The Print Decision: Stop, Shrink, or Charge More
Download MP3Okay, today we're gonna talk about print.
We're gonna talk about what to do.
Should you start printing? Should you stop
printing?
Or should you continue printing?
And 10 years ago-ish, when we got serious
with leaky paywall,
our first customer base were print
publishers.
And we dealt we started doing a lot of
integrations.
We heard a lot of stories, and then over
this decade.
we have heard a lot of stories and I
thought it would be good to kind
of put them all together, package them all
together in one podcast
and share what we've seen publishers do
well and not do well and
why print didn't work out and why print is
still working out with some publishers.
So welcome, Tyler.
Hello, hello. Sounds fun. Let's go.
Let's
go.
we were talking offline a little bit
before,
and you mentioned something about a print
publisher that didn't make it.
shall we start there?
Yeah. I I think I don't know the exact
statistics on this,
but I think there's like one or two local
news s publications that close
in the ne in the US every week.
~
Mm.
or maybe maybe it's even higher than that.
I should
Yeah.
have been prepared for that for that.
But I I know it's a high number,
for especially for the weekly publishers
out there.
They they are struggling and
There are a number of r reasons for why
that is.
we can we can jump into that if you want.
but
Well, how about how about this current
publisher that they're they've announced
that
they're shutting down, is that right?
Okay.
That's right. Yeah. So a a print
a print publication and there are there
there's more than more than
one at this point, that have ~
Right.
decided to close up shop.
And yeah, a legacy print operation had a
great robust digital operation.
~ had a had a growing
Mm.
digital subscription base, not not
ginormous,
not enough to staff, you know,
fifteen people or anything, but certainly
enough to continue running their their
you know, digital only system.
So
Hmm, mm.
Are we allowed to reveal s have they
announced this publicly?
Can we reveal who this is?
Not unclear. Okay.
Yeah.
That's fine.
I can give you better numbers if I if I
don't tell you who it is.
Yeah, and
you also and I remember years ago we we
actually did an article on
a publisher that it was a print publisher
that turned on digital subscriptions,
a very, very small town of West Virginia
and then but ultimately
the the print anchor kinda dropped them,
right?
Yeah, so the one you're talking about in
in West Virginia,
like they stopped printing altogether and
are still digital only to this day.
Now they're a very small mom and pop type
operation in a very small
Mm. Yeah.
town and they don't have a lot of overhead
at this point.
I think they work remote. So they can make
that work and it's growing.
It's been slow but it's growing.
~ and and and it's and it's possible,
good. Okay. Okay.
right? So
But this recent one, they just couldn't do
it.
It was what was it? What what
Yeah.
do you think it was that did him in?
I think there are special circumstances
with this publisher in terms
of debt that was ~
Mm.
acquired.
Yeah.
that is difficult to repay if it all comes
due at the same time.
Right. Right. Yeah, that's a problem.
Yeah.
Yep.
So
Could they have survived? I don't I don't
know.
but I think if you look at print and print
publishers more broadly,
they they struggle because of the cost of
their print.
It's a ginormous anchor on them.
Yeah. Yeah.
~
the reason that most of them print to
begin with is because of
the public notice side of their business.
Mm. Mm.
So if
you're unfamiliar with the that,
public notices are
basically can be anything from probate
to you know businesses needing to publish
court orders,
whatever, that are mandated by every
state,
most states,
Right.
and the the news publisher makes money
from that.
They have a a
Right.
state mandate, you know, we get to charge
a hundred and whatever dollars
for this public notice. ~ but it usually
has to be print.
But it has to be print. Mostly mostly.
Yeah.
Most
states, like ninety percent, ninety five
percent of the states are all
Still like you've gotta have a print
publication and you have to have printed
for the last twelve months and there are
all these hoops you have
to jump jump through in order to become
the qualified
Mm.
newspaper in your specific county or
district.
So and like trying to sort through all of
that is like a complete nightmare.
It's r it's really messy. So yeah,
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.
yeah.
Yeah, so government government funds.
that can probably dry up at any time too.
Yeah.
And that's like that's one fear,
right, for a lot of super hyper local
newspapers is like if their advertising
isn't
strong and they certainly don't have any
paid subscribers,
the only thing that's really holding them
up would be public notice at that point.
~ there's very very
Mm. Yeah, that's tough.
little like other other factors out there
as far as income goes,
so
Yeah. Gotcha. No, the this particular
publisher they were running digital
subscriptions as well as print
subscriptions.
That's right.
Yep. And you think it would have been
different if they made the decision
to stop printing like a couple of years
ago?
Yeah.
Probably. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. It's I know it's difficult
for for print publishers
to even think like that because they do ha
have
Mm.
advertisers that are, you know,
in their print product and they sell kind
of print advertising first
and digital is kinda like this extra thing
versus,
you know, selling digital first and
pretending
Mm.
that print doesn't exist, which is what we
tend to recommend,
right? ~
Right.
we always tell publishers, if you have a
print product,
pretend like you don't online and just
Yeah.
just sell the digital only and give them
the E edition access and then like forget
trying to mail this thing ~ all over the
the country and sometimes
Right. Right.
internationally. So
Right. Yeah. And and f you know,
for local news, I can see that that being
a really tough decision.
but it's not just local news, you know,
like magazine, we deal with a lot of
magazine or niche publishers that that
print,
continue to print, and I I talk to them
and I hear things like,
you know,
If I if we just didn't have the print
expenses and logistics and time suck
and all that. And you could see that they
go into this dreamy state when they
say that. I have heard this, you know,
before, but then it's like, wait a second,
but you know, the print we have a print
magazine that's you know,
that's our product. And that's I think
that's where things get a little little
hazy
for publishers, is like, is the is the
paper or is the magazine the product?
Or is it just part of the product,
right? Or is it just a delivery vehicle
for the product,
Yeah, yeah.
right?
So for everyone listening and thinking
like,
my god, is like news, local news or like
all this stuff like a waste of time?
Is it all dying and like is there any hope
that there's revenue to be made?
And I'll just say that we work with a lot
of digital first publications that have
never had a print anchor. And they don't
think about this stuff.
They just they write content, they send
out newsletters.
They grow their digital subscribers and as
you know,
when they when the subscriber comes on
board,
there's like virtually no cost because
it's it's a digital operation,
right? there's no there's no print product
that you have to mail to them.
And they they grow, right? So it's it's
really difficult to sort
of turn a legacy print operation and
reverse
Mm.
the workflow for them because they fight
Right.
almost every part of it and I get it,
you're you're used to this this workflow
that you've been doing for
the last however many decades and now
you're trying to think digital first
and it's hard to believe
Yep. Yeah.
that we're still having that that
discussion,
you know, in twenty twenty six.
I mean,
that that brings up a good question
though.
It's like when like how do you decide,
right? Like should I should I continue?
Should I should I stop? You know,
should I start? We've had publishers start
print publications and we're gonna talk
about that. the con I think the content
type makes a difference.
Is it, you know, is it is it a magazine?
is it a how to kind of a publication?
Is it news? and that's that
That's different. How about an ad revenue
is another one.
So we have a lot of magazine publishers,
they have a lot of ad revenue.
It makes sense for them to continue
running their magazine.
Absolutely, positively. So if the ad
revenue is carrying you,
it's not even a decision. You can stop
listening now.
We have other things for you. But but
really that's and that's the thing that
has been more challenging. but if your if
your print product suits
the lifestyle of your reader and your ad
revenue supports it,
then yeah, you you know, you keep going.
and then reader attachment. It's like sort
of another thing that when
I talk to publishers, I'd say generally
speaking,
and there are exceptions, but the you
know,
the older the older readers tend to really
they're really attached
to their print publication. and there's
there's definitely trends
in the younger readers that you know,
it's they they love the print.
Like they it's it's a lifestyle thing.
They it's cool, it's it's hip.
to read in print. So so these are the
things that sort of help you determine,
you know, which way to go. And I'll kind
of jump in on this.
And let me actually let me share my
screen.
I'm gonna I'm gonna show you actually this
just a little bit of data real quick.
we're gonna look at this here.
This was ~ this is from Pew ~ Baekdal
republished this
but this is from Pew Research.
~
originally, ~ thanks Thomas if you happen
to see this.
this is advertising and circulation
revenue for US publishers.
And you can see that in two thousand nine,
~ things started going south. And two
thousand nine was our financial,
you know, collapse of the US economy and
the global economy.
and we went from a peak, I think 2006
where print and circulation,
you know, advertising circulation revenue
in print were really at its high.
And it's just been kind of falling.
you know, ever since, ~ as digital has
just become more and more common.
And so you might look at this and say,
like, my God, I gotta, you know,
I gotta stop here. But look at
circulation,
you know, circulation ~ dollars are
actually kind of creeping up a little bit,
which is interesting. ~ so ~ I just want
to get this out of the way.
New York Times kind of a bellwether,
a tech bellwether in the space.
We talk about them ~ sometimes.
They were they were
Really print focused originally as a
paper.
They embraced digital back in twenty
eleven,
I think they turned on their meter
paywall,
which inspired us ~ to to ~ track what
they were doing.
And today they ~ their print product,
guess how many what percent of their
circulation is is print versus digital?
Yeah, any guess?
Boy, I would I would say the vast majority
is is digital at this point,
but that's just because we sit in this
this fish tank together.
~
Take a
guess. Pick a number.
~ I would say let's say thirty percent is
print.
Four percent.
my god.
Yeah. Yeah, it's fallen that far.
And that four percent is super loyal and
they're happy to pay the money
and they pay a lot of money for it,
which is part of the secret to keeping
print running.
But yeah, this is this is it's it's pretty
pretty interesting.
And and I would imagine if you go to the
New York Times and you wanna
go subscribe that it's probably not like
it's probably difficult to find
a print component
No, no.
as as part of that subscription.
So
Yeah, that's exactly right. They're really
the you yeah,
you go there and try to subscribe,
they're gonna sell sell you a digital
trial,
essentially. but you know, of of all the
research that I did,
I didn't crow come across any data that
suggested that print is fine finding
new buyers. It's serving old buyers,
right? Old subscribers. ~
Yeah. Yeah.
now, like I said before, we have some
publishers that did start a print product,
and we'll talk about that in a minute.
and
they're obviously looking for new buyers.
But the overall trend is, you know,
serving the existing the existing base,
which is which is pretty pretty
interesting.
Yeah.
And that also kind of tracks too with
legacy publishers who have a print product
who go online and offer their e edition,
oftentimes their e edition, at least in
the beginning,
will be one of their biggest pages,
Right. Right.
right?
Has the highest traffic out of everything
else.
That does
Yeah.
that does shift over time, but in the
beginning that tends to be where people
go,
to to look. So yeah.
I agree. I think the e-edition
is something you should lock down and
makes it's part of your your
~ digital subscription plan and ~ not
print.
Doesn't it's not part of the print.
It and you'll find that the you know the
the older readers who like
the print format will continue to read
this very difficult to navigate
e edition just because it looks like a
newspaper or looks like a magazine and
They have the time to sit and kind of,
know, and they get used to the controls
and and they get through it.
And it's amazing to me. But that's that's
what's happening.
Yeah. Yeah.
okay, let me see. So on the other,
okay, so on the other end of the spectrum,
on the digital side, if you look at the
Nordic countries,
~ like Sweden, Sweden is is close to 100%
digital
in terms of subscription, ~ like news
subscription sales.
They they have really
migrated out of print very, very quickly.
~ Norway is kind of in a similar boat.
and then some of the and I don't know why
is sort of the northern European,
but even the UK, you know, generally
embrace digital subscriptions pretty early
on ~ in in the ~ in the paywall space,
which which I find fascinating.
~
Yeah.
okay so all right, so let's talk a little
bit about ~ like like what
are the what are the
questions to help you make the decision.
~ I hinted towards ~ magazine publishers
versus news publishers.
So if if you're in sort of the design
space,
right? Like you're a magazine,
you have a niche and you're you're in sort
of heavy design mode,
then the print, yes, can be the product.
Like it's and it's it's a it's actually a
different product because
in the news world, it's like we read news
on our phones,
we we
We might just listen to podcast ~ news
while we're driving.
~ we're we're here to get intel on stuff.
It's kind of transactional. Like we want
to know what's going on,
what are the solutions out there?
Magazine, like a design driven magazine,
it's a very different experience,
right? Like you're you're sitting in in a
in a comfortable chair or at
the table in a in a relaxed way and you're
paging through.
So it's, you know, we call that a lean
back behavior versus ~ the the news lean
in behavior.
~ and that in that case, yeah,
the magazine really is the product.
~ so like the fisherman magazine,
you know, you're you're a fishing
enthusiast.
Enthusiast magazines are are big today,
and people get the magazine and it's fun
to read.
~ any really any kind of enthusiast.
the other thing that I keep hearing and I
think is really valid is AI protection,
right? So if you're printing ~
your your news and you're printing a
magazine,
yeah, it's it's it's you're obviously
protecting the that experience
you cannot replicate through AI.
~ and there's a trust factor too that has
value,
I think, but trust comes through the
content and the,
you know, I think the the that kind of
behavior from the publisher.
But yeah, sure, if you're printing a
newspaper,
if you're printing a magazine,
the trust ~ tends to skew pretty high.
I'd say. So okay. The next one is kind of
in the ~ we talked about the news space,
which is actually cheapest to keep in
print,
right? But easiest to transition.
Since you're not really dealing with
design,
you can kind of get out of news and it's
we'll talk about how to.
But then there's sort of this other space,
the how to space. ~ so we had
We should talk about track and field a
little bit.
Let's talk about ~ so brew brew your own
and winemaker.
They are in the how to, how to,
how to make beer, how to make wine.
And they a year ago, they we did a
separate podcast just on this,
but a year ago they went ~ they just went
cold turkey on print.
~ and they you know they messaged their
readers appropriately.
~ they lost ~ a a percentage of their
readership,
but it wasn't a
calamity and they have been able to
absolutely build back in a year.
and we'll talk about what makes what what
make made that work
~ for them. But that, you know,
if you think about it, yeah, it was a
magazine.
~ but is it design related? It's like how
to,
you know, is it like it's not like a
lifestyle design magazine.
It's like you're it's kind of nuts and
bolts.
It's like, okay, how do I do this?
How do I make I need this recipe,
I need, you know, like I need guidance.
I probably need video content too,
which is tough to do in print.
so that was two how-tos.
I need to talk a little bit about track
and field.
This was super interesting. ~ this
happened a few years ago.
We were onboarding them and they decided
in the middle
of the onboard ~ to stop printing their
magazine.
~ and
We you know, we were like, okay.
~ and so the bottom line is they went nine
months without a print product.
And it's news. It's like they're reporting
on track and field news events.
It's not design, it really is news.
That's why it's called track and field
news.
But the their their readers were skewed
older and they sent the best.
I I they they were sharing their email
campaigns with us and they were,
you know, it's like the voice of the was
like,
Hey, we know you love.
print and we but we we need to survive as
a publication.
All they they said all the right things.
We need your support and all that.
But the bottom line is is half their ~
demographic just didn't want
to log into anything. They were they were
sort of in that stage where it was like,
Yeah, we're gonna we're not gonna we just
can't subscribe because I can't
I can't be bothered to log into something.
We had one there was one, I think it was a
doctor.
He loved the magazine so much he hired
FedEx to print out every single digital
issue
and ship it to the him every month at a
cost of like,
you know, a hundred whatever dollars per
month.
Cause he just loved the the the print
edition so much.
Yeah. Yeah. It was it was worth it to him.
my goodness. Hmm.
And
so okay, so what happened after nine
months?
they figured out that people weren't
logging in and they're like,
okay, well.
Let's bring back the print product,
but let's do it differently. They so now
they're on print on demand,
right? And their previous, no,
this is public information if you look
around,
but if their previous ~ like original ~
pricing for their magazine was like
$29 a year, which was back in the day,
that was a really typical price point.
And then your ads carried your your
magazine.
if you look now, I guess I can go look
now.
I can see that their top product is a
hundred and thirty eight dollars.
So, you know, they increased their they
increased their pricing.
~
you know, four X, whatever, ~ a lot.
Five X almost. ~ and that's that's another
way to do it is decide to keep
the print product for that, for those
readers who who just love the format
so much and you know who you are,
I think if you're hearing this.
~ and then j but raise your pri make sure
you're it's a profit center.
Like you have to make money. And their
volume,
their print volume is is certainly quite a
bit lower than it was back in the day.
But you know, we look at their
We look at their digital and print and
digital subscriptions come through
in the back end and you know, it's every
day,
it's substantial. Like they they figured
it out,
right? and it and it's working.
So in that case where your readers are
really are need the print product,
that that's a good solution.
So they're they're those print editions
are on demand and being fulfilled
by a like a company somewhere that's so as
you order
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
it you get a print copy made for you and
it's sent to your house and that
way you don't have a stack of I guess
print editions to to mail out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Yep.
That's how they that's how they solved
that problem.
Yeah. They didn't want to deal with
inventory.
They just just wanted to send it out.
And yeah, it was more it's more money to
do it that way,
for sure. But but
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
the the price increase, you know,
took care of that. that's a that's a
pretty neat one.
~ let me just tell another story and we'll
get into the how to's.
~ you know these guys. So my villager is
Weekly sh I should say was a weekly
newspaper in Saint Paul.
and there ~ they were running about thirty
thousand
print copies freely distributed every week
through retail stores in Saint Paul.
And they decided that they wanted to go to
digital subscriptions.
They wanted to not stop printing.
But start charging for print and charging
for digital subscriptions.
I'd say this is probably one of the big
reverse,
big, big, biggest changes I've seen a
publisher do when,
you know, their their philosophy was
everything is free.
Read the ads, and the ad revenue,
you know, was dropping. And they were
like,
wait a second, we need to ~ we need to
lean in on our content and charge for
access.
And it and it worked.
They were, you know, they were able to
essentially ~ again,
communication was everything with their
audience saying,
Look, we need in order to survive,
we need your support. We're gonna create
more great content,
we're gonna do all these great things,
but we're gonna charge a subscription.
And all of a sudden, look again,
looking at the numbers on the back end,
it's like, wow, people were just like,
Take my money, you know. ~ and so now I
think now they're a twice
a month ~ paid ~
print publication. And then of course they
have digital subscriptions running,
which is carrying carrying the ball for
them.
~ really, really interesting thing.
All right, what else we got? I got one
more.
Okay, one more for you. This is in the
creation,
~ like should you should you start a pr a
print publication?
~ and yeah, we have ~ let's see,
catch magazine, they started up ~ with the
print publication that was maybe
a year ago.
And they're they're doing okay.
you know, really fancy fly fishing,
like, you know, money, advertising,
you know, it's enthusiast hobby
publication.
~ but small boats, what they did is they
were never print.
They were always digital. They were pub
publishing digital issues.
They took their content and made it into a
coffee table book.
So they looked at their analytics and they
said,
Hey, well, let's see, what are our popular
articles for the year?
One of the most popular, put together a c
~ a Christmas
You know, addition a coffee table book and
it's old and it did really well for them.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah. So if you're in a especially they're
in a passion hobby,
this is all about how to build small
wooden boats.
And ~ you can imagine,
you know, the folks in this have time and
money,
and so buying a nice coffee table book is
~ is probably a good move for them.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny
it's funny you mentioned that.
We we we occasionally see ~ news
publishers start
publications in news deserts throughout
the country and
Mm.
they start a print side of their ~
interesting.
Yeah, and it's you know, at first you're
like,
Why? Why? Yeah, why?
Well, why would you do that? I it's
~ it's to qualify for public notice.
~ I gotcha. I gotcha.
And in some cases it makes sense if you
think about it.
Okay.
if you're doing a weekly publication,
you've got fifty two, you know,
newspapers that you need to create each
year and ~
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
if the numbers work out and there's no one
else handling public notice
in in your district, then you're the you
will be the one they come to
and ~ if you're starting fresh and you
don't have the overhead,
then I think it can work.
Mm. Mm.
but
But yeah, it's it happens. We see it from
from time to time.
Interesting. Interesting.
Like even recently, yeah.
Can you can you create a public notice
newspaper?
That's free?
There the states the states
are are are really like the statutes are
very intense around like what qualifies
you as a newspaper and
Mm. Mm.
like you have to jump through all of these
different hoops and every single state
has different requirements.
Okay.
But but yeah, it's it's not not easy ~ to
qualify in most cases.
Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting.
That sounds like a big lift. ~ yeah.
It's a lot. It's a big investment
of time, ~ and also money for you know,
in this particular publisher's case,
you gotta do it for
Right.
a whole year before you qualify for that
notice flow of income.
So anyway.
Interesting. ~
I'm gonna okay, I wanna shift to ~ I wanna
shift into like what do you do?
Like how what are what are good ways to
transition?
What what are the things we've seen our
publishers do that have helped
the transition? And the to no surprise to
you before we get into
the details of of digital and print,
the number one thing to do is to build
your email list.
I mean your
When you when you're in digital or when
you're when you're if if you have
to make the decision to drop print and
it's a big decision,
it's a big hit, ~ newsletter becomes the
new product,
right? You may have a newsletter,
but you haven't really spent time making
it incredibly awesome,
right? And the newsletter is the is the
engine that drives traffic back
to your site. So the bigger your your
list,
the more traffic you get back to the site,
more chances you have for digital
upgrades.
And the newsletter becomes the product.
you have in paid subscriptions,
you have two newsletters too. You have a
free newsletter and a paid newsletter,
and they both offer opportunities.
So you essentially you're gonna spend some
time,
mostly time, maybe a little bit of money,
but mostly time getting your newsletter or
product right because it's
the it's the number one thing that lands
in people's inboxes every week,
over and over and over and over again.
You can't
You know, it's hard to much harder to do
that with print.
So the digital space gives you that
opportunity.
Now, ~ just to get into the details a
little bit,
I mean the the the number thing number one
thing you gotta do is stop
the n the pop-up nonsense on your website
where you're asking people to
opt in or using opt-in monster or
something like that,
and start up a registration wall which
requires people to drop in their news
their
email into
here to get access. And so you you need to
build a flywheel here.
We call this the publisher flywheel and it
starts with the email address.
So essentially you have great content,
your it's your superpower, you have an
audience,
that's your superpower. Now you gotta
leverage that,
right? And so let's say after one article
you say,
look, drop off your email address and
you'll get the next article or
two or whatever you decide, however
generous you want to be.
Now you're essentially and we we just we
we
Just released the publisher's ~ AI
survival guide.
Just go to leakypaywall.com and you'll see
it pop up for you.
At least by the time this podcast comes
out,
it'll pop up. ~ and essentially what we
found looking across hundreds
of publishers is that if you put something
like this registration wall in place,
your email signups are about 2x to 7x
greater than
a news letter opt-in.
Essentially. So newsletter opt-ins get
like point nine percent
of traffic and registration wall.
This registration wall ~ gains about I
think the number was 3.2 to 6.7% were
the actual numbers. ~ that's a that's
that's a that's times ~ sorry,
X, not percent, X. So average four or five
times more email addresses than
an opt-in.
This is how you blow up your email list.
And you're getting people to register.
They get a password after this.
And in our case, people can log in through
this as well.
This works like crazy. It's the start of
the flywheel.
So important. I don't care what you're
doing.
This is really the key. But if you're
going,
if you're dropping print or you're cutting
down on print,
you you you this is the way for you to
compensate.
Really produce a kick-ass free newsletter,
which is all about, you know, selling the
upgrade message,
and then the paid newsletter, which which
just takes care of your paid readers.
Yeah, you could look at premium content.
You could look at ~ early delivery.
You can you can do a lot of things.
All this you can automate as especially ~
well.
And ~ okay.
Should I get off my soapbox now?
~ so
all right agreed Tyler what do think?
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was a publisher last week had a a story
that kinda went viral in the town.
It was a a scandal with the the the local
government or something.
And we we noticed a spike in their ~ like
free sign ups,
you know, and
Mm-hmm.
You know, they built like two hundred
extra people on their list through that
story,
right? Not through a sidebar widget that
they all want
Just for one.
to have on their websites. Most publishers
want us to add that,
but through
Yeah.
the free registration, you know,
~ system. So
It works. And then now all of these people
are on the newsletter,
right? And so now they're gonna start
seeing content on a weekly basis,
a daily basis, and you know, hopefully at
some point
Exactly.
we'll be able to convert them over to
paid.
So so yeah, this this works. And and if
you didn't have that up and
you had this viral story, you just had a
bunch of eyeballs that are fleeting,
right? Maybe you got twenty thousand page
views,
but
Zero people signed up for anything because
it was free.
Right. Right.
No one's signing
up for a widget on the sidebar for your
newsletter when the content is free.
That's
Right.
that's the point.
Yep. Yeah. And if you want a a ninja
tactic,
if you have a story that's blowing up,
~ just lock it down. Make people register
to read it.
It's still free, but you get their email.
And ~ we have a new dynamic paywall
function that that does that automatically
for you if you're interested. Okay.
~ just to finish the flywheel,
that big that big list that's sending the
traffic back,
remember when you do this, they're not
just email addresses,
they're actually logged into your site.
So that you're tracking
their behavior throughout all the content.
And then your insights should be
essentially telling you,
hey, which of these free people are highly
engaged?
And then you can target and then you can
target them and send them offers.
And that's what our publishers do.
And it works like crazy. Okay.
Sales pitch over. ~ okay so flipbooks.
Let's talk a little bit about flipbooks
because that's something that
~ print publishers ~ tend to embrace on
the web.
We talked about it earlier and
Yeah, it's easy to do. You take a PDF ~
and you upload it into ~ your your
Flipbook
Maker. ~ we recommend real three D for
WordPress,
real three D flipbook. ~ you can and you
can kind of control everything.
It's cheap and and ~ and then just and
lock it down.
And it becomes it becomes a perk for all
readers,
really. Even if you're not like a print
reader,
sometimes it's fun just to kind of look at
what a print edition looks like.
we
With some crowds, it kinda it depends,
but with some crowds, like I mentioned
before,
the flip book is really the thing they're
paying for,
right? You have to lock it down.
and that that they they don't read
anything else because they're older
and they're just used to the format or
whatever.
so ~ it's tough on mobile.
Think of just remember, like reading a
flipbook on a phone,
not fun. Yeah,
desktop, fine, iPad, fine, phone,
not so good.
So you're you're you it's gotta be just
sort of a perk,
an addition. It's not the product,
it's just sort of a a an an extra for your
your subscription.
~ instead, if you are a print publisher
and you have a deep archive of content,
~ you wanna do the reverse. You wanna get
that archive,
you want to get the archive out of your
PDFs and onto the web as real web
articles,
HTML articles, because because of SEO,
~ because of social sharing.
~ what we find is when a like when a
publisher puts
~ an article on their website,
~ it's like a magnet for traffic.
If if it's news, maybe that magnet is good
for a for for a period of time.
But the evergreen content is the gold,
right? So news publishers do have
evergreen content,
magazine publishers have almost all
evergreen content.
So you want to get that on the web and
you'll you'll it just creates like forever
traffic with social.
And SEO and A AI discoverability too,
which is a separate topic. ~ Modern
Drummer,
when we onboarded ~ magazine, when we
onboarded them,
they they started putting ~ their archives
~ once every month they published
an issue going forward on the web.
they published one archive issue going
backward,
and they doubled their traffic in a year
without even trying.
It was just crazy how live web traffic was
generating.
all that natural as you know organic ~
social sharing all that good stuff.
Okay. I will throw in that
we we have a a new new product for if you
have print archives and you want
to get them on the web, go to reissue.app.
Just check it out. There's ~ you can
upload I think right now it's up
to three free issues to to ~ get all the ~
our AI basically translates all the text
And the images and high quality,
high resolution images, all the formatting
into WordPress posts.
It just shoots them straight into
WordPress.
So you can you can scan ~ an archive up to
a hundred megs,
I think, the of a PDF. And you can you can
edit it quickly right in the app.
And then when it's ready to go,
you just shoot that straight in into
WordPress and they show up as draft posts.
~ our publishers using it are telling us
that it's like magic.
It's they've never seen anything like it.
It's new product. Love to for you to just
try it.
reissue dot app.
Okay. wow, this is my second sales pitch.
How about that? ~ okay,
we talked about email. ~
Talked about the archive. And I'd say,
and I don't know if you have any other
thoughts on this,
but we we sort of talked about telling
readers why.
Like if you're gonna make a big change in
print,
tell your readers why. Be transparent
about why you need to do this.
~ I mean, this goes, this is really,
of course, this is like a human thing.
It's like you're gonna do something
drastic.
You just wanna explain to audience why
you're doing it.
And
Just remember, you're going to tell people
like why it's going to be better down
the road. What are the benefits?
You have the why. This is why we're doing
it.
And here's how we're going to do it.
And this is how it's going to be better.
That's the storyline that you want to send
out in your emails or your print matter
or whatever you use to communicate the big
change.
so I think that's anything else on the
how-to department.
We showed off a few articles, talked
about.
Building an an email list. ~ and making
that the product,
making the newsletter the product.
Anything else, Tyler? Does that cover it
pretty good?
Yeah, that that does it.
I think we got it. Okay. All right.
~ hopefully that was ~ helpful to you
guys.
If you have questions, please reach out
info at leakypaywell dot com.
And ~ hey, catch you next time.
Thanks, Tyler.
See you!
