Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
Andreas Stegmannmedium.comSaved by sari
Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
What Thompson’s success shows very clearly is that we as a society are clamoring for somebody to make sense of stuff happening around us.
Andreas Stegmann • Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
My bigger gripe is with the chosen business model. For comparisons sake take a look at Wirecutter. Their model is more aligned and a win-win-win for everyone involved (a free website with customer benefit that generates at least $30 million per year). Affiliate marketing has less hurdles and just feels more Internet-like.
Andreas Stegmann • Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
The default method of getting to where I want to on the web is search. By putting content behind a paywall it’s non-existent for the Google Bot, which is bad for driving traffic (potential customers) to your site and constructing an interlinked narrative. It’s also bad for generating any kind of virality. Because of those reasons almost all paid ne... See more
Andreas Stegmann • Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
But it feels strange that we basically settled with the paywall as the only viable business model for written content on the internet. A model that is at odds with how the web is structured and set up economically:
Andreas Stegmann • Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
Users (and therefore revenue) rise linear instead of exponential, while marginal costs follow in parallel.
Andreas Stegmann • Ben Thompson’s Stratechery should be crossing 3 Million in Profits this Year
Take those official data points and extrapolate them to today in a linear fashion and you’ll arrive at 25,935 paying subscribers.