If you've ever wondered how it is that so many magazines (8,337 at the last count) manage to survive in this country, recent research from the Henley Centre may help. It's all about trust, status and guidance (of which more later) and, like most worthwhile research, it raises as many questions as it answers.

Commissioned by the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA), and revealed last week at their annual conference, the point of the exercise was to attempt to work out what it is that magazines do well and where we're missing tricks.

Given that 20 years ago many people were predicting the end of the magazine industry (why would anyone want to buy anything as archaic and cumbersome as a magazine when they could find everything they wanted on their computer screens?) the proliferation of titles is reassuring. But do publishers really understand this success and, more importantly, how to capitalise on it?

According to the Henley Centre, the power of magazines lies in their ability to penetrate the personal worlds of their readers. Good titles engender a 'network of trust', (so if you pick up a title and enjoy it you are likely to pass on that enjoyment to others). In a society rife with cynicism, trust is an invaluable marketing tool and one that publishers ignore at their peril.

Generating that trust relies on recognising that people are increasingly self-obsessed. A publisher must identify major 'life events' (moving home, having first child, changing job, joining a gym) and focus their content accordingly.

Most experienced publishers would confirm that none of this is particularly earth-shattering. But in an era of information overload, how are magazines to make best use of their trust tool to snare readers' attention? And how do magazines convert that attention into engagement - because it is the 'engaged' readers that advertisers really want to reach.

Interestingly, the answer lies in using magazines as a bridge to that old enemy, the internet, says the research. It makes complete sense, of course, but it's something many publishers haven't yet got their heads around. Having spent the Eighties being told that the internet would kill magazines and the Nineties trying to hang on to its coat tails without going bust, it's no wonder the concept of using interactivity as a financial tool has been slow to dawn.

However, as the research reveals, core magazine enthusiasts are a techno-savvy bunch, and what better way to increase your chances of 'engagement' than to offer readers extra tried and trusted information online?

A lot of magazines have websites, but most are more like poor relations of the paper products than businesses in their own right. Notable exceptions lie mainly in the business-to-business sector, where strong magazines are beginning to reap rewards from offering online users content they couldn't find in the magazine itself.

One excellent example is personneltoday.com, which was voted interactive business magazine of the year at last week's PPA Awards. The paper product, Personnel Today, published by Reed Business, has a controlled circulation of 50,000, but the website gives access to many who don't receive the magazine as well as offering additional material to those who do. So in April, for instance, they had 59,000 unique users on the main site and 36,000 on their jobs site.

The editor, Andrew Rogers, puts success down to the fact that the website uses clever ideas to increase interactivity. 'We run competitions, quizzes, questionnaires, surveys - anything that will get people to use the site, so that they glean valuable information and have a bit of fun at the same time.'

Launched in October 2000, the site turned over £500,000 last year and is expecting a 25 per cent rise year on year. All revenue streams, Rogers says, are on the up. 'Our initial boom came from recruitment advertising, but now our biggest growth is in classified, up 64 per cent. We've also seen growth in display advertising and sponsorship revenues of about 25 per cent. We're beginning to attract consumer advertisers at last.'

The growth in banner advertising is exciting publishers right across the board as agencies become increasingly confident about advising their clients on to the web. Consumer titles, traditionally reliant on display advertising, will particularly benefit if they get it right online but, as in everything, it depends on the strength of the brand.

Procycling, considered the number one magazine by aficionados, has had a website, procycling.com, since its launch in 1998, but it is relaunching in June, in time for this year's Tour de France. 'The site has always made money,' explains publishing director Alun Williams, 'but we anticipate being over 200 per cent up on revenues this year, so it is time to take the site to the next level.'

As a specialist publication, Procycling has a dedicated audience hungry for news. There are 15,000 subscribers to the daily newsletter, and traffic shoots up during the Tour de France to over a million hits a day.

But can more general con sumer titles which don't have a fanatical audience hope to capitalise online?

Absolutely, if the story of hellomagazine.com is anything to go by. It reports a phenomenal 677 per cent growth in advertising in the past year. When it launched in 2001, the site attracted 1.5 million page views per month; now it gets that in two-and-a-half days. Editor Tree Elven says: 'We work closely with [advertising] clients telling them what special stories we're going to be covering, and then come up with ideas and visuals that integrate them into the piece. The editorial and sales teams work very closely together.'

For Hello!'s dedicated celebrity fans, the idea of all those glorious picture exclusives online, updated daily, is irresistible and there's even a Diamond Club for subscribers (£4.99 per month) which offers even more pictures plus video and photo gallery exclusives. But Elven stresses that a quality environment is all-important: 'Advertisers want to reach the "online elite".'

· Sally O'Sullivan is editorial director of Highbury House.