Three months in: an update on Unmade’s progress
Welcome to Unmade, written in snowy West Sussex, while you were sleeping on Tuesday morning.
Happy National Mason Jar Day, hipsters.
The UK’s biggest media properties appear to have angered the gods of live broadcasting. The last four nights of I’m A Celebrity have been cancelled because of extreme weather. Usually the British version is filmed in Queensland, but Covid restrictions saw ITV switch the show to a ruined castle in north Wales, which then proved to be the bullseye of Storm Arwen.
And a few hours ago, BBC Radio 4’s flagship show, The Today Programme, was forced off air because of a noisy fire alarm. The nearest such radio moment I can think of in Australia was perhaps Fran Kelly’s dog barking at the postie when she was broadcasting RN Breakfast from home during lockdown.
Today’s email is, as promised on Monday, an update on Unmade’s progress since launching three months ago.
The same thing applies as last month’s update: this is worth skipping unless you’re interested in the minutiae of business models in publishing. I plan to share the ups and downs. As I hit a rhythm, I suspect that this type of update will become quarterly, and eventually only annual.
There have already been a few monthly milestones.
The first Unmade email was on August 23, about three weeks after I left my staff role at Mumbrella.
The next month, on September 30, I announced that we would be launching a paid tier, and had joined the Substack Pro program. This sees Substack – the platform this newsletter is built on – offer some of its writers financial and practical support including a subscription to Getty Images, funding for podcast audio production and access to the Rev transcription service, among other things.
We published Unmade’s first post just for paying subscribers on October 27. Like this one, I shared all of the data I had so far, including subscriber numbers.
I’ll get to that updated data in a moment.
Before the paywall kicks in, it’s worth mentioning for those still considering subscribing to the paid for tier of Unmade that I’m currently running an offer which reduces the annual price from $650 to $169.
There are just 17 days left of this price. It’ll never be as low again. My aim is that, come next year, as Unmade hits its stride, anyone who subscribed now won’t be able to believe what a bargain they locked in.
Some of those who have been following the journey have suggested my relatively low pricing strategy is not entirely rational. After the paywall, I’ll explain one factor that’s not so obvious from the outside.
We’ve just gone past the paywall, by the way. Thanks for being a paying supporter.
The numbers
So let’s get straight to the numbers.
First, the overall subscribers. We’re now up to 2,725. Pleasingly, the biggest single group seems to be marketers.
Second, paying subscribers. There are now 154 of you.
The two big jumps in paying subscribers in the graph above coincide with turning on the paywall, and then the deadline arriving for our first special offer.
The green colour represents annualised subscribers. The purple one, monthly subscribers. The comparatively big discount on an annual price compared to monthly is most likely what explains why annual subscribers dwarf monthly.
I’d hope to see another jump in a fortnight when the deadline approaches for the current offer to expire.
Then comes gross annualised revenue, which does not factor in too much just yet, but will at some point. As you‘ll see, it’s not particularly significant, floating at around $18,000. This is no get rich quick scheme.
The biggest mistake (that I know of) so far
Which brings me to the biggest error I’ve made so far (which is to the benefit of most of the people reading this). Initially I set my headline annual subscription price much too low. I’ve now increased it to $650.
I’m in the fortunate position of being able to make this a long term play. So my plan was always to offer a low priced introduction to Unmade during the first year and then unabashedly ask for a higher ongoing price once I’d (hopefully) demonstrated that it was good value and something that people in our industry’s employers should be willing to pay for. After the first year there won’t be any heavy discounting.
However, a feature of the Substack platform that I’d overlooked is that so long as people continue to renew their subscriptions each year, their original headline price is grandfathered in.
So those who grabbed the initial $144 annual price, discounted down from $180, will always be able to renew at $180 – even though I’ve since put the base price up to that more realistic $650 per year.
Now I’ve corrected that, people who sign up for the current offer of a 74 per cent discount on $650 will grandfather at $650, even if I put it up again, and so on.
I must admit, I’m not too unhappy about my mistake. If 100 or so of Unmade’s earliest supporters get to stay on a great price even after the first year, they deserve the reward for the leap of faith they made in the early days.
Strategy for the next few months
After the current discounted offer comes to an end, I plan to dial back the focus on paying subs for quite a while. I’ll still be publishing regular paid-only posts so that non-payers occasionally hit a paywall, but I won’t make as much noise about them.
Something I’ve noticed that I’ve been able to only effectively communicate one message at a time – either around building up an overall audience as fast as possible, or converting subscribers to the paying tier. It’s hard to do the second without losing some momentum on the first.
The advice from Substack is that you can hope that about ten percent of your overall base will convert to paid. That seemed to be broadly correct when I had my first big push. About 1,500 subscribers at the time turned into 150 paying supporters.
So the long term game is to steadily build the overall audience. I reckon the overall universe of people working somewhere in the communications industry in Australia is between 70,000 to 100,000. I’d love to get to the point in a year or so where 10,000 are signed up for the main list.
So my plan is to focus on building word of mouth, and asking supporters to pass it on. Actually, that’s essential. Since LinkedIn and Twitter launched newsletter platforms themselves, their algorithms have become distinctly unhelpful in sharing Substack content. It then becomes something of a self defeating cycle, with me less motivated to share links on those platforms in the first place, knowing that it will probably be deprioritised anyhow. But deep down, I know that I still should.
Anyway, if that theoretical 10,000 free subscribers eventually converts to 1,000 paying supporters at a range from $180 to $650, that would mean gross annualised revenue of perhaps $500,000 in a year or two.
However, it’s worth taking into account that Substack and the payment platform would take a cut of about 15 per cent of that. And because it’s an inclusive price, GST will come out too, once Unmade passes the $75,000 revenue threshold.
But that would be enough revenue to think about hiring another staffer at some point, particularly if there are other monetisation options to hang on the Christmas tree by then.
Year two
The dilemma for the publishing model will come next year. In the first year, the decision has been made for me. Part of being accepted onto the Substack Pro program is that you undertake not to monetise the email through advertising during that initial 12 months. That’s no bad thing, as it brings focus.
But I’ve always been a believer in B2B publishing being about building a brand, then monetising it in multiple ways. Take your typical B2B publisher – they can add a lot of baubles to their Christmas tree. They put ads on their websites (either programmatic or sold directly). They organise conferences where they sell tickets and sponsorships. They organise awards where they charge entry fees, sell tables to finalists, and seek sponsorship. They might also build job boards. These days everyone has a branded content unit. And, yes, some also charge for subscriptions.
But all of that starts with building an audience. And in turns that comes from building a trusted brand. So either way, the first steps are the same.
There’s a lot to consider in how Unmade evolves from here.
As far as I know, we have only so far had one person unsubscribe. She sent a kind message saying: “Love your notes but too many for me to keep up on top of everything else.”
And that’s the big question. If I’m asking people to pay for my content among a sea of free emails, Unmade really needs to deliver a lot of value.
My starting point was thinking about the way I used to approach writing the Best of the Week Saturday email for Mumbrella. It was often a couple of a thousand words, and I always sought to add new context or analysis of the week’s events not already available.
Sometimes, I’ve been doing that several times a week with Unmade. I wonder whether that’s too much, particularly on a busy weekday.
I’ve also got a feeling that there may be a gap for a really good daily digest of what’s important – digestible without needing to click out of the email to get the full story. By digest, I mean a curated list of perhaps ten key stories of the day, tightly covered. The value would come not just from the choices made in curation, but in the context with which they are written.
If you’re not quite sure what I mean, yesterday’s newsletter was written in that briefing format, as a bit of an experiment. Please do take a look if you didn’t see it, as I’d love to know your thoughts.
I have a couple of questions for myself around that format though.
First: Is the added value in a daily briefing visible enough that people would believe it worth subscribing for? At first glance, it’s hard to tell the difference between a roundup of the latest press releases, and a genuine deep scouring for the most important stuff. While it takes several hours just to stay on top of the daily output of the English language marketing press around the world, others can take short cuts.
If you’re genuinely only including the most significant stuff, then it’s a great way of hiding work. Yesterday’s email was every bit as hard work as a longer, more essay like one, but I’m not sure that would be obvious.
And second, would a better time of day for that type of digest-style email be at the close of business, like CNN’s Reliable Sources email, rather than first thing? Given that (borders permitting!) I’ll be splitting my time between Australia and the UK for the next four years, that would be a tricky timezone for me.
I’d love to know your thoughts on those questions. Right now, we’re a closed community of 155 – perhaps we can talk among ourselves in the comment thread below.
But let’s get back to the stats.
Email opens is another indicator of performance.
So far, the most opened email – at 3,619 times (which also suggests a high pass-on rate that day) – was last month’s in which I got into the detail of the US court case alleging malfeasance by Google in the programmatic space
The percentage open rate for any given email seems to hover between 40-50 per cent. However, it’s worth noting that these days Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection protocol, introduced back in mid-September, is likely delivering everybody artificially higher numbers.
Overall though, things are unfolding for Unmade slightly faster than I expected.
Unmade has the beginnings of an engaged audience, who are getting in the habit of opening their email most days. Slow and steady may just win the race.
Thank you as ever for your support. And please do tell me what you think.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Proprietor – Unmade
letters@unmade.media
