Every publisher should have a games strategy

By deploying games products, publishers can significantly increase reader engagement and subscriber retention.

Image via Pixabay

Hello there! This is the latest edition of my Q&A series where readers ask me questions and I do my best to answer them.

But there’s a catch: while the answers are free to read, only the paying subscribers get to ask the questions. If you’re a paying subscriber who wants to ask a question for the next edition, you can leave it in this thread over here.

And if you want to subscribe, the link below will get you 10% off for your first year. Not only will you be able to participate in these Q&A sessions, but you’ll be supporting the work I do for my newsletter and podcast.

Ok, let’s jump into it…

Every publisher should have a games strategy

The first question comes from Lee:

Hi Simon - I am wondering about your thoughts on providing branded games as content for membership sites. Any thoughts on what you would consider and also any ideas on how to find to good game app developers? Thanks!

There’s an increasing body of evidence showing that, by deploying games products, publishers can significantly increase reader engagement and subscriber retention. Here are just a few examples:

• The New York Times has seen tremendous success with its gaming vertical, and it’s one of the fastest growing subscription products of the post-Trump era. That’s why the Times just acquired Wordle for seven figures.

• The New Yorker launched a crosswords offering in 2019, and it’s since become one of the magazine’s most-engaged categories. “If you’re looking at a metric like unique visitors, the audience for the crossword is not colossal. But if you’re looking at people who subscribe, or people who read multiple articles a month, those are groups that really value our crossword,” games editor Liz Maynes-Aminzade told Nieman Lab. 

• The Wall Street Journal’s team found that its puzzles drive up subscriber retention. “Their internal data showed that playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting to new subscribers, such as downloading the Journal’s app or subscribing to an email newsletter,” Nieman Lab wrote. 

I’ve seen enough case studies on this issue to convince me that most publishers should have some sort of games strategy.

Some people will roll their eyes at this statement. After all, what would your average publisher know about game development, and how would they find the budget? 

But I think there’s low hanging fruit that’s accessible to just about every publisher: quizzes. What’s great about quizzes is that they can be customized across just about every content niche, and there are plenty of third party platforms that make it easy for you to create and embed a quiz on your website. Not only are they great for engagement, but they can also educate your audience about news stories they may have missed during the week.

The most impressive publishers operating today

Jez Walters asks: 

The publisher who is most impressing you at the moment, and why?

Let me run through several of them:

• The New York Times: I’m almost embarrassed to include this one, since it’s so blindingly obvious. I will say that its monster success with paid subscriptions has somewhat overshadowed its other achievements: launching one of the world’s most popular podcasts with The Daily, building the world’s most authoritative ecommerce vertical with Wirecutter, and even growing its digital advertising revenue. It’s just such a well-diversified business at this point that it’s amazing to consider that people were openly wondering back in 2009 whether it would go out of business. 

• Dotdash: When IAC acquired About.com from The New York Times in 2012, the world hardly noticed. The site was regarded as a content farm of a bygone era when everyone thought SEO was king. But as it turned out, IAC was an amazing steward and guided the renamed company toward massive profits. Its strategy focused entirely on producing what’s called “intentional” content, i.e. answering questions that people type into Google. This has allowed it to really hone its ecommerce and advertising businesses. I’m super interested to see how it incorporates the Meredith magazines it just acquired into its strategy.

• MrBeast: I don’t think anyone has deconstructed the YouTube algorithm better than MrBeast. It’s fascinating to listen to longform interviews with him about his process, especially since he’s an open book in terms of talking about his strategy. I wrote back in December about how he’s changing the economics of YouTube. 

• The Guardian: It was only a few years ago that The Guardian was hemorrhaging so much money that some wondered whether the Scott Trust could sustain the losses. What’s amazing about the newspaper’s turnaround is that it reached 1 million paying digital subscribers without locking any content behind a paywall. If there’s another publisher that’s achieved that feat, I’m unaware of it. 

Checking in on the various Substack competitors

From Terrell Johnson:

What's the state of the newsletter platform space? From what I see, we have Substack, Buttondown, Beehiv, Bulletin... that's all I can think of at the moment. (Not sure Mailchimp belongs in the same category as those anymore.)

When Substack launched in 2017, it was truly a one-of-a-kind product, a platform that combined free email distribution, a nice web publishing interface, and paid monetization capabilities. For years, writers had wanted to replicate the successful paid newsletter strategies of analysts like Ben Thompson and Nick Quah, but they were intimidated by the technical and financial hurdles of doing so. Substack took all those hurdles away, and as a result rode a massive wave of positive buzz and press as high profile journalists started decamping to the platform.

Of course all that buzz led to more competition as large tech companies and new startups tried to get in on the action. Now, there are several platforms playing in the newsletter monetization space, either by competing with Substack directly or by carving out specialized niches and services. There’s also been a veritable Substack backlash — partly to do with the politics of some of its top writers — which has led to some prominent members of the media community actively rooting against its success.

That all being said, let’s look at the newsletter platform landscape and see how all these services stack up:

Revue

I gotta be honest, I thought Twitter had bigger ambitions for Revue. Upon acquiring the company, Twitter immediately made it free to use, which transformed Revue into a direct competitor to Substack. It also integrated an easy signup button into Twitter profiles so that followers no longer needed to leave the platform or confirm their subscriptions. 

And then…nothing. I haven’t seen any major product announcements from Revue for months, even though I think there are plenty of other synergies that can be leveraged. For instance, I was disappointed when Twitter’s new Super Follows subscription product didn’t integrate with Revue subscriptions. It just seemed like such an obvious combination. The same goes for its ticketed Spaces product. I recently experimented with sending out a newsletter on Revue and was unimpressed with its UI and presentation. 

I also haven’t noticed many high profile writers setting up camp on Revue. I feel like not a week goes by without someone publicly announcing they’ve reached 1,000 paying subscribers on Substack, but where are all the humblebrags on Revue? I’m just not seeing much activity.

Bulletin

Bulletin is the newsletter product developed by Facebook. It’s currently invite-only and has been slowly amassing an interesting mix of local and national writers by paying them some sort of advance. The team doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to open this up to the wider public, which I’ve argued is a good thing, since there are too many people out there rooting for Facebook to fail and who will try to capitalize on any missteps it makes. Bulletin’s success will depend on how well Facebook leverages its huge social graph in helping writers to build an audience. My guess is that the most successful Bulletin writers will be those who already have large followings on Facebook.

Ghost

Ghost is often namechecked as a direct Substack competitor, but it really isn’t. Instead of offering up free email distribution and charging a percentage of all paid subscriptions, it charges upfront fees that go up depending on the size of your email list.

This makes it bad for newbie writers who are just starting out but great for already-established newsletters that don’t want to pay Substack’s 10% fees. In fact, several high profile Substack writers have decamped to Ghost exactly for that reason.

Substack

Substack hasn’t taken all this new competition lying down. Not only does it aggressively pursue high profile writers through its Substack Pro program — through which it offers them large cash advances — but it’s also had a robust product rollout schedule. I’m consistently impressed by how often it ships new features, and as a weekly user of the platform, I can only list a handful of changes I’d make to its offerings. And given that it just passed the threshold of 1 million paid users, it’s proved itself as a viable launching pad for bootstrapped media businesses. It’s earned its status as a major force within the Creator Economy.

Did I not answer your question yet?

Don’t worry! I plan to continue answering questions in future editions. Make sure to leave me a question in this thread if you haven’t already.

And again, if you’re not yet a subscriber and want to join in on the fun, use the link below:

Quick hits

"Internally, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has begun to refer to the paper as having not one but four front pages: the print edition, the website, The Daily podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro, and The Morning [newsletter]." [New York]

Top executives from Google, Condé Nast, Vox Media, and Quartz discuss their audience development strategies. [Medium]

TikTok is starting to enter paid partnerships with media companies to produce exclusive content for the platform. [Digiday]

Judd Legum is doing important work in tracking how highly partisan actors are manipulating Facebook's algorithm. [Popular Information]

LinkedIn is launching a podcast network, though it's not clear how this really scales, since LinkedIn hasn't built out a platform for hosting and distributing podcasts. This is just an old-fashioned, invite-only network. [Insider]

"As traffic diverts from breaking news coverage, other non-news verticals are seeing an uptick in interest from readers who are now willing to dedicate more time to hobbies and special interests." [Digiday]

The Daily Beast is using a registration wall to collect more first party data on its readers. [Digiday] From the article: "The revenue earned from a known user versus an unknown user is about 169% greater from the additional first-party data and advertising revenue the company is able to earn from them."

My private Facebook group is closing in on 700 members

I’m constantly amazed by the amount of expertise and the quality of discussion I see in the group. You can join over here: [Facebook]

Do you like this newsletter?

Then you should subscribe here:

Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at simonowens@gmail.com. For a full bio, go here.