How a comic book startup looks to make money

May’s cover.

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Start

Immediately after Dubai-based developer Hani
Ghaith masterminded Magnoon with Dr. Noha Abbas, the head of the
Comic Artists Union in Egypt, his team got to work on the app.
Three months later they launched. 

Talking about how his team at
Magnoon has managed to pioneer in a field that is relatively quiet
Ghaith said: “Always look for a problem or a gap and try to solve
it or bridge it. Then look for the best way to do that.”

Magnoon’s core team consists today
of four members working from Egypt and the UAE. As for the wider
team which contributes to the magazine with illustrations and
stories, its members are based in Lebanon, UAE, Syria, Iraq, Libya,
or Tunisia. However, Magnoon is still looking for new talents. The
magazine also collaborates with twofour54 in
Abu Dhabi, not as a financial partner, but as a business one in
order to build the capacities of contributors, editors, writers,
and comics artists.

Ads are a main revenue source. 

Monetization

The free app has been downloaded
45,000 times so far, mostly through Apple iOS, its initial launch
pad. The magazine later launched its Android version; however,
despite Android being crucial to the growth of their customer base,
the number of people who have paid for the app on Apple is
about three times bigger than that of
Android.

The magazine works on two levels:
the first, a paid monthly subscription for $0.99 USD whereby users
get access to the full content in real time; and the second, a
$1.99 USD fee that is paid upfront upon reading the issue. As for
the free subscription, it only allows users to read new issues a
month and a half after they are published. Current paid
subscriptions are estimated at around 2,000 (5% of readers), with
the largest proportion coming from the App Store (80%) vs. 20% from
Google Play.

Despite all this, Magnoon makes most
of its revenues from ads that are divided into two categories: the
first, selling advertising space in their magazines; and the
second, targeted advertising within the comic stories. “Advertising
constitutes a big proportion of the magazine’s returns, a bigger
one than that of subscriptions,” says Ghaith who also explains that
“most Arabs are still not familiar with online payment; however,
there is a promising boom in this aspect, with game payments
increasing, especially in the Gulf.”

Many challenges facing Magnoon both as a magazine and a
startup.

Challenges

As a developing startup, Magnoon has
succeeded in its first stage thanks to the efforts of its
co-founders, Ghaith and Abbas, without relying on any incubator.
Ghaith sums up the success of this launch saying that, “launching a
startup in Dubai is much easier than in other places, you have
access to a broad network of contacts both inside the UAE and in
all Arab countries, in addition to PR and advertising
agencies.”

As a sarcastic comic in the Arab
world, Magnoon had to deal with the differences between the various
communities, their traditions, what makes them laugh, and what they
consider as taboo. Jokes, sarcasm, and even dialects in Lebanon,
Egypt, and Jordan are different than those in the Gulf, and as a
result the comic would often get negative feedback. Ghaith admits
that the team, at first, faced a difficulty with getting Gulf
society to accept their adult jokes. What made this even more
difficult was the scarcity of comedy and satirical writers in the
Gulf, despite the fact that there are actually illustrators working
for the comic from these countries. That’s why some writers write
their stories in standard Arabic, making them easier to understand
across the region.

Magnoon’s team as they see themselves.

A look into the
future

Focusing on content both for copy
and illustrations the team is looking to make their publications
more interactive – the inclusion of games within the comic
app.  “This industry (of magazines) needs a new
approach to target the new generation of mobile and pad users,”
said Ghaith. “It needs to develop in parallel with the digital
technology.”