over “the millennials are just not into the RC aviation hobby anymore.” However, I really doubt it is the single reason. In my opinion, the downsizing in the hobby is a direct result of how our hobby promotes itself. Consider that the Internet is a search-driven environment. That obviously means that one must have a want to search for a particle area of interest. The results of the search are driven by the search engines. These engines have two primary functions: crawling and building an index, and providing searchers with a ranked list of the websites the engine has determined are the most relevant. As you well know, Google’s search engine is dominant! Bing.com, duckduckgo.com, and others are finishing far behind. So if the information one is searching for has not been search engine optimized (SEO) for Google’s engines, or the information does not have the proper metadata associated with it, it will probably not rank well in the search results. The result is, otherwise meaningful information may never be found or seen—again, it must be SEO optimized to be found. Ultimately, if potential enthusiasts never see what fun RC offers versus one they do see, then just maybe they are lost to our ranks. What do you think? How does all this claptrap relate to RC Flyer News? Well, the cost of SEO, not to mention advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and indeed Google is not cheap. Rather, as a friend who worked for Google for many years said, “Advertising on Google can be precarious for small companies! It costs much, and if not done right you’ll literally be wasting your money. Google ads are probably not the right marketing option for your company, Wil.” That said, how does a small company like Kiona Publishing, Inc. get the attention of potential readers such that we distribute enough copies to garner the attention of advertisers again. That remains a good question for Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos. It would be wonderful if all the RC industry insiders would promote the publications as they once did. Unfortunately, they too are struggling with how to get the attention of buyers via those search engines that don’t give a tinkers damn about their products, but are only searching for the right metadata as a way to rank their products for the searchers. If this isn’t the damnedest Catch 22 you’ve ever seen for a wonderful hobby, I’ll put in with you! Going Forward Our solution to remaining in business and viable for the foreseeable future is for the magazine’s production to be funded by me—the ads you see in this issue were complimentary for almost all the advertisers. They are the ones that made this magazine possible for so many years. Yeah, I know we’re selling subscriptions too. That revenue stream, however, doesn’t even come close to covering the cost of producing magazines. Let me explain: Page Layout While we’ve gone digital, the pages still require design. Ergo, a good graphic designer is required to create layouts that are eye-catching and fun to read. Because so many magazines have gone out of business, competent magazine designers have turned to other areas of design to make livings. Also, the designer Kiona employed for more than 12 years started a paper packaging business in Hangzhou,
China last year and subsequently left us. Consequently, we’ve been searching for a page layout designer for a few months. We’re thankful to tell you that we’ve finally found what we believe will be the right fit for our magazine both creatively and very importantly financially. As you’ll see, the page designs the new guy, and I have created are a more digital-friendly read—or at least we think so. Please understand that your feedback will help us better understand what you want and need to enjoy reading our title, such that going forward we can make further changes to enhance the reading and browsing experience. Digital Downloads While digital downloads don’t cost near as much as publishing and distributing hardcopy, it is not free. Nope! We must rent server space, as well as pay for online hosting, applications, merchant fees, webmail, website uniform resource locators (URL), an online marketing host, our new flipbook solution, etc. It just is not free, which sucks, right. It would cool if free were actually FREE. Products While we want to live in a world of free and have beautiful RC airplanes autonomously land in our front yard waiting to be flown by us, it just isn’t reality. Instead, to stay current with the latest trends in both RC gear and aircraft costs much money, which we’re happy to spend as long as we can see modest returns on investment. We will also visit factories when possible to detail how their products are made and their quality control—that is what we’ve done successfully in the past, and we’ll continue to do. Withal, we will continue to solicit product releases from companies all over the world, with the hope it will keep you informed. None of this is easy or cheap, but it is my passion, and I want it to benefit you as well. Online Store As a way to further support the publishing company, we’ll continue to add select, high-quality products and books to our online store, rcsportflyer.com. These will include batteries, chargers, servos, a minimal number of aircraft, and our specialty aviation books, which will be available in hardcopy. You’ll also be able to buy the back issues of the magazine in digital form from the online store—hopefully the entire collection as we’re able to piece together the digital files from our archives. We hope to offer some promotions as well. The promotions will provide you with discounts on our products and more. A promotion that I’m most anxious to try is to offer a free one-year magazine subscription for those readers that can get five friends to sign up and a free twoyear subscription to those that can get eight friends to sign up. It is just our way of giving back to those readers that are loyal to our title and online store. Content While in the past we’ve paid for content, going forward that is just not going be possible, unless of course, we can get advertisers to repurchase page space. That said, we believe we can offer writers a venue for their content that will be unequaled in the industry, with appealing designs Continued on pg 111
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