I’m not a Luddite. I work with people on technology issues, and I like technology. But I also recognize there’s a role for printed publications. So today I’d like to discuss the possible advantages of print. 1. Branding yourself The New European is a relatively recent publication in the UK that’s aimed at people who…
It wasn’t long ago that people were praising Quartz as magical. Media experts pointed to Quartz as a model strategy that other publishers ought to consider. Well, times have changed. Quartz recently removed its three-year-old paywall. The move is designed to expand its general readership, but that’s at the expense of its paid membership business….
What are the key distinctions between these three models, and how do they affect publishers and their revenue options? We might start by asking what “membership” means. For example, my “membership” at LA Fitness just means that I pay a fee to get access to their equipment. But members at the American Legion have to…
Scott Brinker has an article about the second order effects of generative AI. He says the first-order effect is that the quantity of content in the world will grow exponentially. He’s probably right, but I think my brain was put in backwards because when someone makes a claim or a prediction like that, my immediate…
I wanted to do a little experiment this morning, so I fed this prompt into ChatGPT. I would like to see how well you do at writing a post for my blog, which is for publishers, and focuses on technology and operations issues. I will give you links to my 15 most recent blog posts….
Martin Schori mocks the idea of “peak subscriptions” in a recent article featured by Bo Sacks. The underlying reality is that – despite some recent growth – there’s been a leveling off in digital subscriptions. Why? The article makes some important points. First, you can’t make a good “digital subscription” by making a lousy “digital”…
You can read this article, or watch it here. Twitter has announced a new program for online content, which, of course, they claim is a great deal for publishers. It will allow publishers to charge a fee to read a single article. The catch here is the same as it always is with all tech…
Publishers need to broaden their concept of payment. There are far more options than simply money for access. Jim McKelvey’s Invisibly app allows readers to pay for content in one of three ways. They can let Invisibly sell their data, they can voluntarily submit data (like survey answers), or they can pay money. It’s all…
The Kiplinger Letter is a master class in writing succinctly, clearly, and so readers can easily scan the text — even though it’s only four pages long. I admire that style. Jim Patterson of Kiplinger explains that you can get the gist of any section, and any page, just by reading the underlined parts. It’s…
The typical sales funnel of awareness > consideration > purchase doesn’t go deep enough for publishers. There are several more steps in the journey, and different tools and methods are appropriate for each phase. The following chart can help you get started. Create goals and methods for each of these ten steps in your customer’s…
Summary: Measurement is often a prerequisite to growth, but it can also lead you astray. “What gets measured gets done” is a useful saying in many ways. Measuring something requires attention. Measuring allows you to track improvement. An impending measurement motivates action. However, a bias towards measurable things might lead us to abandon worthwhile things…
Just this morning I was reading a Bo Sacks article about publishers who use AI to make their writing more SEO-friendly, and I thought, doggone it, why don’t you use AI to make your writing more reader-friendly! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how little publishers have done to improve the online reading experience….
According to an internal memo from BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti cited by Forbes, “the business model of news tailored for social media had become too difficult to sustain.” An article distributed by Bo Sacks yesterday with the title, How the social traffic that gave life to BuzzFeed News ultimately led to its demise has Peretti…
In the world of publishing, AI can be a powerful tool to improve your content creation process. However, it is essential to use it with caution and verify its results. Bo Sacks distributed a cautionary tale from the world of artificial intelligence that everyone in the publishing industry should read. A German weekly used AI…
I’ve heard it both ways. My friend Janet Granger says there are big differences, but I’ve also seen old quotes about Baby Boomers that sound suspiciously like recent quotes about Gen. Z, which makes me wonder if the differences are just a matter of getting older. We have a funny relationship with generalizations. Or can…