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Idea!💡


TheSwissAquarist
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Out of the US, I have really struggled to find a decent aquarium magazine which one could just sit, read, and gain ideas from.

The other day (while waiting in a cablecar) I thought: Why doesn't Aquarium Co-Op do their own? A downloadable, on-website, interesting, and monthly aquarium magazine which compiles all the blog articles and contains ads for Easy Green and Java fern (for example). User content is encouraged, and forum members would be able to share photos and experience, while knowing that they're helping the hobby. Aquarium Co-Op monthly would be targeted at the beginner to medium-advanced aquarist, with plant and fish recommendations, and a couple of funny memes along the way, all slathered with information and ambition. So how about it?

What do you and @Cory and @Zenzo think? I expect the idea may have already been explored.

Happy Halloween btw!

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Definitely a good idea if the people, time, support, and so forth were available to make it happen.  I feel like it's a wonderful concept and so I will add Mr. @Randy to the tag, but let's see what the ACO thinks 🙂.

Just off the top of my head:
-A segment featuring an international article / story of some kind. Similar to what you saw with the recent aquarium video below:


-A brief shoutout / note on this month's club speaker as well as the next speaker for the club.
-A tip / trick from someone like Robert, Zenzo, Irene, Dean, Lizzie, Corvus, Bob, etc. regarding something that you might not know, but really should.
-High quality photos of nice tanks
-A Before--->After section where you highlight one user or one creator and a journey in a single tank in some way.  The hobbyist can discuss what choices they made, struggles, insights, tips, and generally have a segment to show what could be with persistence.
-A beginner's segment where you show basic and fundamental knowledge everyone should have.
-A "201" type of segment where you delve a bit deeper into this month's basic topic, potentially some tangentially related research studies or articles could be mentioned for "further study"
-Some sort of letter or paragraph from someone at ACO as the opener / feature for the month
-A "brought to you by YOU" section where the readers are directed to the forums and where one popular thread from last month is mentioned with a gentle nudge on how great it can be to have a forum where people want to help one another (not that blunt, but you get the idea)
-A "fishroom notes" where it could just literally be a photo of the fish farm or cory's pond or something.... a little blurb about anything that might be happening or just what was going on when the photo was taken.  This could also be a way to highlight a relevant ACO project like a "secret project" but without really pointing anything out and just say something like *testing in progress* or something a bit more clear where you have a photo on how the store upgrade is looking.
-AT LEAST ONE photo of a tank in the shop per month, highlight a fish, plant, hardscape, or product.
-Maybe a recipe from Dean?

All that being said, I don't want to sign anyone up for anything and I totally understand the ACO staff has a lot of work on their hands and it's a very busy team.  I like the idea though, especially if something like quality photography, writing, and research can be put together to help people.  I would not target this as a "give this away free at the shop" type of magazine, but like a monthly or quarterly style book.

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On 11/1/2022 at 9:42 AM, Jazz Pizza said:

Not to be a buzzkill, but for the work and effort involved, how does this differ from what we already get? Seems like basically the same content, in a different format with a few extra’s tossed in that could easily be implemented into the current format. 

Unfortunately, I see your point and agree.

I do think that it could be implemented into a section on the website, much like some forums do a "Tank of the month!" contest. Maybe interested members can send in a picture of a tank, a profile of said tank, what foods they use, little tips and tricks they've learned, and other tidbits of information, and the ACO staff could select a submission and post it. 

Years ago, I remember Cory being upset when doing viewer's tanks in video format because people were dogging on featured tanks. Maybe the staff could curate each submission to keep that from happening, and either not have a comment section or heavily moderate it so that only helpful comments/questions go through. 

Just spitballing.

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 Coincidentally, I did think about this same idea recently, @TheSwissAquarist. However, a printed format would require a lot of time, work and resources. I also agree with @Chris that it could easily be implemented into the website. Personally, though, I do like getting information by a wide range of media.

Maybe a digital edition would work, even if not officially done by the Co-Op

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On 11/2/2022 at 3:00 PM, AquaHobbyist123 said:

 Coincidentally, I did think about this same idea recently, @TheSwissAquarist. However, a printed format would require a lot of time, work and resources. I also agree with @Chris that it could easily be implemented into the website. Personally, though, I do like getting information by a wide range of media.

Maybe a digital edition would work, even if not officially done by the Co-Op

Already mentioned; but thanks for the input!

On 11/1/2022 at 7:47 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

A downloadable, on-website, interesting, and monthly aquarium magazine

 

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This is basically every day for us here. I have a great idea. Lets do X. Then the question comes, how do we make sure it pays for itself? 1 Person to oversee a project is 50k+ a year.  I think we'd struggle to sell whatever form of this magazine would be for 50k in a year. We are past a point where, I could just put something together for free as I don't have spare time, and it's not reasonable to ask an employee to do a passion project like this for free. So it'll slide into idea land, till some day it makes sense. Maybe we have a sponsor, maybe we are 5x the size of company we are, maybe social media dies etc. But currently curating what we already do, the closest we get to that is the weekly newsletter.

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On 11/2/2022 at 6:20 PM, Cory said:

This is basically every day for us here. I have a great idea. Lets do X. Then the question comes, how do we make sure it pays for itself?

I understand your problem, you get asked so many times: could you do a canister filter? Could you bag fish like this? Can you do a magazine? The question is: how do you make it work for the business? Seems like the answer's no, but thanks for your consideration!

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