I wanted to send out a big thanks to everyone who’s signed up for Prime since the evening of the 24th when I announced that we were just one sign up short of 1000 sign ups for Prime August. The winner – or the 1000th sign up ended up being TPM Reader JC. (So he can identify himself JC’s first and last names end in S and Y.) Like I said, there’s no prize for being 1000th this month. But it’s no less awesome. So thanks to JC and everyone else who signed up. We’re currently at 1082 for August. And we’re shooting to match July, the first partial month of our 2016 drive when we signed up 1315 new Prime subscribers.
As I’ve been telling you, Prime is a critical part of the future of this publication, both as an expanding part of the publication with deeply reported long form articles, a new podcast slated to debut next month and a bunch else – but also a critical part of our business model.
Ads are and will remain a critical part of how we get the money to fund this operation. But they aren’t enough. To be the kind of publication we want to be and want to become we need membership to become a central part of how we fund the operation. It gives us resources to do things we couldn’t otherwise do, fund projects and reporting and salaries in ways that are difficult or impossible to manage in a purely ad-based funding model. It also gives us stability and predictability, which allows our entire team – editorial and publishing staffers – to focus on making the site the best it can be.
I’m incredibly grateful to all our advertisers. But at the end of the day it is a purely transactional relationship – which is how we want it to be, for all the obvious reasons. If TPM disappeared, our advertisers wouldn’t miss us. There are other places to advertise. So that’s an inherently fragile foundation to stand on. The people who would miss us is you. Not the people who see a link and come by once or happen by a few times a month. They’d find other places to read the news. But our regular daily readers.
After 15 years-plus of doing this, I’ve learned quite a lot about the digital publishing industry. When I started there barely was a digital publishing industry – the whole thing had only existed for 5 or 6 years. It’s grown up with us. From that knowledge I know that our readership patterns are not unique but quite distinct from most other publications. A much higher percentage of our readership comes from people who visit the site not just most days or even everyday but multiple times a day. That’s different. Most publications don’t have that. (That’s also a reason we’re less dependent on social media services like Facebook and Twitter, though of course we work hard to get readers there too.) Most of our audience comes to us from the front page of TPM. That’s an incredibly valuable resource for a publication because it’s a real relationship. That’s why Prime is critical. Because if we can accomplish what we’re trying to do it will mean that a central part of the revenue base comes from people who would miss us if we weren’t here. That’s a firm foundation – as long as we keep doing and doing well what brings you here everyday. The digital publishing world is rapidly changing and advertising based revenue sources are even more ephemeral. Our relationship with our core readership is different. It can endure in the face of all of that.
So that’s why I’m spending all this time encouraging as many of you as possible to sign up. If what I’ve said makes sense to you and you’re a regular reader who hasn’t yet signed up, take a moment right now and become part of what we’re doing. I guarantee you that you’ll also benefit directly in a more tangible way with the better and fuller version of TPM you get with your membership. But it’s important for both reasons. Ready? Here’s the link right here.
