[itmag]

How about this:

Keep the PDFs free to download.

Have a Member's Support Brigade (stolen concept from thesurvivalpodcast.com) which includes free e-books from other people and coupons for other people's products.

Charge for print copies.

Sell a subsciption which gives you a special Ipad version or whatever.

Put in ads.

Sell a "best of" volume via Lulu.com.

Make our own spin-off e-books and sell.

Merchandise (t-shirts, stickers, etc).

Amazon store (books we recommend, stuff like that).

Use kickstarter.com to raise money for specific sub-projects (like "start a hackerspace").

Any more ideas?

[timharding]

I'd add that everyone knows about paying for a subscription to a magazine and everyone knows about paying for advertising so you won't have to teach people about the value (or not) of those two things.

Alternatively just copy the Hacker Monthly business model, apply it to your content. It seems to work and it would be easy to copy.

[timharding]

You're overcomplicating things. Pick the simplest idea to implement and then test it by offering it to the market. See if it works, go from there. And just do one thing to start with.