Securing a new power base: An update on the Unmade adventure
Welcome to Unmade, kicked off on Wednesday lunchtime in the amazing Cuppa, Cake & Collectibles tea shop in Sisters Creek.
Only in Tasmania can you order a jacket potato, pot of leaf tea and home made chocolate brownie, plus a can of Pepsi Max for later, for just $11.50.
Happy Separation of Church and State Day. Maybe we’ll celebrate it properly in Australia at some point.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Sea FM Burnie. It’s a rare day that they’re not playing Jack and Diane. This was not that day.
It’s now nine weeks since I launched Unmade, and four weeks since I turned on the paywall.
Going forward, at least one post per week will be subscriber only, along with some of our podcasts.
For those thinking of subscribing for Unmade’s paid tier, tomorrow will be the last day before I turn off the launch offer. I’ve come to the conclusion that – so long as I do my job properly (and I intend to) – $180 per year is too cheap. So the current 20% off deal – taking it down to $144 – will not be repeated.
As somebody who writes about media business models for a living, it’s been an invigorating couple of months trying out a new one for size. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…
(And by the way, the non-paying subscribers just hit a message above this paragraph, telling them they have to subscribe to read the rest. Now it’s just us…)
So long as there’s interest, I’ll offer a progress update once a quarter or so. They may be a bit of a ramble, but I’m trying to share as much about the process as I can, so feel free to skip if subscription models aren’t your thing.
The main headline is that I think Unmade is going to work, although the business model could yet head in a couple of different directions.
Long before I left Mumbrella, I was fascinated by newsletters as an underrated medium. There’s an awful lot to be said for building a relationship with readers based on habit. I began to feel that more clearly once I started Mumbrella’s Saturday “Best of the Week” email about five years ago.
Trying for a quality threshold to build an expectation that opening each email would be worth the effort became a weekly discipline that ruined my Friday nights.
It came with a growing sense that the main value that experienced trade journalists could add for their readers was context on the events of the day – particularly as many of them departed to better paying gigs away from journalism in other parts of the industry.
And then along came Substack, attempting to do for subscription newsletters what WordPress had done for digital publishing.
I first experimented in August last year, launching a free Substack publication called Fifth Day, alluding to the fact that during the first months of the pandemic our working week had been reduced to four days. About 150 people signed up before I put it into hibernation after just two posts when I signed a publishing deal to write my book.
When it was time to leave Mumbrella’s staff, I was drawn back to Substack for all the reasons I outline above, and for one other – which I haven’t written about here before. But you’re the paying subscriber, so you get to hear it first.
For the next four-and-a-half years, I’m going to have family reasons for spending a lot more time in the UK. From next July, it will be more than half my time.
So I wanted to build a business where the time difference and location worked in my favour.
I found myself being drawn back to the newsletter model. Writing something overnight Australian time, looking at the media and marketing world from an Australian perspective, but capturing global developments, felt like something potentially useful, and different to what is already in the market.
That’s one reason why I’ve been experimenting with getting up at 5am and spending my first three or four hours writing immediately before sending. It’s a dry run for when I’m in the UK time zone.
This week was a good example. The big stories affecting the local market were out of the northern hemisphere. The Google court case, and News Corp’s annual report are where my attention went naturally this week anyway. And, for instance, there was an intriguing development out of Texas overnight with attorney general Bill Paxton, the person leading the case against Google, filing a brief to reinterpret the Communications Decency Act to try to stop Facebook claiming the legal protections of not being a publisher.
But, nonetheless, I was still nervous about becoming irrelevant to the market when I left Mumbrella. My first two years after leaving the editorship of B&T consisted of repeatedly telling agency receptionists: “It’s like ‘umbrella’ with an M in front,” whenever I left a message.
We sold Mumbrella almost four years ago. Its new owner Diversified Communications has known for the last three years or so about my plans to spend more time in the UK. In the non-Covid timeline, I’d have already been there for a year by now, starting Mumbrella Europe.
I even made a first research trip as part of that plan, getting back to Australia on March 2, 2020, noting during my Singapore Airport transit the remarkably large number of people wearing face masks. I planned on making a further three trips throughout 2020. Ha ha.
As a company whose principle business around the world is expos, in a world where they could not be held, Diversified’s appetite for Mumbrella Europe understandably changed.
Still, I was nervous about being out in the cold. Mumbrella had been my home for 13 years and I’m under no illusions that PR people like you for your job title.
I felt that even more acutely shortly after I made the move when I read an interview with Steven Van Zandt about quitting the E Street Band after he fell out with Bruce Springsteen.
“Let that be a lesson, kids. … Never, ever leave your power base. Not until you have secured a new one.”
I was fortunate that Diversified offered to help me secure that power base, and support me in building Unmade while I retained the honorary title of editor-at-large of Mumbrella and continued to contribute to things like the Mumbrellacast.
Nonetheless, I was nervous. The switch into irrelevance is a real thing, and it takes time for the market to get used to changes. Unmade is at the stage where the bosses might be signed up, but not all of their communications people are.
And my reluctance to cut the cord makes it harder. Thanks to the editor-at-large title, a lot of people have the impression that Mumbrella is still the main job and Unmade is a hobby, rather than the other way round.
At the moment I have this slightly confusing triple professional identity where I’m positioning myself as an author to help my book reach as wide an audience as possible, still wear my Mumbrella hat a couple of times a week, yet Unmade is the day job and my main priority.
I find I can hold about one idea in my head about a person, so hoping that other people will understand three is a big ask.
I still have to scrap to make sure I’m on lists. Yesterday Foxtel Media held their upfronts and forgot to invite me. Which was a useful reminder that I need to try harder to get the word out.
So let’s get to the numbers…
When it came time to start Unmade – named for my book, Media Unmade – I rebooted Fifth Day.
When I announced my plan at the end of July, there was a jump from Fifth Day’s 150 or so subscribers to just over 500 to Unmade, which then plateaued, until I started posting on August 23.
By early September we hit 1,000 subscribers to the main email list, and just this week, we passed 1,500.
Above is the chart since I started Fifth Day. The long flatline is the period where it hibernated before being rebadged as Unmade.
The scale of the graph is more flattering to recent audience growth than it deserves. Rescaled to the last 90 days, the growth is still there, but in reality not as dramatic. Slow and steady is what will win this race.
My plan was to play the long game before monetising anything. This was based on the early days of Mumbrella, in which we learned we needed a decent sized audience before looking for advertisers or sponsors.
Slightly to my surprise, a couple of supporters from within the agency and media world reached out anyway to enquire about advertising so I began to consider it.
But then I talked to Substack’s Kiwi founder, Hamish McKenzie, who I’d previously interviewed for the Mumbrellacast. With his support, I was accepted onto a partnership program run by Substack which backs professional writers moving across to the platform.
The program provides a bunch of helpful tools. It’s their subscription to Getty Images that allows me to feature the above image of Little Steven, for instance. It’s their subscription to Rev that allows me to provide transcripts with my podcast interviews. And indeed, they fund the audio production work on my podcasts. They also provide some financial support for my first year, although the contract prevents me from disclosing the amount.
Substack is not a fan of advertising on its platform, and asks its supported journalists to focus on the subscription model during that launch year. Given that this was always going to be a year of building audiences anyway, it was a deal well worth taking.
So I switched on the paid tier a month ago. And here you are.
Rather neatly, I signed up my 100th paying subscriber yesterday afternoon.
I’m still thrilled every time I get an email saying that somebody has signed up. Initially, each name that came up was somebody I knew. And the moment where it began to feel like maybe I was onto something was when I started seeing names of people who I didn’t know, but trusted me enough to support me anyway.
There is, however, a long way to go until the paid subs model proves itself. I’ve started with a relatively low initial subscription price. As it stands, gross annualized revenue is $10,796. Which isn’t bad after just a month of asking people to pay, but a long way from a living.
My instinct is that in time, if I want Unmade to be a business, rather than a one man band, I’ll need to develop an advertising and sponsorship stream. But that will come later.
Now though, the thing that most interests me is the subscription marketing funnel As it stands, 6.4 per cent of Unmade subscribers are on the paying tier. That’s right in keeping with the five to ten per cent of the total list that Substack predicts.
So the name of the game is about bringing in new subscribers to the free list, and then converting them.
And it’s also about pricing. Maybe I should have listened to Mark Ritson’s advice and used the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter to set the price. And once I fully figure out what Unmade looks like, maybe I will. The price should be higher, and will be. (Congrats on spotting a bargain by signing up when you did.)
My sense is that many of those who already joined the paying tier did so to support an independent voice in the industry – and I’ll always be grateful to you, my first hundred. Now, to fully grow, I’ll need to ensure Unmade develops into a product that becomes an important enough tool to become a routine business expense.
As I’ve been experimenting with formats and send times, I’ve gradually moved towards an idea that on weekdays my main focus should be on what’s important, in a shorter, sharper format. And I should offer longer, more analytical pieces once or twice a week. I’ve a hunch that nobody has time to read 2,000 words every day.
But I could be wrong about that. Tell me, if so, at letters@unmade.media, or via the comments.
I’ll also be doing a quarterly tracker of net promotor score, with one question: On a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it that you would recommend Unmade to a colleague?
In its first running, there were 92 responses. The mean score was 8.26.
Turned into a net promoter score – on a range from -100 to +100 – that amounts to +39. Apparently that ranges somewhere between good and excellent.
I’m conscious, however, that there may be a positive bias in readers choosing to respond to the survey in the first place. And of course, those early adopters of Unmade are most likely already positively disposed.
The proof will come as the overall database, and response rate, grows in future quarters.
That growth, by the way, is very much reliant on word of mouth. Something I had not factored in is that many of the social media platforms have their own newsletter platforms, and seem to preference them in their algorithms over Substack. It’s anecdotal, but I’ve gone from seeing dozens or hundreds of engagements on my previous LinkedIn posts, to just a handful whenever I include a link to Unmade.
So please do tell a colleague!
And one other piece of news before I wrap up this first progress update.
Tomorrow, I’ll be launching a new series on the podcast.
I’ve been turning Unmade into an audiobook. The first chapter drops tomorrow. As a paying subscriber, you’ll get all of the chapters.
For now though, thank you for your support.
Clarifications and corrections: News Corp circulation
I have a correction to a point I made in yesterday’s analysis of the News Corp 2021 annual report.
I wrote: “But what is also striking is how much printed circulation most have dried up since the audit was killed off. Even four years ago, the Daily Telegraph was claiming sales of 240,000, just for the print edition. Now it’s little more than half that across print and digital.”
I wasn’t comparing apples with apples. That audited circulation number of four years ago included both news stand and subscription sales. The number provided in the annual report referred to subscribers only.
Nearly time to let you go about your Thursday. I’ve a hectic few days coming up.
I’ll be recording the Mumbrellacast this afternoon – Google, Facebook and News Corp are on the list of topics.
And remember how I mentioned I’d be spending more time in the UK? Scott Morrison confirmed yesterday that it will be legal for us to leave without an exemption from November 1. I’ve managed to get a ticket for November 7, next Sunday. It’s been the longest I’ve been away from the family since being in Australia, so I can’t wait. I plan to be over there until late January, working on Unmade every day.
So I’m spending the next few days packing, along with jamming in a couple of days of meetings in Sydney on the way out. I’m also putting the finishing touches to listing my place on Airbnb while I’m away. I’ve been spending far more time than I’d like finding matching doona covers and the like in Spotlight. Who knew sheets were so expensive?
Have a great day, and look out for the podcast tomorrow.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Proprietor – Unmade
