Articles by: "Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents"

What publishers can learn from independent creators

December 2, 2022 Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents

Some publishers are evaluating the impact of a Twitter implosion on their website traffic. By Apr 2023, Meta will be sunsetting Instant Articles after seven years of serving fast news and meandering listicles. Who knows if Google AMP will have a similar destiny? It’s not unlikely.

In Jun 2020, New York Times left Apple News over a lack of reader connection. “Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules,” wrote COO Meredith Kopit Levien in a memo to NYT employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”

The platform problem

It makes you wonder if promoting articles to audiences on platforms is really worth a publisher’s while. As a publisher, distributing content via audience platforms sounds like a good strategy to “meet audiences where they are.” However, it’s laden with inherent risks.

First of all, there are way too many platforms: BuzzFeed, Medium, Apple News, Google News, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. And let’s not forget the fact that audiences, formats, and platforms change. For a publisher to port audiences from one platform to another or maintain audiences on multiple platforms is almost impossible.

Then there’s the fact that, as platforms grow in size, the share of revenue per publisher is bound to decrease over time. The math is simple: As more publishers join the network, the user’s share of time spent on any one publisher’s content decreases and hence the revenue-share for the publisher decreases.

Hence, the best strategy for every publisher is to leverage any audience platform with the express goal of building a direct relationship with audiences they find there. Then, they need to focus on ensuring that these audiences are monetized through direct-to-consumer (D2C) models as quickly as possible.

Individual creators and journalists are the earliest movers breaking free from walled gardens and there are clear lessons for publishers. Let’s uncover some examples of individuals who have leveraged their audiences inside walled gardens to eventually build direct consumer relationships and monetization models.

Mr. Beast

Jimmy Donaldson has officially broken the record for the most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube with his channel Mr Beast. It has amassed an unbelievable 112,193,139 subs, as verified on 17 November 2022.

For direct-to-consumer monetization, Donaldson has moved his audiences offline. Leveraging the trust he garnered on YouTube, he is now selling them burgers, chocolate bars, and merchandise.

Nas

Nuseir Yassin is an Arab–Israeli vlogger who is most notable for creating over 1,000 daily one-minute-long videos on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram under the page Nas Daily.

Leveraging his fandom with aspiring creators, Yassin found a way to capitalize his own learnings to offer services, courses, and community platform to advertiser brands and up-and-coming creators. He has found the path to directly monetize his audiences outside the walled gardens.

Glenn Edward Greenwald

Glenn Edward Greenwald is an American journalist, lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. He has won numerous awards for his investigative journalism.

After working as a journalist at Salon and The Guardian, Greenwald co-founded The Intercept in 2013 along with Poitras and journalist Jeremy Scahill. He resigned from The Intercept in October 2020 over debates around editorial freedom. Subsequently Greenwald started publishing on Substack and currently has tens of thousands of paid newsletter subscribers with whom he has a direct connection.

Key takeaway

The walled garden of an audience platform provides a springboard for early experimentation and finding your niche as a publisher or creator. But without the ability to build a direct relationship with your audiences, you risk eventual irrelevance on the audience platform.. Finding unique ways to directly monetize your audiences will improve your chances of building a sustainable publishing business.

It is possible that publishers will start to offer their journalists a community management engine where journalists can develop direct relationships with their niche audience. A platform where journalists can offer merchandise, courses, newsletters (of course with publisher co-branding) for their specific niche audiences. Effectively, every journalist could be operating as a creator running mini-businesses inside the walled garden of the publisher.

About the Author

Abhishek Dadoo is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from ‘Never-Subscribers’. He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Segment your audiences to increase overall revenue

February 15, 2022 Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents

Reader revenue is among news executives top priorities. In fact, 79% of news executives who participated in The Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2022 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, said that revenue from initiatives like subscriptions and memberships will be among their key income priorities. As reader revenue gains popularity, it’s critical to assess the approach publishers take towards subscriber acquisition and revenue maximization.

Current approach towards reader revenue

In its simplest form, revenue calculation has two components: price and volume. Until now, the focus has largely been on maximizing subscriber volume as quickly as possible. This has resulted in publishers offering heavy price discounts to attract and acquire subscribers. Another tactic has been using excruciating cancellation policies to retain subscribers.

The outcome of such growth tactics may be acceptable, but they aren’t particularly attractive. Even the largest publishers barely manage to capture 1-3% of their total audience before plateauing in the second year.

What about churn? A study by Nieman Labs identified that the top reason for churn was “money” in different forms:

Promotional rates expired
Irritated that subscriptions auto-renewed
News organizations weren’t transparent about price
Lack of funds/budget
Already have multiple subscriptions

Evidently, the tactics used for quick subscriber growth are also the main reason for churn. As Nicholas Thompson, chief executive at The Atlantic put it during the 2022 DCN Next:Summit, “You can get to a million subs pretty easily: You can massively discount, right? However, if you set a goal solely on subscribers, it can move you in some harmful ways.”

This means that there is an opportunity to maximize revenue by shifting focus to differentiated offerings for mutually exclusive audience segments. Let’s find out how.

Consider a segmented approach to reader revenue

In addition to money-related reasons, people also cancel their subscriptions because of lack of value. They take out a subscription but are unable to justify the ROI. Many can barely consume all of the content offered.It’s a classic “too much information, too little time” scenario.

Consider the example of an airline. Every airline offers at least four different pricing options for its flyers: economy, premium economy, business, and first-class. Based on their willingness to pay, spending power, comfort, need, and other factors, flyers select the most suitable class for themselves.

SaaS is another place where the segmentation of buyer personas is well understood. SaaS companies ensure pricing is different for small and medium businesses, and enterprise businesses. Then, within that, it usually follows a tiered pricing model based on the number of users or usage volume. The key lies in offering the right value to the right customer.

For most publishers who are reader revenue-focused, they typically only think about subscribers (1% of the audience) and prospective subscribers (99% of the audience) and keep recycling prospective subscribers onto metered paywalls or registration walls at best. However, clearly identifying and segmenting never-subscribers will help publishers monetize this large user base much better.

Segment #1: The Stalkers

We call the first segment of never-subscribers The Stalkers. They have no loyalty to any publisher and consume content from multiple sites without ever subscribing. Subscription models follow a winner-takes-most dynamic with the top few publishers capturing a majority. The median number of news subscriptions in the US is two. This means that a subscriber for one publisher will always be a never-subscriber for another publisher.

No matter how often publishers target this segment with introductory offers, free trials, or any other growth hack, they will not convert. So, ads are the optimal way to monetize this segment.

Segment #2: The Daters

This segment of never-subscribers is made up of light readers we call The Daters. They could be open to subscribing but are scared to commit. They need to be convinced of the value or ROI they get from their subscription. So, even if prompted to subscribe with a paywall, they will not immediately go through with it (at least the first few times).

For this segment, publishers can explore a pay-per-content monetization model or voluntary contributions Maybe during the first three visits, this segment can be shown a subscription paywall. But, after that threshold, every time a casual visitor/light reader declines a subscription paywall, a pay-per-article paywall can immediately be shown. By doing so, publishers can eliminate any risk of subscription cannibalization.

Also, in addition to capturing first-party data, publishers will gain incremental revenue. Daters can then be nurtured towards a subscription with high-quality, relevant, and personalized content. Instead of offering an all-you-can-eat subscription, Daters could be offered a personalized micro-bundle based on their reading preferences.

This segment is also perfect for voluntary contributions. They already appreciate the content enough to keep revisiting. So before committing to a subscription, they may be amenable to your creative encouragement, even if they won’t subscribe.

Segment #3: The Lovers

Finally, the third segment refers to the subscribers. We call them The Lovers. They trust their relationship with the publisher and hence the publisher’s focus is on retention and creating hooks for daily engagement.

Unfortunately, a study by Medill Spiegel Research Center (SRC) has shown that 49% of subscribers never visit their paid publisher subscriptions even once a month. These are essentially zombie or sleeper subscribers who are highly likely to churn. When they churn, rather than showing them a generic subscription paywall yet again, publishers must treat them like The Daters segment, and engage and nurture them with pay-per-content or voluntary contributions.

Transitioning from volume to value

“I think that this is one of the follies of the industry – this volume chase. [We look at it from] a revenue standpoint, versus a ‘we are chasing this volume number’. There are all kinds of terrible things that you can do to your long-term viability and sustainability that will drive that volume number,” according to Kati Erwert, Senior Vice President of product, marketing, and public service at Seattle Times.

Revisiting audience segmentation, analyzing first-party data, aspiring towards high-quality content, and exploring innovative revenue models for different segments can help redefine value to those segments. By offering more value, volume will eventually follow. And if a greater value is delivered, publishers can command higher subscription prices. So then revenue becomes a value-game and not necessarily a volume-game.

About the author

Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from ‘Never-Subscribers’. He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.

Perspectives | Supporter Spotlight

Evaluating your walled-garden strategy

December 7, 2021 Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents

Seems like everyone is a podcaster these days. There are millionaire teens on TikTok and it seems like every yoga instructor has a million subscribers on their YouTube channel. You see big media companies rejoicing about their fan following on Spotify, YouTube etc.

These platforms share their audience, advertising revenue, and subscriptions revenue with the original content creators. They allow publishers and creators to grow their following and create their fiefdom of anonymous fans. Most of these platforms have started accepting voluntary contributions and passing back a portion of the contribution to the creator. Twitter calls it Tipjar, YouTube calls it Applause, Twitch has Cheer, TikTok has Gifts. However, this fiefdom is limited within the walled gardens of the platform. There is absolutely no way for a publisher or creator to port over their fans to another platform or build an email relationship with the platform’s audience.

The winner-take-all dynamics are just as prevalent on these platforms. Very few pieces of original content will garner outsized views or listens, enough to justify significant monthly payouts. Having spoken to 100s of creators and media companies, we have learned that the platform payouts and terms of revenue are riddled with opaqueness. It’s just like how Heinz (analogous to original content creator) does not have any control over their revenue terms with Walmart (analogous to platform). For most creators their primary source of income is actually through sponsorships; either as influencer marketing campaigns, podcast readouts, or mid-roll video placements.

Relationship business

In all of the above scenarios the original content creator does not own a direct relationship with the platform’s audience but rather with a non-traceable user of the platform. Some creators try to link-out from these platforms in an effort to build a direct relationship with the user and start building a reader revenue stream.

Some of the most common Link-In Bio companies like Linktree (Linktr.ee), Later (Linkin.bio) or Buy Me A Coffee provide a landing area for creators to start building a direct reader revenue relationship. On the flip side, almost all platforms curb the use of external links primarily to restrict monetization inside the walled gardens of the platform. Instagram for example does not allow web-links in posts. Creators can have only one link in their Instagram bio. In late 2017, YouTube tightened rules around videos with external links.

In the context of audio and video content, few publishers and creators have dared to branch out and go direct-to-consumer (D2C). Beyond plugging in standard advertising revenue options through various ad-networks, the D2C decision hinges on sustainable reader revenue potential. This has intensified in light of the ongoing regulatory discussion around solving for “dark patterns” or subscription traps. Globally, regulators (Federal Trade Commission in the US; Competition & Markets Authority in the UK; Reserve Bank of India in India) are revising consumer protection policies around recurring payments and mandating subscription renewal reminders with one-click cancellation options.

The business of engagement

This would bring mayhem for direct-to-consumer publishers and creators whose subscriber base is filled with zombie subscribers. Almost half of U.S. podcast listeners are lighter, casual users who listen to less than 3 episodes (across podcasters) in a month. This raises concern over their propensity to subscribe to a paid podcast subscription. A recent study by Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center shows that:

49% of digital subscribers do not access their paid subscriptions even once
54% have accessed their paid subscriptions just once in one month

Given the regulatory headwinds, it is becoming crucial for publishers to diversify reader revenue sources beyond all-you-can-eat subscriptions. One of the top five reasons subscribers cancel their subscriptions is because of the inability to consume all the content their subscription offers. So, while reader revenue is on everyone’s mind, subscription alone will not suffice. Unbundling audio and video for pay-per-content requires sophisticated technology.

Every publisher and creator with quality audio or video content starts off with piggybacking on platforms. They consider sponsorships as their main source of revenue. But the moment of truth comes when the sponsorship gravy train stops and platform revenues do not add up compared to the cost of production for quality audio and video. That’s when a clear direct-to-consumer and reader revenue strategy takes its rightful place in the limelight.

About the author

Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers, that brings incremental reader revenue from “Never-Subscribers.” He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.

Perspectives | Revenue | Supporter Spotlight

Never-subscribers are hiding in plain sight. What are you doing about it?

September 1, 2021 Abhishek Dadoo, Co-founder & CEO – Fewcents

How many publishers do you have a paid subscription with? While you may be a paid subscriber with one or two digital publishers, you remain a “never-subscriber” from the lens of the next publisher. The 2021 Reuters Digital News Report states that the majority of people pay for one subscription (for content from publishers and local papers), and that the median number of subscriptions for U.S. consumers is two.

To digital publishers, never-subscribers mean lost revenue. But in today’s digital-first world, where ad revenues are unreliable and subscription fatigue is mounting, should never-subscribers remain a lost revenue opportunity? The answer lies in implementing dynamic paywalls.

A typical dynamic paywall journey looks like this: Place a first-party cookie so you can track user visits. Then, give the visitor access to a few pieces of metered content. After a set number of articles, it’s time to show a registration wall. Then, as soon as those views are up, it’s time to show the “all you can eat” subscription paywall/offer.

Many users traverse this journey but for those that don’t subscribe, publishers tend to “rinse and repeat” the same journey. Some publishers might try discount offers for “all you can eat” subscriptions or even suggest custom-bundles at lower price points before allocating dead end users to the “rinse and repeat” pool.

Untapped revenue opportunities

Despite visit recency and frequency metrics, there are users who defy registration, subscription, or custom-bundle offers even after relentless efforts by the publishers. These dead-end users are your never-subscribers. And there are hoards of them. There are also those users who churn after the subscription trial period is over, or sleepers who churn at the beginning of the month when they evaluate their credit card bills. All of these users offer an untapped revenue opportunity.

Putting never-subscribers (dead end users and churned users) back in the “rinse and repeat” bucket is hardly a strategy. However, there are a few questions that needs answers before a real strategy for never-subscribers can evolve:

Who are the dead end users?
What are the additional options available beyond discounting or custom-bundles?
If users were given additional options, would fewer users subscribe?
If users were given additional options, would there be fewer sleepers?
If users were given additional options, would it accelerate subscription churn?

Dead end users could be visitors with high visit frequency who subscribed elsewhere. They might be casual visitors referred via social media. Or perhaps they are low frequency visitors from international geographies. The mix differs for each publisher, but retrospective analysis of user journey data should yield quick segmentation of never-subscribers.

Extending the user journey with discounted subscriptions or custom-bundles are good options for users approaching a dead end. But how do you know how much discounting would suffice? Or what custom-bundle offers will work for the user?

Unbundling solutions

To get this understanding, publishers have to unbundle the existing content pool to evaluate the true worth of each piece of content. Extending to unbundling solutions such pay per content provide insights for custom-bundles. They also provide substantial revenue streams for the long term.

Understanding the direct impact of unbundling solutions on the publisher’s existing subscription business requires sustained experiments and aligned goals between departments. For example, subscriber numbers dominate reader-revenue headlines.

However, they fail to focus on subscriber retention or revenue. Marketing teams could be focusing on increasing pageviews without any consideration about the quality of the audience which converts into subscriptions. The editorial team on the other hand could be working in a silo without any revenue linked objectives.

Playing the long game to win

Improving audience engagement and customer-lifetime-value are high level goals that every department’s KPI should be linked to. For example, changing the KPI to net new subscribers and average revenue per subscriber are better health barometers of the reader-revenue business. New subscribers per-1,000 pageviews focuses the marketing team’s efforts on quality audiences. And, average time spent per page allows editorial teams to focus on quality content for their audience.

No publisher can escape the fact that subscriptions are a long game. The Google News Initiative reader revenue playbook carries an ominous message:

“For some of the [news] organizations we’ve worked with, the transition can take years if not decades. But it’s achievable. For many news organizations, converting just 3-5% of readers into paying subscribers or contributors can support long-term sustainability”.

Therefore, understanding never-subscribers and the monetization opportunities that lie within is a long game too! But why is it that publishers are ever so quick to dismiss the never-subscriber cohort and bring them back into the “rinse and repeat” pool for subscriptions? It turns out that extending the user journey with unbundling options might bear more fruit.

About the author

Abhishek is a Co-founder & CEO of Fewcents, fintech-for-publishers that brings incremental reader revenue from “Never-Subscribers.” He is a seasoned business leader and technology product manager. He has worked in management consulting with PwC and Altman Solon in Boston, USA before moving to Singapore permanently. In Singapore, he started his own venture, Shoffr, a digital marketing solution that provides online to offline attribution for digital marketers. In 2019, Abhishek sold Shoffr to Affle, a publicly listed ad-tech company in India. After solving the advertiser’s offline attribution problem, Abhishek has now set his eyes on solving the content monetization problem for online publishers.