’s a good tip. I like that. 

Rachel: Yes. 

Lynne: I think I can use that too. So, question two is a habit that genuinely saves you time. 

Sarah: I like to communicate with people on either Teams or Slack rather than email, because people tend to send shorter messages and only contact me if it’s actually important, rather than sort of getting cc’d in on a billion messages a day, and I read somewhere recently about not letting other people’s urgency become your emergency, and it’s definitely, if you’re in your email inbox all day, you can just get pulled in so many different directions. Whereas, if you’re on Teams, people tend to only come to you if they actually need you to do something, and you can filter a bit more. 

Rachel: Massive Slack fan myself. Okay. Final question, one thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career. 

Sarah: Tricky. Probably setting boundaries and saying no. I’m such a people pleaser, so I really struggle with this, and I tend to overcommit. Not all jobs are the job for you, and it’s okay to take a meeting and get a bit down the track, but then not take the work if it’s not going to be a good fit for you and it’s not going to be a good fit for them. And trust your gut when it comes to those sorts of things, because once you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ll know. 

Lynne: Definitely.  

Rachel: Absolutely. Wow, what a great conversation. It’s just, I’m kind of buzzing, actually. It’s really cool hearing about it. 

Lynne: Pretty cool. 

Thank you, Sarah. It’s been so interesting. Thank you. And I imagine it has got the wheels turning for not just Rachel but our listeners as well who work in custom magazines or thought about working in that sort of area. Tell our listeners where they can find you.

Sarah: So, if you want to have a read of Bridge, probably the best thing to do is just Google Bridge magazine Continence Health Australia. And if you want to find me, I’m at tweedcoastmedia.com.au, and my Insta is sarah.taylor.writer. 

Rachel: Amazing. 

Lynne: Lovely. 

Rachel: And I think you are offering 10% off in-house staff training or coaching for our audience, who might want to sort of dig into putting a custom publication together, so we’ll pop that into the show notes, yeah, as well.

Sarah: Yes. That’d be great. 

Lynne: Wonderful. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you very much, Sarah, and thanks to all our listeners out there and we’ll see you all next week. Thanks. 

Rachel: We will. Bye. 

Lynne: Bye. 

Credits:

Find Sarah on her website: https://tweedcoastmedia.com.au/ 

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co