Selling to magazines - bad idea?

Discussions
#1

I’m reading Philip Morgan’s The Positioning Manual right now. One of the exercises in the book is to list a number of your past clients/employers and try to mine a niche positioning from some type of work you’ve already done.

Not many of my past jobs or client engagements translate into anything that seems like a viable niche. (Many were failed startups.) One engagement that does seem potentially good is a project I’m doing for a magazine owner to help him figure out how much he owes each of his sales reps at the end of each pay period based on how many ads each rep has sold.

I shared this positioning idea with a friend/potential business partner and his opinion is that magazines are on their way out, and that there’s enough software out there already. I’m not so sure.

What do you guys think about the viability of selling to magazines?

Or any general advice on finding a niche is very welcome. I’ve signed up to be notified of the next 30x500 and Micropreneur Academy, although I’m too dissatisfied with my current work situation to just sit and wait until I hear back from them.

#2

A couple other ideas I had were “something in the solar power industry” and “something in the logistics industry” which are both super vague. I just subscribed to a few podcasts in those industries to kind of feel it out. I imagine if the niche has a conference and some podcasts, those are some good chances to get in front of people in those industries.

#3

If you helped a magazine owner figure out how much he owed each sales rep, then your niche is sales rep management not magazine owners.

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#4

That’s what I was thinking. Being magazine specific is quite narrow and not really a growing industry. But sales rep management sounds like it could be something, I haven’t seen anything like it (but never really looked).

#5

I worked for a company in the sales compensation space. Sales cycles were long because only big companies had this sort of problem.