[WCE]

Hi fellow window cleaners,
 I've just finished my first tax year in window cleaning and was wondering if you could help me.

Looks like I found the answer to my own question! Not as long as me. I guess that proves that you are hardly qualified to comment on my experience. Are you Trad or WFP?

[Clive McDonald]

Is this what you're talking about?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm glad the debate has opened up a little and I note some excellent informed comments from M-Clean.

It's a bit much I think to listen to all this high principle stuff- we will not compromise our integrity on bringing a mag by and for WC's. What a load of old toffee- turns out you've only being going a year and suddenly you are the guardians of the conscience of an industry.

You seem too dim witted to take on the points about broadening your appeal by added diversity, interest, and readership.Too full of lofty ideals to sully yourself with invovement with a ready made FWC vehicle offered to you on a plate.Too superior to realise the synergy of trying for a tie in with a brilliantly strategised directory listing 6,000 cleaning contractors.

You haven't any ideas of your own of course.

Several people with first hand knowledge have already attested to the difficulty of what you are trying to do- most telling for me was peter saying about chasing articles and the man who did have a viable mag desperate to get rid of it because it had taken over his life. To eschew sound advice in the absence of any kind of thought through purpose of your own is just baffling.
unquote.


To answer your question (about my mistake) I was merely echoing something Tennant had said. I get a great many of my own ideas from this forum and it can be a brilliant and cheap focus group for sounding out ideas and getting the views of others. I don't think you'll proceed and one of the reasons may be that you feel you've been shouted down. This isn't true at all , but what is true is that the idea had many weakness which weren't properly addressed.

[Clive McDonald]

And Furthermore;

What astounding and astonishing disrespect to your fellow window cleaners. You start a thread without the least bit of interest in anyones contributions or answers other than mine and your being able to make the point that you have been doing it longer!

Incredible. You couldn't make it up!

[Dave Turley]

4 and a half years, 2 wfp, 2 weeks hot and loving it. will never work for anyone else, can't believe I used to!

[WCE]

And Furthermore;

What astounding and astonishing disrespect to your fellow window cleaners. You start a thread without the least bit of interest in anyones contributions or answers other than mine and your being able to make the point that you have been doing it longer!

Incredible. You couldn't make it up!
[/quote
 Actually, Don't flatter yourself discount. I am interested in everyones contributions and posts. What I meant was it was your completely wrong assumption that I was a newbie that spurred me on to post a topic about it. You say you like debate so what's the problem?  You set me thinking about the whole  subject and I just thought it would be interesting to see what the range of experience was on here.  If I had noticed the other thread I would of just posted there.   

To answer your question (about my mistake) I was merely echoing something Tennant had said. I get a great many of my own ideas from this forum and it can be a brilliant and cheap focus group for sounding out ideas and getting the views of others. I don't think you'll proceed and one of the reasons may be that you feel you've been shouted down. This isn't true at all , but what is true is that the idea had many weakness which weren't properly addressed.

I certainly don't feel shouted down at all. What amazes me is comments from you  where you say this wont work, thats wrong and you'll never get anywhere. All these comments are made based on speculation and nothing else. You don't have all the facts about the project or know anything about how far we have actually got with bringing the magazine to market. I do wonder if you sometimes argue just for the sake of it and if I said the sky was blue, you'd argue it was green. That is all I am saying on this matter. This thread has nothing to do with the magazine. As I have already said the debate on that is just going round in circles and rather than talk about it again and again, we are working hard to put the magazine into production. When we have some more development news we will post on here and then we will discuss that news with you. Until then I am not going to waste my time answering the same few questions that have just been worded differently. The answers to all your questions have been answered on the other 2 threads.     

[Clive McDonald]

Yes i don't have a problem with you as you do attempt debate.

I haven't asked any questions. My comments have been suggesting business models (of which I left out exhibition tie ins).

Your constant point is how can I or anyone else criticise when we haven't seen the content.The reason for this is that we believe (rightly or wrongly) that other decisions come first. Like who is the magazine actually aimed at, who is likely to buy it and in what numbers, how broad should be it's appeal, and where is the content and revenue stream to come from.

Your replys have been like a mantra often repeated. But when suggestions that could part answer some of these questions have been made you have slipped into defensive mode.

[WCE]

Your constant point is how can I or anyone else criticise when we haven't seen the content.The reason for this is that we believe (rightly or wrongly) that other decisions come first.

This has already been answered. It seems that you are so desperate to get the last word in (not just in this post) that you have forgotten previous parts of the debate. There have been lots of posts on the content side (good and bad). I said how can you knock the content when you haven't seen it and I do wonder how people can make assumptions on this as we have not yet posted anything about any specific content that is going to be in a magazine. I also notice that you now say that decisions on areas other than content need to come first. Why the change of opinion? Sanity and myself have said this all along - the content is the last thing that we have to do. However it is never to early to start hearing peoples ideas on content but they are just that, ideas. If you look on the other two threads Sanity explained the different stages in detail:
1. Idea (lets create a magazine)
2. Feasablity Evaluation (who will buy it, what will it be about, is this interesting enough to get people buying it, what is the market, will it be worth doing? etc etc etc etc)
3. Financial Evaluation (will it need financing?  costs? income projection, advertising rates, etc etc etc)

At this point, it is decided by the idea originator, publisher, future editorial team, financier, etc whether or not to commit time, energy and money into the project...

4. Design alpha (this is the first rough design of the magazine.  It shows examples of fonts (letter styles) colours, layouts (using Jabberwoky, pleas egoogle it), possible placement of content, page styling, placement of page numbers etc...  This is an internal design, meaning that the production team (currently jusy WCE and myself) would view it and make changes.  If more people join this team, more people would get an input but as of yet nobody has commited THEIR time and effort to it...
5. Design beta.  (last draft of the design, showing final choices of lours,fonts, sizes, placements of content pages and editorial information.)  This is the stage at which it will be forwarded to the 'design team' (the team of people from the forum that will advise us on our design choices)
6. Design Final.  this is the finished design, with all the aforementioned colours, fonts etc decided and set as a template.

Now the bit that DOES require input from potential readers...the content..

7. Theme.  Each issue requires a major theme that will proivide the cover story and the major piece imediately after the contents page and on which the majority of editorial comment will be made.  This theme will be decided by the editorial team (currently...WCE and myself, please see definition of team in a dictionary or wikipedia, although if anyone would like to assist, please do so...)
8. Article procurement.  A register of volunteer article contributors is created at this point, providing sources for articles to match, compliment or contradict the theme.  Other contributions such as letters, jokes, cartoons, etc are obtained in the same manner.  Canvassing is carried out to obtain advertising customers.
8. Editing. The gathered, edited, spellchecked, grammarchecked articles are returned to their writers for their agreement of any changes that have been made. 
9. Layout draft.  The articles and other content are inserted into the allocated text boxes.  Images are obtained to match the articles and inserted into image placeholders in the design agreed in stage 6.  Once the magazine is filled, this is then sent to proofreaders (again, selected from the register of contributors) for checking.
9. Layout final.  At this stage, the artwork for advertisements is put in place, and any changes made from the proofreaders.  Final checks of continuity etc are made and printing marks added.
10.  Proof.  The final proof is sent to the printer, who produces 5 copies for us to check that what is printed is what we see on our PC screens.  If this is ok, then we go to print.


Anyway this has nothing to do with the subject post and you never answered my question WFP or Trad?