Ben T back on Daring Fireball … again.
You would have thought that they had something to promote.
No dithering in that decision I guess.
Will come back later with details, but off the top of my head, as far as I can see, Gruber and Thompson generated more cash in subscriptions in a week than The Intercept has achieved after many weeks, just to keep itself going - and their overheads must be through the roof compared to a couple of Apple bloggers.
@JohnPhilpin power of brand right? They both have substantial audiences to market to, even if softly marketing. The way to look at Dithering, and I don't mean this negatively, is as an upsell for their existing customers.
Coming back as I said I would.
To be clear - not to say that both these gentlemen deserve what they are getting - the public is voting with their wallet - money is coming in because the public perceive there value. All Good.
Gruber on the first week of Dithering
We’ve had just over 5,000 sign-ups so far and not one single request for a refund. Zero! And for that $5/month price you get access to the whole back catalog of episodes going back to mid-March.
Fag Packet Analysis:
5,000 * 5 * 12 = $300,000 annualized subscriptions - OR ... if they all came through as $3 extensions to Ben's existing series - knock that down by 40% .. so say $180,000 ... so somewhere in the middle ... $250,000 with more to come probably.
This is to add to revenues that both already have ... translation - they are doing ok.
Meanwhile - over at The Intercept ... they are running a May campaign ... attempting to hit $500K
On the 27th they have only got to $360K (they say - but I guess like all fund raising - I suspect they have some unspoken dinations that will suddenly come o=inon the final day)
This all in light of what Gruber has been writing about re Howard Stern and Jo Rogan,
Brand indeed has power.
But of course there is also what you are saying and who you are writing about.
Not really sure what I am trying to say, other than we seem to be ok with paying for our entertainment, but still don’t seem to be interested in paying for news - commentary and analysis on same, investigative journalism etc etc.
What is right is that the ad supported models do need to go ...
BUT maybe there is room for other ways to reward the written word.