Sourced from OCCRP

Professional scammers call upon a global network of service providers to execute their work in a sophisticated, streamlined fashion. Here are some of their names.

Feature image credit: Banner: James O’Brien / OCCRP

Sourced from OCCRP

By Kyle Christie Edited by Maria Bailey

How solopreneurs can use YouTube and AI to stay discoverable and build trust in a changing search landscape.

The digital space is noisy and fast-moving. For solopreneurs, staying visible is one of the biggest challenges. While many chase quick wins on Instagram or LinkedIn, the most reliable platform for long-term visibility remains YouTube. As artificial intelligence changes how people search for information, YouTube isn’t just useful — it’s essential.

A 2024 Statista survey found that 63% of Gen Z prefer YouTube over traditional search engines, and 58% turn to TikTok. This signals a major shift in behaviour: people want video content that is direct, trustworthy and easy to engage with. And as AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini become more embedded in everyday searches, video is becoming the format people trust most when they need real answers.

Why YouTube still works

Unlike social platforms where content disappears in hours, YouTube acts more like a searchable library. A single helpful video can be discovered, indexed and recommended for months or even years. That gives solopreneurs a major advantage — a way to stay visible without constantly churning out new content.

AI is supercharging this effect. When someone types a question into tools like Google, ChatGPT or Gemini — “How do I price my services as a freelance designer?” for example — the answer often includes a recommended YouTube video. That video is usually pulled from a channel that’s clear, specific and helpful. This creates a major opportunity for small business owners to show up right when potential clients are looking.

My experience: showing up when it matters

I started my YouTube channel, See Your House Now, 14 years ago. We have just over 1,000 subscribers — not a massive number — but that’s not the point. People find us when they need us. Our most-watched video is titled Who is the best real estate photographer in Waterloo Region? That’s a question people search using AI tools, and because of that video, we stand out and get clients.

For us, it’s never been about going viral. It’s about being in the right place at the right time. Most of our in-person video service inquiries come from people who first found us on YouTube. We also host client real estate tours on the channel, which adds more value. It’s a quiet engine for our business — and best of all, it’s free.

Five steps to build a YouTube presence that lasts

Start a purpose-driven channel
If you don’t already have a channel, start now. Focus your content on the specific questions your audience is asking. Instead of broad topics like “how to grow a business,” choose direct, niche-specific titles like “how to get clients as a solo architect” or “how to raise rates as a copywriter.” Make each video answer a real question your ideal client would type into a search bar.

Use AI to reverse engineer your titles
You don’t need to be tech-savvy to use ChatGPT or Gemini. Ask what questions your audience might be searching or request optimized title suggestions for your niche. Try prompts like, “What would a real estate agent in Houston search for on YouTube right now?” These insights help build a stronger content calendar that aligns with what people actually want to watch.

Optimize your metadata
Help both people and algorithms understand your videos. Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions, relevant tags and upload transcripts to boost accessibility and search ranking. Small details like this help your videos surface when and where they matter most.

Design thumbnails that stand out
Your thumbnail is often the first impression. Keep it bold, simple and consistent. Use a high-quality image of your face, a short phrase with large text, and a clear visual identity so people instantly recognize your videos. Free tools like Canva make this easy — just search for “most popular” templates to get started.

Create a content series
Don’t think in one-off videos. Build short series around your core topics. This improves discoverability — no matter how someone phrases a question, they’re more likely to land on your channel. A focused series also builds trust faster than scattered videos.

The future of being found

For solopreneurs, the biggest challenge isn’t making great content — it’s making sure people find it long after you’ve posted. YouTube solves that problem. Especially when paired with smart AI tools, it gives your work a longer shelf life and higher impact.

This isn’t about chasing trends or going viral. It’s about showing up with clarity, consistency, and value when your audience is ready. If you create content that answers real questions, YouTube will continue to work for you long after it’s posted. And that’s the kind of strategy that leads to sustainable growth

By Kyle Christie 

Founder & Creative Director at See Your House Now Inc. at The Listing Lounge. Kyle Christie has taken all of the editorial and production skills learned in his career as a television journalist and applied them to real estate. The result is a marketing agency that provides clear messaging, imagery and promotional content to help real-estate professionals stand out.

Edited by Maria Bailey

Sourced from Entrepreneur

By Jodie Cook

You know you should be posting online every day, so you do. But your focus on quantity is leaving quality behind. Most content sucks, and some of yours probably does. It’s safe, predictable, and instantly forgettable. You’re doing it to hit a quota, not to make a real difference. Hitting publish is no use if the words don’t hit home. You’re simply training your audience to ignore your work.

The difference between viral and invisible is the courage to say what you really mean. The courage to share what people are really thinking. ChatGPT can help. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through.

Transform boring content ideas into viral hits with ChatGPT

Say what your industry gets wrong

Boring content happens when you’re scared to have a real opinion. Everyone nods along to the same tired advice. Nobody challenges the status quo. Your industry has sacred cows that need slaughtering, and you know what they are. Call them out with proof and confidence. Say what others won’t, and people pay attention.

“Based on what you know about my industry expertise and opinions, identify the top 5 things I believe my industry gets completely wrong. For each one, help me craft a bold statement that challenges conventional wisdom, backed by specific evidence or examples. Make each statement direct and provocative enough to stop scrollers in their tracks. Focus on beliefs that are widely accepted but actually harmful or outdated.”

Transform a bland draft into a controversial opener

You’ve written something safe and sensible. Great. Now make it dangerous. Take that boring post sitting in your drafts and give it the edge it needs to grab attention. Your first draft is never your best work especially when you’re playing it safe. Find the controversy hiding in your careful words.

“Take this draft post I’ve written: [paste your boring content]. Rewrite the opening to be controversial and attention-grabbing. Challenge a common assumption, make a bold claim, or start with a counterintuitive statement. Keep my core message but make it impossible to scroll past. Give me 3 different controversial angles I could take with this same content.”

Turn client wins into standalone hooks

Long case studies put people to sleep. But when you turn a client transformation into one punchy line, it hits them right in the feels. Your clients’ success stories contain viral gold. You just need to extract the message. These become your best hooks, opening lines, and standalone posts that stop the scroll.

“Based on what you know about my business and the transformations I create for clients, help me turn a recent client success into 5 different viral content hooks. Each should be under 15 words and work as a standalone post opener or complete tweet. Focus on the surprising insight or counterintuitive result that makes people stop and think. Make them screenshot-worthy.”

Hijack trending content with your take

That viral post everyone’s sharing? It’s probably wrong. Or at least incomplete. When everyone zigs, you should zag. Take what’s already working and add your controversial spin. Ride the wave while making your own splash. The best viral content builds on what’s already capturing attention, then flips the narrative.

“Here’s a post getting traction on social media: [paste the content]. Based on what you know about my expertise, help me craft the opposite take that adds value while standing out. Create a response that acknowledges why people love the original but offers a better, more nuanced perspective. Structure it to get attention from people already engaging with the trending topic.”

Write what scares you to publish

You know that post sitting in your drafts? The one that feels too real, too raw, too risky? That’s the one to publish. Fear is your guide, and it’s pointing toward viral content. If a post doesn’t make your heart race before hitting publish, it’s probably too safe. The content that scares you is what people remember.

“Based on what you know about my experiences and challenges, help me identify the story or insight I’m most afraid to share publicly. Then help me structure it into a post that’s vulnerable but valuable. Balance the personal revelation with actionable insights others can use. Make it real enough to connect but professional enough to position me as an expert. Ask for more information if required.”

Stop playing safe and start creating content that explodes your reach

Going viral with your content happens when you have the guts to say what you really think. Challenge industry norms with the first prompt. Turn boring drafts controversial with the second. Extract viral hooks from client wins. Hijack trending topics with your unique angle. Share the stories that scare you. Each prompt pushes ChatGPT to help you create content that actually goes viral, not just exists. You don’t need more time to create better content. You need more courage.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Jodie Cook

Find Jodie Cook on LinkedIn. Visit Jodie’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

By Laura Michelle Davis

If you want to break into freelancing, here’s a practical guide to building your reputation, finding your network and working on your own terms.

Jamie Brindle has been freelancing for 16 years and is on a mission to “demystify” the freelance world. In 2020, amid a shaky job market and widespread rejection of corporate hustle culture, he started helping beginner freelancers become their own bosses.

The expansion of remote work, advances in AI and the growth of influencer platforms have all led to a kind of self-employment boom. As Gen Zers and millennials find new ways to upgrade their skills in a flexible work setting, the traditional 9-to-5 has become less inviting — and less reliable.

“People are finally coming over to my side and agreeing that building something for yourself is the safe option now,” Brindle told me.

Financial instability is not a minor factor. Plenty of full-time professionals rely on part-time side hustles and gig work to compensate for stagnant wages and the high cost of living. Working as an independent contractor can feel like a life raft during tough economic times. Whether by choice or necessity, millions of people are turning to freelancing as a long-term business strategy.

“If you lose a client, you’re inconvenienced,” said Brindle. “If you lose your job, you’re unemployed.”

The term “freelancer” often brings to mind ride-share drivers or creators working from home. Yet the self-employed span nearly every industry and skill level, from entry-level musicians to highly specialized brand consultants. In my research, I discovered a world of artists, technicians, developers, strategists, writers, coaches and tradespeople, each carving their own path.

In 2027, freelancers are projected to make up more than half the US workforce, according to Statista. A majority freelance workforce has numerous political and economic implications for future generations. What does a country of nearly 90 million independent contractors look like?

Better yet, should you follow the trend? Whether you’ve recently lost your job or you’re following your passion, this article focuses on tips to get started building your own business. Shaped by real-life insights from seasoned freelancers, this practical guide can help you thrive in this expanding work model.

How to move from full-time employment to freelance work

Freelancing is not always a choice. If you’ve recently been laid off or left your job out of necessity, you won’t necessarily have the luxury to plan for self-employment. But in today’s competitive job market, setting up your own gig could be the easiest way to guarantee some income.

One of the biggest hurdles is getting started. First, identify your strengths and narrow in on what you’re offering. Then tell everyone you’re available for work.

“If you create a persona for yourself, market yourself and your business, and create that reputation, that’s what eventually will bring people to you,” said Jeanette Smith, a freelance content writer and editor. Over the years, Smith has cultivated an impressive following, with 11,000 connections on LinkedIn.

When making the leap from a conventional employee to an independent contractor, don’t wipe your slate clean. Use the experience and connections you’ve built over the years to devise a business plan and reach out to prospective clients.

“Everything that you’ve done in your 9-to-5 is a launch pad for your freelance work, your network, your skills,” said Tia Meyers, CEO and founder of Freelancing Females, the world’s largest community of women in the freelancing field.

If you need guidance, the Freelancers Union, a non profit with over 500,000 members, can provide advocacy, education and access to benefits. Executive director Rafael Espinal said the organization can connect you to fellow freelancers and provide assistance for everything from creating contracts to setting rates.

1️⃣ Understand the business

If you’re committing to freelance work full time, you might need to formalize your business by registering with the state. Setting up a separate legal structure will give you liability protection, tax flexibility and the ability to secure loans. In Smith’s case, she created an LLC (a limited liability corporation) that allowed her to open a business bank account and keep her personal and business finances separate.

Alternatively, anyone who is freelancing for occasional side income can be classified as a sole proprietorship. If you don’t want to incorporate or form a legal entity to run your business right away, you’ll report your income on your personal tax return. “Just be aware that as a 1099 employee (freelancer), no taxes are being withheld,” said Smith. “It is your responsibility to estimate your taxes due and pay them quarterly.”

Ultimately, how you decide to structure your business entity depends on your goals as a freelancer and what legal and tax benefits you’re looking for.

2️⃣ Build your reputation

A freelance business doesn’t grow magically. Once you begin taking on projects, it takes time to find your footing. Depending on the industry and your persistence, Meyers told me to expect anywhere from three months to 12 months to get consistent income and inquiries from clients.

To build your reputation, Brindle recommends boosting your visibility on the professional networking platform LinkedIn, which he calls a “24-hour business conference.” But don’t treat the site like a portfolio or an online resume. Instead, use social media for discussion and commentary, where you can make ongoing contributions and maintain engagement.

Brindle said that sharing posts about what your clients find valuable will favour the algorithm, which is designed to keep users on the platform as long as possible.

3️⃣ Find your network

No one will know you’re looking for work unless you tell them. “Go to your past co-workers, send notes to friends, find a collective of people,” said Meyers. Communities like Freelancing Females, the Freelancers Union and local job boards advertise openings, help you collaborate on work and share client bases.

Creating a profile on talent marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork can also do some of the lifting. According to Nikhil Purwaha, senior director of project management at Upwork, the site has thousands of job posts for freelancers across more than 125 categories, from marketing to software development to customer service.

“We recommend creating a profile that highlights your core strengths, then browsing open projects that match your background,” Purwaha told me in an email. “Clients are often more interested in outcomes than credentials, and many are open to giving newer freelancers a shot if they show commitment, skill and professionalism.”

4️⃣ Grow your client base

To generate a loyal clientele, your outreach should be ongoing and diverse, ranging from in-person referrals and professional associations to smaller contract agencies. Once you start completing assignments and proving your reliability, clients are likely to come back to you.

“The trust factor is the most important thing to build,” said Smith. “If clients like you, they will eventually trust you. And people tend to only buy from people they trust.”

Though Fiverr and Upwork can help you get started, many independent contractors don’t recommend relying on them as the foundation of your business. Sites like these have “pay to play” elements or take a percentage of each transaction as commission. As a result, online gig-work marketplaces are often saturated with low-paying clientele. “They can create a race-to-the-bottom mentality, where freelancers are outbidding each other to secure work,” said Espinal.

According to Brindle, the majority of your clients should come from your own networking and promotion, and only 10-15% from freelancer platforms.

5️⃣ Market your niche

Marketing involves educating prospective clients about your unique service and demonstrating your brand’s niche — a way of planting the flag as a category leader. “If a freelancer comes to me and says, ‘I don’t know how to get leads,’ 99.9% of the time it’s because they don’t have a niche,” Brindle said.

For example, if you’re trying to generate clients as a personal fitness trainer, you’ll stand out if you specialize in something more exclusive, like helping executive women over 50 reach their strength-training goals. “Specificity is your ally,” he said.

Once you’ve found your niche, focus on the deliverables, not the skill itself. What will the results be? What should your clients expect? What problem will you solve? Translate everything to the language of ROI to guarantee a solid return on investment, said Brindle.

6️⃣ Determine your price

Before you set a price for your services, create a budget sheet of your business costs and work backwards. Independent contractors should put aside 40% of their take-home earnings to cover taxes and professional expenses, according to Espinal.

“Consult with other freelancers in your industry and see what they charge,” said Smith. Then figure out your “happy price” by considering all the project details — length, time commitment, resource costs — to set a figure that feels fair for the value you’re offering. Though you might not have a set price for your services out of the gate, have a goal of what you’d like to be charging in a year or two.

Ideally, according to Brindle, you’re pricing in a way where you could technically subcontract every job — i.e., hiring another freelancer to do the work — and still meet your annual revenue goals. Though a lot of freelancers advertise hourly rates, consider charging based on the project or the solution you’re offering, not the time it takes. Brindle says not to allow the client to set a ballpark figure. “You’re the expert, so you should be the one to present a budget to them,” Brindle said.

The benefits of freelance work

Becoming a business owner comes with different responsibilities, new types of management and increased flexibility. While you might start off working more hours than you had in the past, you’ll eventually familiarize yourself with pacing, tracking your hours and working when you’re most productive. You also aren’t limited by an income ceiling, so you can always make more money by taking on more projects.

“The beauty of freelancing is your choice to work when you want, and to work with the clients you actually want to work with,” said Meyers. Whereas traditional employment locks you into the same focus area, freelancing allows you to take your skills to the next level or build something unique based on what you love to do.

In today’s uncertain job market, being an independent contractor can give you increased freedom, according to Espinal. “In a traditional 9-to-5, you don’t have control over whether or not you go to work the next day. You have an employer who makes that decision for you,” he said.

Top advantages to freelance work: 

☑️ Set your own schedule 

☑️ Choose your own clients 

☑️ No salary ceiling  

☑️ Flexibility to pivot 

The downside of freelance work

Not everyone is comfortable with marketing their business or managing their time and finances. As a freelancer, you’ll have to be willing to sell your services and get used to keeping receipts for expenses, paying quarterly taxes and reconciling your finances monthly. “I recommend getting a bookkeeper if you can, because there are just so many rules that change every single year,” said Meyers. If you can’t afford to hire someone, try different platforms or accounting software such as QuickBooks and HoneyBook.

One major disadvantage to freelance work is the lack of benefits. You won’t get paid time off, a retirement account match, short-term disability, health insurance or anything else that typically comes with an employment compensation package.

You’ll also need to be prepared to give up a steady pay check and get used to a more erratic income stream. “Payments from clients aren’t always prompt, and sometimes you have to chase them down,” said Smith. In some cases, clients could refuse to pay entirely, which makes it even more important to have a written agreement when taking on projects. According to Espinal, around 75% of freelancers accept work without a contract, leaving them vulnerable to noncompliant clients.

If you go into freelance work to fulfil your passion on a full-time basis, be careful you’re not living and breathing work. An otherwise fun hobby, like baking, could become particularly gruelling if you’re trying to transform your personal kitchen into a cookie factory. Staying motivated requires being cognizant of work-life balance to avoid burnout.

Main disadvantages of freelance work: 

☑️ Inconsistent payments from clients

☑️ No included insurance or retirement benefits

☑️ Ongoing expenses and taxes

☑️ Fatigue from not setting boundaries 

Final tips for new freelancers

➡ Be bold

When starting out, you’ll face a lot of rejection and ghosting. “But you have to keep believing that the next opportunity is going to be the big break,” said Smith. Don’t be ashamed to market your business however you need to, she added.

Remember that a lot of your clients will hire you not only because of your skills, but also your character. “Don’t be afraid to share your personality,” said Meyers.

➡ Get a website

A business website shows off your portfolio and is great for search results. It also demonstrates that you’re human, Smith told me. If you don’t have a website, make sure you have some type of web presence (substack, landing page, social media), so clients can see your work and contact you easily.

Once you have a web presence, don’t force your clients to scroll through multiple pages to know what you’re selling. Meyers recommends creating clear packages and service offerings.

➡ Prepare the financials

First, prioritize building up an emergency fund to cover at least six months of expenses in case of unexpected circumstances. Factor in all your business overhead expenses ahead of time: software, equipment, gas, meals. Study the tax rules to know exactly what you can claim as a deduction.

You’ll also want to make sure you can afford to pay health insurance out of pocket and contribute to a retirement fund. If you’re interested in other insurance offerings besides health insurance, Espinal said the Freelancers Union provides some benefits, including disability, liability, and life insurance, to members at a fraction of the cost.

Feature image credit: Jeffrey Hazelwood/CNET

By Laura Michelle Davis

Laura is a professional nitpicker and good-humored troubleshooter with over 14 years of experience in print and digital publishing. She currently oversees CNET Money’s housing market coverage. Before becoming an editor with CNET, she worked as an English teacher, Spanish medical interpreter, copy editor and proofreader. She is a fearless but flexible defender of both grammar and weightlifting, and firmly believes that technology should serve the people. Her first computer was a Macintosh Plus. Read full bio

Sourced from CNET

By Katty Kay

After two decades of sharing more online, it looks like we’ve decided to share less. New polling shows that nearly a third of all social media users post less than they did a year ago. That trend is especially true for adults in Gen Z.

In a recent essay for the New Yorker, writer Kyle Chayka suggested that society might be headed towards what he calls “posting zero”: a point where regular people feel that it’s not worth it to share their lives online.

I’ve noticed this downward trend in my own social feeds. For every picture of a friend’s vacation or of a colleague’s children, there seem to be dozens (if not hundreds) of posts from brands and influencers promoting a new product or discussing the latest trend.

Social media used to feel like an imperfect facsimile of my social life – but now, it feels more like “content”.

Some of this, I know, is because the platforms themselves have changed. TikTok and Instagram amassed endless troves of vertical videos and built eerily powerful algorithms to help guide you through them.

I think the social contract of social media has changed. The deal was if you put stuff out there, if you put out content, you could get this massive audience. But that becomes a vicious cycle that becomes your entire life. So, unless you’re trying to become an influencer or a professional internet poster, the deal doesn’t seem so good anymore. The downsides of posting are too great and the advantages are not good enough. So, you might as well just text your friends.

KK: I had a super-interesting conversation with Jonathan Haidt, who’s obviously done a lot of work on trying to get phones out of schools. Do you think that if the trend you are spotting – you call it posting zero – turns out to be a kind of a significant wave that we’re moving towards, does it actually make it easier to break that phone and device addiction for kids?

KC: It’s a good question. I do think we’ve passed peak social media in a way, but I don’t think that removes the 24/7 digital conversation that people are having. It’s just that the conversation moves away from the public channels into these group chats, into DMs or a more ephemeral platform, like Snapchat.

The addictive capacity of the phone is still there. The distraction is certainly still there. But I think there’s less of this public nature of it. I think it is a little bit better that we’ve moved out of the public sphere and have removed that risk of just getting totally exposed to the entire world and going viral for the wrong reasons. But we’re still texting each other all day. We’re still consuming memes. We’re still getting distracted by feeds.

KK: Throw it forward. What are we going to be looking at on our phones in five years’ time? How different will our interactions be with the social component of our phones and our devices?

KC: I think it’ll be even more like television. If we look at the way things are going, it’s a lot of professionalised media. It’s a lot of passively watching stuff. We kind of see this merging today of YouTube and TikTok and Netflix into just an unholy combination of audio and video and algorithmic feed.

If I had to predict, the conversation and social aspect will be in text messages or I think it might move more into real life. I think this peak social media has created more of a desire for in-person interaction and has reminded us of the value of actually sharing things in real life. So, that makes me a little bit hopeful.

KK: Do you think we’ll get to a posting zero world, where people like you and I just are not posting anymore?

KC: I think so. I think it’s coming sooner than we expect, just because there’s no incentive to post anymore. Why post your selfies or post your breakfast if you don’t get attention for it, you can’t reach your friends and you’re just competing with all of this remote, abstracted garbage out there?

Maybe social media was this aberration in a way, or a detour. And this idea that every normal person should share their life in public was kind of flawed from the beginning. And we’re now waking up from that a little bit and seeing the damage that it’s wrought and moving on a little bit with our habits.

Feature image credit: Writer Kyle Chayka and BBC Special Correspondent Katty discuss the changing landscape of social media (Credit: BBC)

By Katty Kay

Sourced from BBC

By Gerald Webber

Feature image credit: Kudometrics

By Gerald Webber

Sourced St.Louis Post-Dispatch

The reader is responsible for complying with any applicable Terms of Use for YouTube and any other sites. This content contains links to third-party websites or services that are not owned or controlled by the publisher, Lee Enterprises. The views, thoughts and opinions in this contributor content belong solely to the writer.

By Keisha Oleaga

Feature Image Credit: Robin Utrecht

By Keisha Oleaga

Sourced from what’s trending

By Ryma Chikhoune

Christos Garkinos looks to create the “Netflix of Shopping.”

In 2020, Christos Garkinos turned to Instagram Live in the early days of the pandemic. What began as a way to connect with fashion lovers became something bigger: a luxury fashion resale business that’s sold more than $200 million to date.

Three years later, he added beauty to the mix, partnering with his long time friend and beauty editor Kelly Atterton to lead the vertical.

“They trust what I’m selling,” said Garkinos, who has a knack for cultivating community.

Born and raised in Detroit, he moved to Los Angeles in 1990 working for Disney and Virgin Megastores with Richard Branson before getting into fashion and opening consignment shop Decades — a former retail destination for celebrities and stylists — with Cameron Silver. Garkinos went on to become a TV personality through a reality show centered on the store, “Dukes of Melrose.” But after losing his sobriety, his life unravelled; he tells the story in his memoir, “Covet the Comeback: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Found Success, Lost Everything, Then Built a Fashion Empire.”

Feature image credit: Christos Garkinos and Kelly Atterton Courtesy/Katie Jones

By Ryma Chikhoune

Sourced from WWD

By Phillip Smith

Back in 2004, I helped one of the early online environmental “blogs” undertake a big technical upgrade. At the time, this site had a staff of 10 people and their email newsletter list had about 60,000 subscribers. I remember thinking that was a sizeable list at the time, and much later learned how important it was to their non-profit business model.

Three years later I checked back in with them. They’d moved into a new office — a much bigger space to accommodate a staff that had grown to more than 20. I asked about their email newsletter list size: it was now 600,000+ subscribers strong, a growth of 10x. Their annual revenue, unsurprisingly, was much larger too.

In the years that followed, I kept a close eye on their business model because I felt like it provided a glimpse into the future of internet publishing and — more importantly — the strategies and tactics that might lead to sustainability for online journalism.

Case in point: this “blog” — Grist.org — has been publishing for 20 years now, employs 35 people and generates more than $3 million in annual revenue. In an industry where there’s stiff competition from corporate competitors like Discovery Communications and Gizmodo Group, they’ve become one of the most renowned voices in environmental media for their brand of  “Gloom and doom with a sense of humour.”

But the one detail of their story that I obsessed about the most was the exponential growth of their email list. And how they did that has lessons applicable to many news publishers.

In addition to helping the organization spread its coverage about climate change and environmental advice, their email list also drove substantial growth in revenue from donors, as well as sponsorship and advertising. It also increased the reach of their stories and engagement from their community.

There were many factors that drove that growth, but the one that surprised me the most was paid subscriber acquisition.

Here’s another fact that might surprise you: Today, many savvy digital-first newsrooms have seen this opportunity, too, and are investing thousands of dollars a month — sometimes tens of thousands — into paid acquisition campaigns.

And yet the second fact that surprised me all those years ago and still continues to is that so many publishers are choosing not to invest in this area, or simply aren’t even aware of it as an opportunity to grow their audience and membership. There are several reasons for this (detailed below), but the top two challenges are “resources to assist with campaign planning” and “available budget to invest.”

These challenges are particularly acute for news startups where it’s essential that these efforts are undertaken before their launch funds run out. It could quite literally be the difference between a journalism organization existing or not.

In this first report and in subsequent pieces I’ll share what I’m seeing as I attempt to answer the question: Can publishers who seek to grow their membership invest in paid lead acquisition tactics and predict with strong confidence the rate of return on their investment? [Editor’s note: Check out Spending Money to Make Money, Part II: Case Studies of Newsrooms Using Paid Acquisition.]

To answer this question, several organizations have worked together — the Membership Puzzle Project, Pico, and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism — with me, a 20-year veteran of the publishing industry, former CTO of an online news startup, and now entrepreneurship coach for journalists. Together, we’ve asked seven publishers across the United States to experiment with paid acquisition campaigns. These publishers cover a range that includes local news, regional news, and single-subject news. All but one are digital-first publishers:

• Block Club Chicago (subscriptions): Block Club Chicago is a non-profit news organization dedicated to delivering reliable, nonpartisan, and essential coverage of Chicago’s diverse neighbourhoods.
• BoiseDev (membership): BoiseDev is a community-focused journalism organization, bringing business news coverage to the Greater Boise area.
• Brooklyn Eagle (engagement): The Brooklyn Eagle is journalism for curious, creative, and constructive Brooklynites.
• Colorado Sun (membership): The Colorado Sun is a journalist-owned, award-winning news outlet based in Denver but which strives to cover all of Colorado.
• Documented (patronage): Documented is a non-profit news site devoted solely to covering New York City’s immigrants and the policies that affect their lives.
• The River (patronage): Real news for real people, in the Hudson Valley.
• Sludge (patronage): Sludge produces investigative journalism on lobbying and money in politics.

Now, you have a front row seat to this research. Your questions will help guide where it goes next. And I hope that you’ll take these ideas back to your own newsroom, experiment, and contribute back your results to our growing community of “paid acquisition for news” nerds (you can find dozens of us in the #paidacquisition channel on the Let’s Gather Slack instance).

Let’s get to it, shall we?

The Opportunity for News Publishers and Journalism Funders

There’s an opportunity to simply fund email list growth and to walk away knowing that this is a leading indicator for subscriber, member, and donor growth, as well as increased revenue from sponsorships and advertising.

Larger email lists also mean more people reading an organization’s journalism, more people sharing, and more engagement with polls, surveys, letters to the editor, comments, and more. Email list size is a critical “North Star” metric for many digital-first news publishers, particularly because of the correlation between list size and audience revenue, a topic that we’ll explore below.

As demonstrated by government grant programs in Canada, this strategy is fairly obvious. However, it is not “sexy” per se and appears to be beneath the consideration of most of the larger journalism-focused foundations in the US. One possible reason for this might be funders’ distaste for operational scaling, something that is fairly common in other industries. But it’s not just the Canadian Government that believes this is a solid strategy. It’s also precisely the way that many venture capital investors work, too: They look for signs of a company’s early traction with users and then invest in helping that company find exponentially more users.

Growth these days is treated as a science with a profession of its own. This professionalization and the internet mean that never has it been easier to find people who might be interested in a product. Long-gone are the days of having to use the “spray and pray” approach offered by direct mail marketing. It’s now possible to micro-target just the right people, with just the right offer, and encourage them to take that first step of creating a relationship with a news brand. From there, it comes down — mostly — to math. A large number of cold leads in one end of the funnel, and a small number of paying customers out the other end … eventually.

And that is the one variable that is, perhaps, the most important thing to note: time.

It takes time to build a membership program, time to design the funnel that potential members will pass through, and time to test each step: to look at the data, to adjust, to iterate, to optimize. Most significantly, it takes time to build the relationship and trust needed to convert cold leads into regular readers, and then into paying community members.

Growth-oriented, tech-savvy funders and investors already understand this. In other industries, this idea isn’t verboten but embraced. I can only hope that the rest of the sector will come to the realization that investing in journalism is a long-term investment, and that underwriting activities like paid subscriber acquisition — activities that lead directly to growth — are far more important than finding the next shiny new thing.

The opportunity is significant: When I informally surveyed 20 American publishers with different coverage areas and list sizes, I found that only half are currently engaged in any kind of paid acquisition activities. And when looking at newsrooms with fewer than seven staffers, a size at which audience growth is often critical to survival, none were actively working on paid acquisition campaigns (more on this below). The majority of newsrooms with a staff of more than 20 staff people were engaged in this work, and yet — in most of those cases — the work was a subset of someone’s job, not a full position unto itself.

Paid Acquisition in a Nutshell

Whether called performance marketing, direct response, or the gag-inducing “growth hacking,” we define paid acquisition for this experiment as any form of paid marketing that seeks permission to contact the person again. Whether that’s by asking directly for an email address, a mobile phone number for SMS engagement, or a social profile for messaging, or indirectly by providing a free product trial, a contest entry, or even an inexpensive sale like a $1 time-limited subscription — as long as a publisher pays to get that information from a potential customer (or member, subscriber, or donor) — we consider those activities “paid acquisition.”

Often, permission to contact the person again would be followed up in the short term with information that provides some value to this new person (whom we’ll now refer to as a lead), such as a no-cost newsletter subscription or a no-cost guide on a frequently read topic. Down the road, the new lead would likely receive information about products or services provided by the publisher, such as a subscription offer, premium membership benefits, a variety of information products, or, in the case of a non-profit publisher, an appeal for support.

The math is fairly simple and has its roots in direct-mail marketing from long ago. Once a publisher has enough information to calculate the average lifetime value of a customer (my fellow MPP researcher Joe Amditis has written more on this topic as it relates to membership), it becomes relatively straightforward to determine how much to invest in acquiring a new customer. The objective is to spend less than the estimated customer lifetime value minus cost of service. Be sure to include hard costs, as Alexandra Smith described in this article by WhereBy.Us’ Anika Anand.

From there, a savvy publisher will experiment to determine the average rate at which new leads convert into paying customers, thus answering the sometimes-tricky question of “how much should I pay to acquire a new lead?”

Both of these variables, average customer lifetime value, and average customer conversion rate, will vary by the source of the lead. But once a publisher has this data, growth can become more predictable and can justify greater investment.

Anecdotally, I used to spend a lot of time at conferences aimed at the magazine industry. These conferences were filled with direct-mail marketing experts and circulation gurus. Inevitably, a magazine publisher would ask the question, “How many direct mail campaigns should I send to the same mailing list?” And the answer to this question is surprisingly simple: They should keep sending direct mail until they’re paying more for a lead than they might recoup in future revenue (minus costs of producing the product and/or delivering the service).

The same formula holds with paid acquisition. As long as the cost per lead is low enough to predict over a specific period of time, and that revenue from leads that convert into members is likely to be higher than the marketing expense of acquiring all the leads, one should keep investing and work to scale that investment until the formula no longer works.

Here’s a simple graphic that puts this plainly:

For example, if 2% of leads convert into paying members, that would mean two new members for every 100 leads. And if those two new members, on average, resulted in $240 each, say, or $10/month for two years, that would result in $480 in revenue. Thus, as long as all the leads were acquired, on average, for less than $4.80/each, the publisher would grow their subscriber or member base and break even on the cash investment (cost of labour is not included in this simplified example). The same would hold true for 1,000 leads and 10,000 leads.

This approach to growing customers is so established at this point that there’s a whole category of software dedicated to helping companies design and visualize their paid acquisition sales funnel, to predict changes in revenue based on what is invested in acquiring new leads, as well as an abundance of tools to help with improving conversion rates. For example, Geru helps to visualize funnels and estimate costs and revenue, services like Unbounce help to build landing pages and improve conversion rates, and products like Ad Espresso help to manage cross-platform campaigns.

Screenshot of a popular “funnel planning” software Geru.

And, beyond software, there’s a whole industry of professionals, agencies, and certifications that have become established brands in the field of growth, performance marketing, and paid acquisition. To avoid sending you down a very large rabbit hole, I’ll simply point you to this free online guide to growth by Julian Shapiro as a good place to start diving deeper, as well as this excellent essay by Aubrey Bergauer on audience development.

Experiments with Paid Acquisition

Even though the math is straightforward and there’s a whole industry dedicated to the science of growth, the question remains: How well does it translate to the world of journalism at large, and journalism membership programs specifically?

To answer that question we teamed up with Pico, a newsroom software company that provides “smart pop-ups and landing pages to turn readers into customers,” and asked several publishers on Pico’s platform if they would be open to experimenting with paid acquisition campaigns and letting us detail the results. Funding by a grant to Pico from the Lenfest Institute covered the hard costs of the acquisition experiments: platform advertising fees and stock photos. These hard costs are a figure that curious publishers will need to think about in calculations toward their own efforts.

The experiment design is relatively straightforward and consistent across most publishers:

• The campaign is always promoting the publisher’s free newsletter. In some cases that’s weekly, in some cases daily. The ad campaign objective is a subscription to the publisher’s newsletter.
• Once subscribed, new leads receive a three-part automated email series. The first message is a simple welcome, the second a short survey, and the third a gentle ask for financial support. The language and length of these emails was kept similar across publishers.
• At the end of the series, I calculate both engagement and conversions across those leads. Specifically, how many opened the email series emails? How many unsubscribed? How many took the survey? How many became a financial supporter?
• Over time, we’ll also be looking at email newsletter engagement and engagement on the publisher’s website.

There are two outliers in the sites in this study. One publisher is experimenting with United States Postal Service (USPS) marketing to potential members in their city. There we’ll be looking at how many people made the leap from postcard to website and eventually to paying members of the site. Another publisher will be testing a different kind of membership ask. In this case, it will be voluntary membership in a locally-focused “insight network” for that city, similar to American Public Media’s Public Insight Network.

These are exciting questions to be asking, and I’m keen to answer them, in part, with data. As is said, “math don’t lie.” And yet math doesn’t always reveal the entire truth either. The limitation of this research is the very short window of time that we’ll be looking at: just a few short months between June 2019 and January 2020, far short of the time necessary to see the full picture.

The Facebook Local News Subscriptions Accelerator Program has been looking at a similar question for just over a year now and recently reported that they’re seeing promising results across the metro newspapers in their program. Specifically, they’ve reported that publishers might “expect to convert five to 10 percent of your email subscribers to paid,” and went on to share that “most Accelerator publishers saw that range of free newsletter readers converting to paid subscribers.” When I asked Facebook Journalism Project’s Program Manager for accelerators, David Grant, to expand on these findings in terms of how long it took to accomplish that conversion, he clarified that “for all of these titles, it’s taken years.”

What I am hopeful to document objectively, however, are some starting points for publishers that are thinking about this route: what works, and what doesn’t in terms of ad copywriting and images, ad formats, and audience reach. And what to expect in the days, weeks, and months after new leads join a newsletter list. What to expect to pay for new leads across platforms. What to expect in terms of performance. And what signals to look for toward a longer-term outcome of a conversion to paid membership.

Early Results, Promising Signs

With funding through January 2020, it’s still early days for this research. And paid acquisition work requires an investment of time and attention that is challenging for many smaller publishers (more on that below). That said, I’m happy to report out some early results.

We are currently running paid subscriber acquisition campaigns on two platforms, Care2 and Facebook. The aim is to expand on these experiments and to investigate other lead-acquisition platforms, including the earlier mentioned USPS, as well as Google Adwords, LinkedIn, Quora, and Reddit.

Facebook’s “boosted posts,” a form of advertising with the purpose of getting people to react, share, and comment, are a relatively well-known commodity to most publishers. However, many publishers I’ve spoken with outside of our research group are not aware of the key differences between the various ad types that Facebook offers, which currently number more than 10. Our research focuses exclusively on the “Lead” ad type, which optimizes for subscriptions that take place on Facebook directly.

This is unique from the other types of ads that would typically require a publisher to direct the user to a landing page of some kind off of Facebook.

An example of a Facebook “lead” ad.

Care2 is relatively unknown to many publishers. It describes itself as a 21-year-old “network of millions of people around the globe, dedicated to building a better world.” Its core product is essentially an online petition service that is used by anyone from neighbours to global NGOs. The network boasts 45 million users with most of those in the US. To support itself financially, Care2 provides a pay-per-lead campaign service, which is what we’re testing with the publishers in this study. We are testing both issue-focused campaigns (environmental reporting) and geo-targeted (state-wide reporting) campaigns on the platform.

A Care2 petition for Sludge.

To date, these campaigns have delivered thousands of new email newsletter subscribers to some of the participating publishers. And, 12 weeks in, this is what we’re seeing across the subset of publishers who have undertaken Facebook and Care2 campaigns:

• Engagement via open rate: Open rates for the email series range from 26% to 36%, and the average open rate across all emails and all publishers for new leads is 29%. This is higher than the MailChimp-reported industry average for “media and publishing” of 14%.
• Engagement via survey: The rate of new leads who completed the short survey ranged from 2.7% to 7.8%, with an average across publishers of 4.7%.
• Retention and churn: The unsubscribe rate, so far, has been between 0.8% to 6.4%, with an average across emails and publishers of 2.8%. In future updates, we’ll unpack how this compares to industry averages.

We’re also observing a consistent cost per lead of less than $3 across the two platforms we’ve tested. Care2’s pricing is set in advance, unlike Facebook’s, and varies based on how specific the audience criteria is. On Facebook, we’re seeing a range of scenarios play out, in some cases the average cost per lead is consistently below $1, in others it’s between $1.50 and $2.50, and we’ve yet to learn if these costs will stay consistent across tens of thousands of leads.

What we’re also still assessing is the quality of those leads, their engagement with the journalism, likelihood to stay subscribed and, eventually, to convert. Lead quality will likely vary by lead source, as will the cost per lead. For example, platforms like LinkedIn will be more expensive to advertise on, but we might find that they deliver a lead quality that justifies the larger investment. There’s still a lot to learn.

However, if Facebook’s own observations hold true — that news publishers are seeing conversion rates between 5 to 10% from free newsletter subscribers to a paid digital subscriptions and memberships — then these lead acquisition costs are a promising signal for publishers to take note of. At a 5% conversion rate, using the most basic of calculations like the one above, the prediction is that a publisher would generate a tidy 2.5x return on ad spend (ROAS). At 10%, that would jump to a 5x return, a number that would be the envy of many people in publishing and growth science, too.

My own observations from over a decade of working as a staffer and consultant for publishers in South America, North America, and the United Kingdom have led me to be more conservative in my predictions. And, having spent many years managing projects like this at The Tyee, I understand what it’s like to work in a resource-constrained newsroom. My hope is that this research will eventually provide the detailed data necessary for publishers to determine their own estimates of what they can reasonably achieve within a certain timeframe and with reasonable investments of time, energy, and money.

Resources, Staffing, and Budget

Three of the biggest challenges ahead for small-to-medium sized news publishers who are interested in setting up a paid subscriber acquisition effort are:

1. The budget to invest;
2. Availability of staff time and skill sets;
3. And curated resources to assist with campaign planning.

Of the seven publishers in this research, less than half had invested in paid acquisition efforts over the last two years. And, combining the efforts of all of those that had invested, the total dollar amount invested was still very small. This highlights the first problem: many early-stage publishers simply don’t have the budget to invest in growth, which is a Catch-22.

More established publishers, with larger teams, struggled less with available budget and more with freeing up staff time. My observation is that publishers with six or more staff people or freelancers start to experience increased complexity in the work environment, leading to less nimbleness. In my experience this is usually due to the requirement of more clearly defined roles and management structures that are needed as team and audience size increases. This is another difficulty for those seeking to grow a digital news startup, where constant innovation is a likely part of the recipe for financial sustainability. (As Matt Thompson and Emily Goligoski wrote for this project, “membership cannot scale beyond an organization’s ability to serve its members. In some cases organizations are strategically limiting their growth to support members and ensure member value is not diluted. We think this has important ramifications for restoring the ‘human element’ to news.”)

The third big challenge lies in having knowledge or access to knowledge about where to start when trying to build effective paid subscriber acquisition campaigns. Most publishers in the study are actively engaged in using paid marketing to promote their content on platforms, but none had active paid acquisition campaigns underway when the research started.

This challenge was clear in a recent informal survey of 20 newsrooms, and the question “what do you believe to be the main challenges for your organization in committing resources to paid acquisition campaigns?” to which 70% of respondents answered “resources to assist with campaign planning.”

This isn’t entirely surprising given how quickly the landscape of lead generation advertising options shifts and how frequently the algorithms behind these systems change. It can be a full-time job staying on top of all of these shifts and changes: changes that can significantly impact campaign performance. That is perhaps the largest challenge here. Only the largest publishers have a dedicated resource focused on this; most others make do with this expertise being just a part of larger job description.

A related research question that we’ve surfaced is: how can early-stage, small, and mid-sized digital-first news publishers take advantage of the opportunities that paid acquisition presents?

So far we have clear patterns emerging in both the data that is being collected directly from participating publishers and from less formal data we’re gathering via literature reviews, interviews, and surveys.

Paid lead acquisition is an established path to new customers that is being leveraged by many growth-oriented businesses. It’s not just tech startups, online mattress firms, and companies that sell online courses; it’s being used by many small-to-medium sized businesses across the country, including everything from car dealerships, to plumbers, to real estate agents and more.

There are signs that larger, more digitally-savvy newsrooms are increasingly investing in paid growth of their email newsletter lists. Case studies are surfacing that report promising results toward converting free newsletter readers into paying supporters, like WhereByUs and the Seattle Times. And the data we’ve collected in this research so far indicates that new leads can be acquired for a low enough cost to provide a positive return on that investment over time.

I believe the question “can publishers who seek to grow their membership invest in paid lead acquisition tactics and predict with strong confidence the rate of return on their investment?” can be answered with “most likely; more data forthcoming.” It is clear that the tactics of paid lead acquisition do translate to the world of journalism — people do respond positively to the advertising campaigns, subscribe from social platforms, and stay engaged. And these strategies can be useful even if you have a paywall or patronage model.

To fully take advantage of these opportunities, I think the sector needs to further develop the following:

• An easy-to-use spreadsheet template, or calculator, that does that math for publishers who are trying to justify the investment (to themselves, to investors, and/or to funders). It should quickly provide a detailed prediction for a range of possible outcomes based on a small number of inputs. And it should make the investment case clear, as well as defining the metrics that publishers will need to keep an eye on.
• A playbook for how to get started with paid acquisition in the context of journalism and local news. This should be a resource that is frequently updated to stay current with the field, and it should aim to surface the best bets in the moment for publishers who are just getting started. Ideally, it would also provide detailed case studies from publishers who’ve led the way.
• Most importantly, funding to help publishers get underway with this work, knowing that audience growth has the potential for exponential returns across several indicators. And for publishers who’ve already established their paid acquisition strategy, there’s a need for funding to scale their campaigns. The would ideally be in the form of “no strings attached” operational money, where a funder might say, “Show us you’ve got an acquisition model that works — money in equals more money out — and we’ll give you a grant to scale it.”

The simple act of getting started with these campaigns helps to deepen the publisher’s understanding of how it works. We’re seeing it boost their confidence in being able to continue the work independently. In the words of one of the publishers in the study, “It has been incredibly successful in terms of getting us new subscribers [and] a lot of insight on how to run a successful campaign. We’ll be interested to see the quality of these subscribers going forward, but it definitely proves that investment in lead acquisition can pay off if done correctly.”

Feature image credit: Margaux Savey / Momkai

This story originally appeared on the website of The Membership Puzzle Project, a public research project into membership models by the Dutch journalism platform De Correspondent and New York University’s Studio 20 Program.

By Phillip Smith

Phillip Smith is a veteran digital publishing consultant, online advocacy specialist, and strategic convener. He is the founder of the Journalism Entrepreneurship Boot Camp. If you enjoyed reading this, you can find him on Twitter.

Note: Jason Bade, Jessica Best, Burt Herman, Emily Goligoski, Ariel Zirulnick, and Margaux Savey contributed to this post.

Sourced from Global Investigative Journalism Network