Did The Verge figure out a great way to increase homepage traffic?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Let’s jump into it… Did The Verge figure out a great way to increase homepage traffic?It's been a year since The Verge redesigned its home page so it featured short, Twitter-like link posts. The site claims the redesign significantly increased user engagement:
Did SEO specialists ruin the internet?Speaking of The Verge, it published a pretty spicy history of the SEO industry, asking whether it’s the culprit responsible for flooding search results with so much low-quality content:
I think a pretty big reason the SEO industry has such a negative reputation is it served for years as one of the greatest sources of spam. I remember a time in the mid-2000s when running a comments section on my blog became unmanageable because it was inundated with so much automated spam content from SEO link farmers. My inbox has also been bombarded with offers of “guest posts” from SEO consultants who are trying to place links back to their clients. A lot of that activity has since died down — I haven’t had many spammy comments on my Substack and I can’t remember the last time I was offered a guest post — but a lot of that stench still lingers for anyone old enough to remember it. ICYMI: How ScoopWhoop became one of India’s most viral publishersThe BuzzFeed-like site has built two popular channels on YouTube, one of which serves as a counterbalance to partisan TV news. How TikTok is transforming the music industryWired profiled a talent manager who specializes in finding artists on TikTok right before they blow up:
The worker bees of the Creator EconomyMany of the top creators now employ entire staffs that work behind the scenes on both the creative and business sides of their operations. Business Insider interviewed several of these workers to get an idea of what it's like to be employed by a famous influencer:
Do you sell a product targeted toward marketers, media executives, or professional creators?What a coincidence! That’s exactly who reads my newsletter. You can find out how to advertise to them over here. More content = more trafficThe Daily Mail has developed a reputation as a web traffic behemoth. A lot of that success simply boils down to the fact that it produces a crap ton of content:
The rise of influencer journalistsThere's a rising generation of "influencer journalists" who are creating native news content on social platforms. While this has lead to new perspectives from people with more diverse backgrounds, many of these influencers aren't actually conducting any original journalism:
Getting off the subscription hamster wheelInbox Collective published a case study from a newsletter writer who developed a series of evergreen ebooks around her niche:
Sometimes, it's better to create evergreen information products that you can sell into perpetuity than it is to launch a paid subscription newsletter where you're required to churn out new paid content every week. What’s the journalistic value of a scoop?This is a great profile of Punchbowl's Jake Sherman. It does a good job of asking whether his "micro-scoops" really amount to any meaningful information that's actually serving the public:
We haven’t hit peak subscription just yetA large portion of the population doesn't pay for news subscriptions, but if a person subscribes to one publication, there's an 81% chance that they subscribe to multiple publications:
Let’s take this relationship to the next levelI only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |
Older messages
How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Simon Carless carved out a niche in the gaming industry by tracking the metrics around game releases.
The creator “middle class” does exist
Friday, October 27, 2023
PLUS: How Cameo lost its way
How the Tangle newsletter reached 77,000 readers and $624,000 in annual revenue
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Isaac Saul wanted to create an antidote to the hyper partisan media ecosystem that dominates the web.
The thriving Creator Economy company you've never heard of
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
PLUS: How Substack justifies its 10% fee
Big tech is breaking up with publishers
Friday, October 20, 2023
PLUS: How to use Instagram for news distribution
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