Whether publishers realize it or not, we may be reaching the end of an era of our overreliance on social platforms. Due to how the economy is weakening and specific platforms undergoing fascinating ownership changes, platforms are becoming far more unpredictable for us.

But first... A short sponsor message.

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I recently signed up for SparkLoop to test out its partner network. Essentially, it's a marketplace connecting newsletter operators looking to monetize with those looking to grow. Like promotes like very well, so people who read newsletters are more likely to sign up for others. I've never promoted one, so I am testing it out here. That said if you want to check it out, sign up here.

Here are a couple of newsletters I am promoting this week:

1. State of Digital Publishing: This weekly newsletter is about media and technology news, trends, and tips.
2. Creator Wizard: For those going solo, a twice-weekly newsletter with potential sponsorship opportunities.

I'll keep you posted on how this works. But, in the meantime, I am excited to see how SparkLoop is introducing new ways to help solo newsletter operators monetize and grow their lists.

Now let's dig in...

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On Friday, CBS News announced that it would be halting its Twitter activity. According to Variety:

This was short-lived. According to a tweet, CBS News said:

There's nothing overly surprising here. The media world doesn't know what to do with Twitter right now. But it never has. Media companies share on Twitter because everyone else also shares on Twitter. But does it drive traffic or revenue? I suspect that it has been dropping over the years. But it's now a lot more confusing. Will the usage of Twitter rise once Elon Musk has finished whatever he calls this period of time? Or will it continue to flounder? It's hard to say.

And it's not just Twitter. Meta (Facebook) announced two weeks ago that it was letting go of 11,000 people. According to NiemanLab:

This is only the next step in Facebook's plan to minimize news on its platform. According to NiemanLab:

Publishers just weren't that interesting to the platforms. It makes sense. To properly monetize content, publishers needed to get the traffic from the platforms onto their owned and operated. But this ran counter to what Facebook wanted because it meant users were leaving its platform. An ad business was competing with another ad business.

Even news aggregators are struggling to be as helpful to publishers as they used to be. According to Digiday:

This is obviously more of a user interest problem than anything, but even here, publishers cannot depend on them like we used to. It's just not as effective a source of traffic.

And please, for the love of everything, do not get me started on Mastodon. This is not going to become a new source of traffic for anyone.

A few tropes have come up throughout the three years I have been writing A Media Operator. And I want to reiterate another one today: traffic from these platforms will never completely stop, but you will never be in control of it, and their dependability will ebb and flow.

Whether we're talking about social, SEO, or aggregators, that's true. However, as much as we may try, we do not control what goes into traffic driving to our sites. Therefore, we should spend less time trying to game these platforms and more time doing whatever we can to convert these users to our owned and operated properties.

This is why I have long believed every media company should start as a newsletter. From the beginning, you are building something you control. While we can't control if platforms change their inbox strategies—or Apple introducing MPP—the simple fact that we can push content gives us a significant leg up. Of course, blasting out a tweet doesn't guarantee anyone can see it. And good luck if you think Facebook will send you traffic these days.

The game must be converting the traffic into an owned audience. I love SEO. It's where I got my start. But I'm not deluded into thinking I can depend on Google forever. Keyword interest changes and upstarts attempt to capture the top positioning. But if I convert users from Google into an owned audience, I become less reliant as time goes on.

I started this by saying we couldn't depend on platforms anymore. Maybe we never could. But for a solid decade, many media operators thought they could build a sustainable business on the backs of the platforms. Those days are dying. Owned audiences are the future like they always should have been.

Paid subscriptions are more likely to subscribe to more

One of the criticisms I've received about an advertising business is that it's less predictable than subscriptions. However, the same economic climate that might make advertisers pull back is also one that might have consumers rethinking their subscriptions.

According to Toolkits:

Both of these data points are indeed very interesting. First, contraction is common sense. People are feeling the pinch of losing their jobs and inflation. Paying for content becomes a lower priority compared to feeding the family.

However, I find the second paragraph even more impactful: 44% plan to add more by year's end for users with five or more subscriptions.

While not apples to apples, we found something similar at Morning Brew. As users subscribed to more newsletters, they became more engaged with all of them. It ran counter to our hypothesis that more emails would overwhelm. On the contrary, people who sought out more engaged with more content.

It's a potentially similar scenario with these paying subscribers. As users get used to paying for content, converting them to pay for more content becomes easier.

But how does this help publishers? There are two ways. First, if you can create a persona of the user likely to pay for content, you can become smarter with your marketing. Second, as you start creating new products, you might be able to convince them to pay more for the bundle. For example, this is how The New York Times is attempting to grow its subscription revenue.

But, bringing it back to the first point, no business model is perfect when economic times are rough. Whether it's advertisers or consumers pulling spending, publishers still make less money.

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts, hit reply. Or, become a premium member to receive even more AMO and an invite to the Slack channel. Have a great week!