I am totally agree with boyuancy. I want to thank boyuancy for his nice reply post. I just want to add something more in this post. If you want to get advertising from local businesses for your magazine, you need to follow some important steps.
At first, You need to assemble a media kit for your magazine. The media kit should have information about who your customers are and what your competition in the publishing world is as well as why you're different from the competition. It should have some sample pages to present what the magazine will look like. It should also have important information about how often the magazine will publish and how you plan to distribute it.
Secondly, You need to identify companies that might be interested in advertising in your magazine. For example, if you are creating a women's fitness magazine for your city then all the fitness centers, gyms, fitness equipment retailers, health food stores and beauty products stores might be candidates for purchasing advertising in your magazine. You can also use the phone book or web pages to find the businesses in your area.
Then, You need to start calling or emailing your potential advertisers. If you choose to contact them by email, you can ask permission to send a digital copy of your media kit. You should not send repeated emails if people aren't interested as that constitutes spam, unwelcome email advertising, which is considered negative.
At last, You should offer deals for advertising in your magazine. If you're not popular, you need to offer special deals for people who want to advertising right away or for long periods. You need to knock off a percentage, say 25 percent, for the first 20 companies to buy ads in your magazine. You also need to give a discount for advertisers who want to buying more than one ad. You should consider that The longer the contract, the bigger the discount.
I think these tips will help you for getting advertising from local businesses for my magazine. Please share your experiences with us.