Membership Puzzle

Citizen Agenda reporting:

• Citizens Agenda in Action: 20+ newsrooms turning to the public to focus their 2020 election reporting
• The Citizens Agenda: An Alternative to the Status Quo of Elections Coverage

Show Notes

1:48 - What is the Tyee

3:18 - The role of a publisher and Jeanette’s day-to-day work

5:30 - How editorial and publishing teams work together

7:10 - The changing role of the publisher from advertising to membership

8:40 - How nonprofit work relates to membership growth

10:14 - The benefits of regional focus and regional audiences

15:15 - How Jeanette thinks about community engagement strategies 

21:30 - How the Tyee uses events for growth

25:56 - Experiments

30:23 - Shifting away from advertising

33:13 - How the Tyee runs crowdfunding campaigns

38:14 - Balancing email volume during a crowdfunding campaign

40:35 - Different value propositions during a crowdfunding campaign versus normal fundraising

43:08 - Surveys and pre-engagement with audiences before launching bigger campaigns

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Show Transcript

5:52 - What is the Peak

7:05 - Why has the Peak been successful while others haven't, what makes the Peak unique and valuable with its audience

8:49 - How to write for a specific audience

9:30 - Finding your first readers, why it’s harder to build an audience than you think

11:06 - The challenges with engaging with your community and audience, the problem with broad versus niche audience

12:38 - How to go niche with broader audiences

13:35 - How you approach engaged versus non-engaged audiences, how engagement informs what topics they cover

15:28 - Strategies for keeping engaged audiences coming back

17:42 - Two questions to ask picking new ideas or strategies to pursue

19:43 - Metrics they monitor

21:40 - Which channels they use to grow audiences

23:55 - When to use referral programs, breaking referral marketing misconception and generating momentum

30:28 - The ins and outs of newsletter advertising, newsletter ad products, integrating ads into your newsletter, why you should move away from CPM-based ads

33:04 - How to pitch your outlet to advertisers

35:00 - Deciding what to charge for ads

36:38 - The value of writing your own ads versus advertisers

37:55 - Advice for media outlets beginning to do ad sales,

39: 42 - Monetization strategies they didn’t pursue, types of ad units for different audience sizes

41:55 - Why they didn’t pursue the subscription model

43:33 - Why the market for newsletters is only going to grow

45:14 - Why they aren’t pursuing American audiences

Ethan Cox is one of the foundesr of Ricochet, a public interest membership funded news outlet.

Last year Ethan partnered with an independent journalist to launch The Rover, a crowdfunded Substack publication. The difference? It's part of Ricochet, an existing media brand.

In a discussion that every publisher should listen to, Ethan walks through how his outlet has integrated the independent writer Substack model, why it could be a model for other outlets and why you don't need a paywall to create sustainable journalism.

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Show Outline

4:27 - What is the Rover and how it was created

7:41 - The model, why traditional publishers are not evil and how others could replicate this model

11:15 - How to make a payment model work without a paywall

13:37 - Why they used Substack instead of building a custom solution

17:52 - How Christopher Curtis engages with members and why this model fits with him as a reporter

23:01 - How did they decide to price a Rover membership

24:55 - The benefits of gift subscriptions

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Show Transcript

1:50 - Why Emma started The Narwhal

3:05 - Why and how to do member research

6:56 - The importance of branding and positioning

9:30 - How to engage with younger audiences

11:55 - Membership without a paywall

16:26 - Consistency in membership value

19:45 - The Narwhal’s marketing funnel

24:15 - The importance of email marketing

26:16 - Why their newsletter isn't about traffic

28:03 - Analytics and data

29:25 - Reducing churn

32:46 - The benefits of physical products for membership

36:34 - How The Narwhal uses Facebook advertising

38:35 - Why you need metrics before advertising

40:18 - How they use analytics

42:40 - Their craziest and most impactful A/B tests

43:26 - Tools they use for A/B testing

44:10 - Team structure for a startup news outlet

46:30 - How the team has changed over time

48:18 - When is it time to hire

50:15 - Processes for hiring 

52:30 - One thing new outlets should do