This interview is packed with helpful information and applies a unique lens to the world of LGBT travel.  We dive into Ed's journey into entrepreneurship and his travel philosophy as a gay man.  If you prefer to listen, you can press play and subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher Radio.

Interview:

Welcome to Gay Ambitions where we bring out the best in business. I’m your host, Paul Collanton and I’m excited here to be in Madrid with Ed Salvato, Co-founder and Chief editor of ManAboutWorld which is the gay travel magazine for the iPad. I’m actually one of their global correspondents in training and so I look forward to learning more about the business model because it turns out there’s a lot of history behind it as well.  So Ed, given listeners a brief of who you are and what you do, so can you take us through what you do personally and give us an overview of your business.

Ed: Sure, yes. Thank you for having me in your podcast.  And I hope your listeners can get something out of it.

Paul: My pleasure.

E: My name is Ed Salvato, and I’m the editor in chief of ManAboutWorld and it is the first Gay travel Magazine created specifically for the iPad. We launched the business two years ago along with my business partner Billy Colbert, who is the original founder of Out and About the very first gay travel newsletter that was editorially driven, written for the readers back in 1992. So there’s a lot of gay travel DNA in this publication. So in this past month, we released a version for the Android tablet as well. It’s a digital magazine, there’s no print involved, it’s not a blog, it’s not a website, we didn’t kill any trees. It’s a connection magazine, so I consider it to be eco-friendly as well.

P: How did you decide to start with iPad? Why iPad?

E: I was also the editor in chief of Out and About and also Out Travel both really great print publications with digital presence but primarily print publications. And my background is print, I love print. But my background is also very early web. We launched the first website in 1998 for Out and About and it was instantly profitable because we sold travel guides as PDF’s for cash, for money. And we made a lot of money. And people didn’t know what acrobat reader was and what’s a pdf. So, we have a lot of customer service.  And then with economic crisis in the United States in 2008-2009, the magazine was discontinued as well as my job with Here Media. So I wasn’t sure 100% on what to do. I didn’t think the world needed another gay travel website or gay travel blog. And it’s very difficult to monetize those without millions of hits and impressions and I didn’t know what to do really until Billy thought of why don’t we launch an iPad magazine. At that point I didn’t have an iPad, didn’t know what it was all about. We are pioneers in the space to a certain extent. There aren’t many digital iPad tablet, android tablet native products. There are a lot of replicas but there are very few original creative for that platform. We’re sort of inventing it as it goes along. So that was really the reason we did it. It was a very crowded space, the gay travel website space, but this space is not very crowded.

P: I love it. It’s a subscription model, which is lucrative. And it’s evolved with the times. We obviously still have prints and we know it, we love it but we have to evolve with times as well and be where the consumers are.

E: Right, and you know the idea that content should be free is not what I subscribe to. I believe that content, should really pay for good content. We have really good content, its premium. And I believe it’s worth it.  You buy a subscription for $39.99, it’s a cost of a few cocktails in Manhattan. You’re going to have like the best trip ever.

P: Yeah, I agree with that too. And you’re more likely to read something if you...