07/16/08

It’s Your Turn

Having been at this for many long years, I can say with certainty that there is some magic in producing a publication that sells well month after month. I can also say that most of it is dumb luck. I’m talking about the newsstand. Competition is incredibly tough. Niche market magazines abound. About the most difficult arena is Chevrolet dirt. Even magazines devoted to the umbrella principal usually base their output on some kind of Chevrolet-related information. The idea is to separate your product from all the rest. Maybe that will work.

Ostensibly, MaxChevy was about all things wearing the Bow Tie, be they drag race, NASCAR, street car, and about those soldiers behind the scenes with the ubiquitous oil can, lubing the works and making sure the gears keep turning without grinding.  As a one-time editor of Hot Rod, I found it difficult to get my head around the Big Picture. Still, whenever I put anything but a Chevrolet on the front page, sales numbers would usually be down. 

We thought we’d blazed a slightly different path with MaxChevy, but that seems not to be the case. We did a reader’s survey a year ago that confirmed some of our suspicions. About 92 percent of you are male. Your average age is 47. Though your average income is $75K, more than a third of you fall into the $30-$49K category.  Education is about evenly split between high school, some college, and college graduate. More than 60 percent of you are either active drag racers or are spectators at same. About half of that group is an owner/driver. Interest in late-model stock cars comes next at a distant 27 percent. Car shows rate high and are inhabited by 75 percent of you as active participants, not gawkers.

When it comes right down to it, 91 percent of you go online to find the stuff you need and buy it directly from that source. Nearly 100 percent of you bother to read the ads in MC and only 3 percent of you don’t look at Check It out, the new products section. Fully 62 percent of you will buy from an ad you read in MC. You continue to hold the print media in high regard and Super Chevy and Chevy High Performance with equal abandon (46 percent). Hot Rod is a close second at 45, followed by Car Craft (32.8 percent). Popular Hot Rodding is a distant sixth at 26.8 percent.

You say you want more engine and performance tech, more project cars, car features, and resto how-to articles, but only 56 percent of you are habitués of our immediate news section, BowTie Bytes.  About two-thirds of the respondents don’t care for Twice Pipes but nearly 50 percent look forward to reading about Jim McFarland’s gritty recollections every month.

In all, the webzine still demands a product very much like the print agenda that has held fast for decades, a mix of tech articles, car features, project cars, and drag strip antics. That’s what we know about you. We need to know more. Please don’t hesitate to register your preferences and to tell us what you really don’t like about MC. We will listen. E-mail me at editor@maxchevy.com. Thank you for your kind support.  

 

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