Why our online startup releases a print product, and how we do it. (opens in new tab)

I'm more interested in what lazyloading plugin you are using for jQuery -- is there an out-of-the-box one that works in Nov 2012, or did you make your own?

(On iPad, it starts to load, then goes to onswipe.com... Black with forever spinning circle)

It started as a bunch of cold-emailing — that's probably how we get the first 100 or so vendors on our directories. The rest comes from things like the Lookbook (vendors sharing with their vendor friends), and our blog (we run a long of vendor-promotional posts, then new vendors sign up with us so they can participate). I try to keep vendor acquisition as easy as possible on our side since again, we're only two people. We're also launching new features on the directory side to further promote vendors encouraging other vendors to join.

WeddingWire does a LOT of vendor profile scraping — vendors can search for their name and find that WeddingWire created a profile for them, which encourages them to sign up and "claim" the profile. I won't deny it's a working tactic for them, but it leaves a bad taste in vendor's mouths and I'm not comfortable with it personally.

Another interesting thing they do is have a "WeddingWire Award" — which gets sent out to every vendor, practically. These vendors display the award on their websites, which gets more couples and vendors to sign up with WW. That's a good vendor acquisition tactic that I'm looking forward to improving on soon with WeddingLovely.

It's too bad EasyCatalog costs so much, but I expect that's they're targeting big name, high-budget publishers. I was very pleased to see the trial, and would love to buy if I could — it does what it says it does very well. That said, I'm still on the lookout for better, cheaper solutions for next time.

Yes, exactly. It's one of the best ways we've found to differentiate ourselves in the wedding space — I'm really dedicated to being personal and real with our vendors, and promoting them as much as possible (like the lookbook, the blog is also primarily a promote-good-feelings-for-vendors tool). It just makes sense, since it more than pays off for our company and our bottom line in the long run.

Since we're bootstrapping, we've pretty much only looked at MagCloud for the past three editions, but for the Spring edition coming out next year, I'm definitely looking into printing it ourselves. If I went that route, I'd probably look into a local printer so I could ensure press quality rather than another online solution.

I liked going with MagCloud to start too because it allows us to not worry at all about the printing aspect to start — I feel a lot more comfortable with the production of the lookbook so now we can branch out into printing solutions which'll cost less but take more of our time.

Keep in mind that the cost through MagCloud is only when someone buys — free to upload and distribute, and you can just tack on a "profit" to their base cost per issue.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet!