Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year

I like to say that I write about media generally and journalism specifically because the industry is a canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impact of the Internet: text shifted from newsprint to the web seamlessly, completely upending the industry’s business model along the way.Of course I have a vested interest in this shift: for better or... See more

The real breakthroughs that enabled the revival of the 1,000 True Fans model are better understood as cultural. The rise in both online news paywalls and subscription video-streaming services trained users to be more comfortable paying à la carte for content. When you already shell out regular subscription fees for newyorker.com, Netflix, Peacock, ... See more

I think Substack did a lot to pioneer the subscription model of newsletters. But I think those two models (ads or subscription) leave a lot of writers still without a great business model.

Substack identified a business model (subscriptions) that aligns reader, writer, and company incentives.

It’s easy to think that the Internet Age is well-established, but the truth is we’re only getting started. Remember, it took nearly two decades for the Model T to develop the car ecosystem to the point where new opportunities emerged to offer differentiated vehicles at much higher prices and much greater per-unit profit (Mercedes-Benz, for example,... See more

It seems to me, then, that the only long-term solution is to acquire customers directly, and to monetize them directly. The Internet is an efficiency machine, which means that closely related objectives, a la publishers seeking to reach more readers and advertisers seeking to reach more customers, are not sufficient; content and business need to be... See more