Print publications have been hit hard in recent years as more consumers flock to digital content. Newspapers have experienced the worst of this trend, with a $5 billion decrease in ad revenue between 2010 and 2015. Meanwhile, magazine revenue remained relatively flat from 2014 to 2015. Getting new readers onboard remains a constant struggle for print publishers.
At the other end of the publishing spectrum, digital content is soaring. Amazingly, in a time when there’s no shortage of highly-valuable free content, Foundr magazine has managed to grow, even with a premium subscription to its digital magazine.
I had a chance to sit down with Nathan Chan of Foundr to discuss the magazine’s success and find out what it’s done to get people to open their wallets for digital content.
Bootstrapping the Next Trend in Content
Sujan: Thanks for meeting with me, Nathan. I’m excited to share the amazing things you’ve done with Foundr. Tell us about yourself first, and then let’s dive into this topic. I’m dying to know how to do it myself.
Nathan: Sure thing! I started Foundr back in March of 2013. I wanted to create this digital magazine that would target entrepreneurs and founders, especially young and aspiring entrepreneurs in the novice stages.
At the time, I felt like there wasn’t really a publication out there that really spoke to that crowd. I was so risk-averse in the beginning, though. I had $3,000 to bootstrap my startup, but I kept working at my day job in the meantime. I didn’t know if my idea was going to work at all because I knew that print was a dying trade. It’s so expensive to produce a print magazine.
That’s why I decided to do it digitally, but in a way that people wouldn’t think it’s just a blog. It has a cover, table of contents, and a masthead. It’s professionally edited and everything.
It’s interesting that we’re talking about getting people to pay for content with Foundr. People already pay for content – just look at Apple and the app marketplace. People are paying for apps, and that’s content. They’ll pay for content all day long, but if it’s not packaged in a way that makes it valuable to them, then they won’t pay.
We packaged it right with Foundr, and inside there’s strong, evergreen content full of value. Other publications don’t really give away a lot of in-depth content, but we focus on that heavily. We’re not just packaging up awesome content; we’re also saving people time.
You could sit down and read the magazine in 30 minutes and find a piece of advice from someone we interviewed, like Richard Branson, that is absolute gold. You could also get some great leadership advice that could make you millions of dollars over time.
With Foundr, we created a source people can trust and rely on, full of great content on a consistent basis.
We’ve branched out beyond the magazine as well, with a strong presence on social, decent traction with our blog, and an e-newsletter. We recently built a membership site that contains premium content and put that magazine behind a paywall, bundled with influencers and a community. Now we’re getting into e-learning and educational products.
Winning with Visual Content
Sujan: Out of all your channels, which would you say is your main channel?
Nathan: Most definitely Instagram. We built our following from zero to over 850,000 followers in about 19 months and we have one of the largest business accounts producing startup-focused content on Instagram. That’s been a tremendous platform for connecting with our target audience.
Sujan: Do you think being one of the early adopters of Instagram for business purposes was a big part of that success?
Nathan: We definitely had a first move advantage. Instagram has been around for a while, but I think many businesses didn’t understand that you could use it to drive traffic. I think what we’re doing, by providing a lot of value, helps it in a big way.
Build Success with Value, Not Advertising
Sujan: In a multi-channel approach like yours, what else have you done that got people to pay for content?
Nathan: I think our emphasis on design creates higher perceived value, professionalism, trust, respect, and even excitement when people come to it the first time. The design wows them. It’s not just about having great content but also packaging it to look amazing.
We’ve also been able to feature a lot of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation on our covers, like Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, Tim Ferriss, and many more. We use ambassadors and influencers quite heavily in our marketing. When people see our brand, and we ask them to pay for content, they respond because they see it as a legit magazine after reading testimonials and reviews, as well as the design and influencers.
If you compare us to print magazines, you’ll see that they have a strong focus on advertising as sources of revenue, and their costs are high because they’re printing copies. We flip the model on its head so it’s all digital, low-cost, high-scale production quality, and we provide high-value content featuring influencers that our audience loves. It’s a really cost-effective model for content.
Sujan: That’s great, and I can’t emphasize enough how important that design is. It’s that first impression someone has with your brand experience.
Nathan: Right, and great design is now a commodity. You can go anywhere online and find amazing designers for a fraction of what it used to cost.
Steve Jobs really emphasized the importance of design. He said it’s not how it looks but rather how it feels. That’s something I’m focused on with the experience. When people see our brand, what does that experience feel like?
Master Channels One At a Time to Master Them All
Sujan: That’s really important. Are there any other points you think contributed to your success in general?
Nathan: Caring is a big one. We go above and beyond in what we do for our audience and community. We could easily charge for all of our content, but we spend tens of thousands of dollars putting it together and giving it away. Making our free content better than people’s paid content creates a lot of reciprocity.
Consistency is critical, too. We focus on mastering one channel at a time, whether it’s blogging or podcasting or social like Instagram. Once we’ve mastered it, we put a system in place to maintain consistency. We have been doing that across every channel, and the more we compound our efforts, the more growth we see.
Sujan: I know it sounds like basic stuff, like consistency and design, but it’s also important to have the resources to do it right and grow a brand. In your opinion, is there a way to hack it?
Nathan: Truthfully, just start reading. When we want to master a channel, we’ll purchase a couple courses and read a ton of blog posts. Then we start testing until we find out what works.
Another part of that is networking with experts to find out what’s working. With Instagram, we worked out a lot of the process on our own, but I learned from other experts as well. That’s been the case for every channel so far, even with the magazine. You have to be super patient, but you can fast-track things by researching, reading, and speaking with as many experts as possible.
You won’t get instant results, but it doesn’t take forever, either. Just focus on one thing at a time and keep chipping away.
Do you think your content has so much built-in value that your audience would be willing to pay for it? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below:
