Niche Media Publishing This Week - July 31st, 2024

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Welcome to this week's issue of the Niche Media Publishing Newsletter.

Before jumping in, a quick word from today’s sponsor:

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Let’s get started with this week’s topics.

Revisiting Newsletters as a Platform

I just got back from the MARCC conference put on by Martech Record in NYC. I had many great takeaways, but one subtext is that newsletters appear to be here to stay.

Specific to this realization was an excellent panel including James Denis, Global Head of Revenue at Sherwood Media.

Sherwood is the impressive, fast growing, media arm supporting the Robinhood financial services platform. Newsletters are their main media growth driver here, but function almost as a loss leader.

Newsletters are at an interesting inflection point. On the one hand, much of the frenetic “hype cycle” is over. Many aspiring newsletter operators are finding it’s easy to start, but hard to sustain a newsletter over time.

It’s not even terribly difficult to GROW subscribers. The challenge remains: how to drive meaningful revenue.

Sherwood is an intriguing play because it’s built to support and augment Robinhood and their financial services. But this gets to the heart of the newsletter debate….

Newsletters are valuable augmentation tools if you have something to sell.

Subscriptions can work, but very few newsletters provide enough “signal” to warrant individual monthly service charges.

Beehiiv and ConvertKit ads are nice ways to cover cost, but only the top 2% are making meaningful dollars here.

I’ve seen a few interesting notes on this recently…

First, there’s classic revenue models for local newsletters around sponsored advertisements (the old local newspaper playbook).

Then there’s new innovations like this:

The reality seems to be, most newsletter operators want to be thought leaders (and get paid for it), BUT they should really think of themselves as ad sales / revenue optimizers FIRST.

This is a great framework, again with local, but applicable to all:

I DO think there’s room for more intermediate service & infrastructure layers to help newsletter operators with monetization.

Specifically, affiliate (performance marketing) has yet to formally break into the ecosystem with dedicated tools, network support, and marketing for newsletter audiences.

Until this infrastructure matures, newsletter operators should start with the end in mind.

START with: how might this newsletter drive revenue? Scope it out up front. Research competitors and how they monetize. Imagine how you would sell (or pitch) brands in your market. Maybe even create the pitch script and circulate it to friendlies for feedback.

Do NOT rely on native network ads and newsletter referrals to pay the bills.

Scott Oldford dropped some knowledge bombs from his experience acquiring and then selling a newsletter holdco:

Wise words to keep in mind from someone “in the arena”…..

Substack as a CMS

Substack gets overshadowed by Beehiiv and ConvertKit in many head-to-head feature comparison.

Substack doesn’t have a built-in ad network, has a fairly minimalist interface, and certainly does not feature advanced email automations.

But don’t let Substack’s plain Jane demeanor confuse. There’s something cooking.

Substack is still the market leader in the newsletter category and hasn’t shown any signs of being knee-capped by either ConvertKit OR Beehiiv…

Substack has one thing that neither Beehiiv or ConvertKit (yet) can offer: a platform network effect.

I still have a few Substack newsletters running and am genuinely surprised each week to see a handful of new subs… even when I haven’t published a thing!

This is because Substack has built-in discoverability! Substack sort of is a search engine for newsletters. They also have a WIDELY utilized mobile app. This gives them a huge leg up without even trying very hard.

But, one more recent trend I’ve noticed is Substack’s rise in Search.

Substack now boasts over 3M monthly visits from search alone, on the back of 3.7M+ organic keyword rankings.

In fact, Substack’s rise DIRECTLY correlates with the September 2023 “helpful content update” along with Reddit and other UGC platforms.

So, for your next niche media concept… consider using Substack as a completely free CMS for optimal growth.

BONUS POINTS if you can combine Reddit + Substack for some quick-cooking oats.

Need Traffic? Want to Build Community?

I’m “all in” on Reddit right now as the fastest way to acquire users and build community.

As such, my course is a fluid, evolving project. I’m adding new modules weekly!

Perplexity Launches Publishers’ Program

This is very late breaking news, but Perplexity announced an intriguing new revenue sharing model for publishers.

I’m still cautiously pessimistic, but this could be the type of solution the new ecosystem needs to sustain long term!

There does not appear to be a sign-up link just yet, but I’m eager to test and report back my findings when / if this becomes accessible to publishers.

Other Things I Read Recently

These are some articles I enjoyed, but don’t really have anything to add to!

Other Newsletters Worth Following

Here are some other publications I subscribe to, author, or co-sign.

If you are operating a newsletter (or even just interested), this next one is one of my “must opens” every week as a newsletter operator myself:

If you want to go deeper with Reddit (one of my favorite creator ecosysystems right now), check out my sister publication:

And don’t miss Amy’s excellent insights into wants happening in the world of content marketers.

Interested in Booking an Ad?

I’ve put together a resource sheet over at Passionfruit here.

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OK, that's it for this week...

Please do reply to this email with any feedback or suggestions.

Ewen