Magazines are becoming some of their advertisers’ top competitors, as many are choosing to start an online store, selling everything from designer clothes to jewelry, makeup and accessories – the very items they feature on their pages.
It’s no wonder, too. Online shopping is huge. With just the click of a mouse, you can browse, find, buy and ship just about any item you want straight to your front door. It’s this ease-of-use that makes online shopping such a hot commodity – and such a money maker. That’s why just about EVERYONE wants to start an online store.
Leslie Hahn, president of Online Store Confidential, says this recent move by many magazines is no shocker.
“Ecommerce stores can lead to great success,” Leslie said. “If done right, they can elevate your business and bring in an entirely new revenue stream.”
The biggest shopping season of the year is quickly approaching, and magazines all over the country are wanting to take advantage and try their hand at ecommerce. How to keep objectivity in the magazine, while still promoting your products, though?
With magazines selling items in an online store, what’s to stop them from promoting those items in their magazine just to up sales?
Let’s take an example. Say Marie Claire decides to start an online store. In that store, they sell accessories and makeup, but sales aren’t going so great. In next month’s issue, the editors are doing a feature on the best makeup for fall. What’s to stop them from “recommending” Marie Claire’s online store lipstick, instead of what really is the best lipstick out there? Will the drive for sales blur the lines between objective writing and advertising? Will the magazine begin recommending inferior products just to drive online store traffic? Will the pages just become one big promotional tool for ecommerce?
How to keep these two areas of business separate is a huge issue. Where do you draw the line between the two sides of the business, and still remain true and honest to the customers and readers? You don’t want readers to feel duped.
The want to start an online store is an obvious one; it’s a great source of money, and in this digital age, print products can use all the help they can get. Let’s just hope this venture into ecommerce allows us to still get unbiased, objective magazines, and not just a 40-page advertisement for web stores!
What do you think about magazines’ foraying into ecommerce? How to keep it objective: big deal or not at all? Let us know what you think in the comments!