September 30, 2024 • 35 mins
Join us for a must-listen conversation with Dr. Matt Paulson from MarketBeat, where we unravel the latest shifts in the financial publishing landscape.
FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.
John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, hey everyone.
I'm here with Dr Matt Paulsonfrom MarketBeat.
How are you doing, Matt Good?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Happy to be here again.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, great to have you back.
I wanted to get your take on awhole bunch of things.
Your perspective on theindustry is a really great one,
because you kind of see all theexternal that's going out
through the various CPA offersand things like that, and we've
had a lot of change.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, it's September of this year versus January.
It is two very differentenvironments.
What's working has changed,what's hot has changed.
The election has created agiant distraction.
Obviously, some big changes atMarketWise.
Crowdfunding has really takenoff.
Just a whole lot, a lot ofdifferent things happening.
That's really um shaking up theapple cart yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So it's almost like it's not like one major thing.
There's been a ton of majorchanges.
So I mean, how would you, howwould you like basically
characterize then, like januaryto now, um, like the shift then?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
yeah, it a it's definitely a weaker environment.
Um, you know, I heard from afew people kind of that first
quarter is probably the bestquarter a lot of people ever had
.
And now we're we're almoststarting to look like some of
the 2022 numbers again where,like you know, for us we're
probably down 25, 30% top lineum Q1 compared to Q q3 and it's
(01:26):
just a more challengingenvironment and I think the
election has something to dowith that.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Uh, the changes that market wise, uh, certainly
haven't helped um and um, youknow, just the conversion
environment's weaker than it wasyeah, yeah, and so with the for
people who maybe not as awareof everything that happened at
MarketWise, which is that I meanyou had the legacy shut down
and then you had changes andPorter came in, came out a lot
(01:55):
of disruption there, a lot feweroffers coming out and I mean, I
think the big thing was thatthere are initial price points.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The company decided that their kind of front end
initial cart was going to be 200, up from maybe 70, and that's
uh, that's definitely going toimpact your number of
conversions right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So it's big.
It's a big kind of like impact,since they were probably the
largest external advertiser forthe last year or two at least.
Yeah, for a lot of people,absolutely yeah, yeah.
So then, um, when you thinkabout like the, just kind of
like the, the impacts then fromkind of the weaker environment,
changes in market wise and allthat like what do you think are
(02:39):
like?
How's that impacting everybodyelse?
How's that impacting uh, kindof what, what's working for
people, what they're doing likestrategy?
I mean, there's a lot changing.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, right now with the election, it does seem like
the political angles are workingreally well on copy.
We've seen Porter Company andWeiss and behind the markets do
really well with some differentpolitical angles.
All of the gold companies arereally using political angles
and they're having a lot ofsuccess with that.
And you know, I think thatprobably dies down after the
(03:13):
election, but right now it seemsto be one of the things that's
working well.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, no, I think that's like the gold connection
with politics when gold is hot,has always been strong um I know
that paradigm had that order,that, that promo, doing like a
just 500 or a thousand orders aday at one point, yeah, um, and
then porter's been pretty.
He's been pretty consistentright as a, as a publisher,
(03:41):
talking about kind of morepolitical kind of conversations,
which has worked well for him.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it's like you have to either do it
consistently or never at all,cause if you don't talk about
politics and you start talkingabout politics, you know your,
your audience, may not like that, cause they you know I you
listen to Taylor Swift for hermusic.
Then all of a sudden she startstalking about politics and say,
hey, I like your music, but Idon't really need to hear your
political opinions.
(04:07):
And I think that can be truewith kind of FinPub too, like if
you're, you know, I'm here foryour investment opinions, not
your political takes.
And if you go from not doingthat to doing that, I think some
people might not like that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah it's definitely one of those, those you know
message mismatches.
If you're not, it's either partof your.
It's either part of your ethosor it's not.
Yeah, and if it is, it's greatwhen it's around, but it's not
always great, and I think that'sthat's one of those things that
if you have a particular ethoslike you just have to accept
there's times when it's hotterthan than other times and
election years are one out ofevery four years, so not like it
(04:43):
works this well every year.
But that kind of market-wiseraising their prices on the
front end, I mean obviously itimpacts their total number in
the door.
But the kind of general trendalso seems to be a little bit of
this.
That high volume kind of likeI'm not so worried about churn
(05:04):
approach to acquisition haschanged too, hasn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, I think you know there's a lot of people
that will purchase a $50 product, that may never purchase a $200
product, right?
And I think for a while thegame was to see, okay, how many
people can we just get in thedoor?
And that was certainly the gamein 21.
And I was cooled off in 22, butkind of came back in 23 of,
(05:30):
like, you know what is thatinitial checkout price?
That makes sense and you know,I think for a lot of people it's
still that $79 to $99.
But you know, if your companyis struggling with new sales and
profitability, like you know,maybe you try that $199 entry
price point and see if you canpay for your customer
(05:50):
acquisition cost in day one.
We don't really try to do thatFor us.
We're lucky to break even after90 days and we're happy with
that.
But things are tight, like Iwould just try to cut back on
the stuff.
That doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It doesn't break even as quickly, right, right, right
, and that's the.
I mean, the smaller, thesmaller pubs have have, I'd say
like they don't have as much.
Well, they can't handle therisk as high as some of the
other ones, obviously.
So, um, scaling up, I mean, Idon't know.
I hesitate to say that it'sbetter to go higher price when
(06:28):
you're smaller, um, becausethere's so much variability.
But it definitely seems likewe're seeing more of that like
kind of drive to like, hey,maybe I can, you know, get a
higher price point on the frontend, um, and it makes my media
buying work sooner um it, justthere's not the scale that you
would have as you, as you golower, so that is.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
That is the big trade off you, when you're working
with people like Charles Plagleand George Mecham and ourselves,
like we're going to send outthe thing that makes us the most
money all like all day, everyday.
Right, If something is, youknow, a higher price point,
we're going to see lowerconversions, we're making less
money, so we're probably notgoing to send out the volume we
(07:09):
would otherwise.
So you have to find thatbalance of like what number
makes sense for you know you asa publishing business but also
what numbers will make sense forthe people who are sending you,
your customers.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, yeah, and so the you know you bring up, you
bring up you know, charles andgeorge and um, I'm I don't say
surprised, I'm a littlesurprised.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
actually, in the discord you guys have been
sharing, like which which offerswork for you versus what, what
their hot offers are, and andthere's a lot more variability
in there than I would haveexpected- yeah, I, my hunch
would have been that we all hadkind of the same top offers, but
that's not really the case andI think that what that says is
that, like you know, those guysuse different kinds of channels
(07:55):
than we do on acquisition.
You know, they're both very biginto AdWords and we're not as
big into AdWords.
So it just tells me you know,we've got different lists with
different interests and that'sgood, because that means we're
not just all trying to send thesame people to the same
advertisers.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and so how would you characterize as
somebody who's like, hey, I'dlove to be able to target your
traffic better and deliversomething for you that can get a
lot more scale?
What kind of offers would yousay, and kind of thematics work
really well for you?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
You know for MarketBeat, the stuff that
really kind of tells a story andgives a glimpse into the future
or what the future might belike.
Like Californication, early inthe year, just crushed it like
nothing has had since 2019.
But it gave people a glimpseinto like this is what a year
from now it like like nothinghas had since 2019.
Uh, but it gave people aglimpse into like this is what a
year from now might be like.
(08:49):
Uh, maybe neither biden ortrump is president and you know
they didn't get gavin newsomright, right.
But like you know who thoughtwe were going to have kamala
harris as a presidentialcandidate a year ago?
Like it didn't seem likepossibility but they really
pointed you in that directionand said, oh, this really could
happen and here's why.
And it did happen.
So that kind of stuff worksreally well.
(09:13):
The storytelling is reallyimportant.
Here's what the future lookslike really is important.
But then also that personalrelationship where it's not like
here's something that mighthappen.
It's got to be like a personwith an opinion, like if Porter
Stansberry sends you a personalletter or what looks like a
(09:34):
personal letter, people justengage with that more than like
some generic copy that lookslike it's an advertisement.
Like you know, I think peoplestill do want that personal
connection to a publisher, likethey say I'm this person's guy
and like I really like theirstuff.
And like you have to developthat personal brand as a
(09:54):
financial publisher so that youcan kind of have that connection
.
And, like you know, this weekPorter had a bunch of people out
to his farm his customers, likefor a live event for two days
and you know not many people aredoing that right.
Like you know, you want to giveyour best people that kind of
access they're looking for sothey can continue to develop
that personal connection.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, I do think that the people overlook the
especially newer people in theindustry.
They overlook the power of theguru and the relationship and
how.
I mean even this was truethroughout the history of FinPub
, but with, like, the rise ofsocial media, I mean everything
is personality, everything'spersonality now, and so like to
not have personality in thepromo seems like a missed
(10:36):
opportunity for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, I do think there's a disconnect with um.
You know, some of the biggergurus over the years have really
kind of fallen short on theirpersonal brand outside of like
their publications.
Like if you're going to be thatexpert and talking about a
subject you know a lot about outand have a publication where
you're charging for it, like youshould be on podcast, you
(10:57):
should be on twitter, you shouldbe on some of the platforms
talking about some of the samethings, so that, like, like you
know, hikatori, like in hispublications, like versus like
him elsewhere on the internet.
Like I don't want to say likehe's just on twitter, like you
know, there he could tour you,like in his publications, like
versus like him elsewhere on theinternet.
Like I don't want to say likeit just on Twitter.
Like you know, there's not muchof a presence on other
platforms.
There's just not much of apresence Like if you're, if you
(11:19):
are going to advertise yourselfas, like I'm the expert, I know
a ton about this topic and I caninform you about it and teach
you about it.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Like you got to be the other places too yeah, yeah,
I think people are nervoussometimes too because in twitter
like twitter is not a kindplace and people get uh, people
have no problem calling you outon stuff.
But I think that's not, um,that's not fundamentally
negative uh, if you're, ifyou're doing good stuff, um.
(11:44):
But no, I think you're right onthe uh, and I think it also
goes to a little bit to the theway that we would build gurus in
the past, um, since they neverhad any direct conversation,
right, it's all the copywriterfiltered kind of stuff.
Um, you could take somebody whodidn't have as much personality
(12:05):
and build them up bigger Uh,but if they're not out there now
nowadays, it's harder to kindof hide that um yeah, I think,
like like somebody who's doing areally good job with this is is
duneberg.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Um, you know he's anonymous and a lot of people,
including we, kind of know whohe is.
But, um, and you know he'll, hewill speak at an event every
now and then, as long as there'sno cameras, um.
But I mean, he's got a Twitteraccount with a quarter million
followers.
He does podcast interviews, buthe's still got, you know, the
paid subscription offering andhe's probably making several
(12:38):
million a year doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, I think there are.
I mean this is conjecture, butfrom talking to people with
Substack and other places, Ithink they're around four to
five.
They're one of the best ones onSubstack.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's the number I kind of heard too, but I didn't
know if that number was publicor not.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I've heard.
I mean it is now.
I've heard enough people.
I mean I don't have any directknowledge of it, I just have
lots of people who've been usingthat number that seem to be
familiar with their business,and so Maybe it's not quite
accurate, but they're doing agreat job for sure.
And, like the you mentionedbefore, like the crowdfunding is
(13:15):
picked up and things like thatso how have you seen that space
develop this year for you?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, really the reggae kind of stuff is really
taking off and a lot of that hasto do with Dealmaker and a lot
of that has to do with dealmaker.
They have done a nice job ofkind of being the I don't know
the agency that sits in betweenpeople like MarketBeat and kind
of.
You know these companies thatwant to raise money and you know
I don't know everything they do, but they have come to us.
(13:41):
You know they're picking uptalent.
They've come to us with a lotof companies and said, hey,
we're trying to do a deal withthis company and you know, do
you think you could drive some?
You know, um, you know, drivesome interest and um, they're
working.
I mean, this is I don't sayit's it's not like what uh,
(14:12):
excuse me, you know it's notwhat IR was in, like 2021, but
for there to be five, six, sevendifferent reggae companies kind
of out there at once looking tobuy traffic, like that's pretty
meaningful and they're buying alot.
They are.
They picked up Georgia fromStrikepoint and she's done a
nice job of making thoseconnections again and they've
got a lot of volume.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, no, I think, like Rebecca and those guys over
there, jonathan Stead, on themarketing side, they have done
like a really great job kind of,because they realize that in
order for the crowdfundingreggae raises to work, you need
distribution and digitaldistribution, and without it it
doesn't work.
So they did a great job likebuilding out that capacity.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
um, yeah, yeah, mobile still out there doing a
bunch of direct buys too, that's.
They're kind of a bit unique inthat that they're, you know,
really trying to go through asmany direct channels as they can
.
Um, yeah, we've seen a lot ofvolume from them and as well
yeah nice.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So I wanted to ask you too, like this you test.
It seems like you test.
You test almost everything thatcomes out when people are
putting offers out.
You're willing?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
to test everything.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Um, what do you see is kind of some of the big
problems that people are havingfrom conversion standpoint, like
what are they doing wrong?
Not anyone specific, maybe, butyou you've got.
You've got to see a lot ofthings that like this stuff
never works, or like we'll testthis but it doesn't work,
probably, and fair enough, itdoesn't like.
What do you see from that side,or what's your perspective on
(15:41):
that?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, um, I think we've kind of gotten lazy on
copy as an industry, um, and itseems like a lot of people will
just want to do a spray and prayapproach of like here's 20
lifts, test them all and to seewhich one works, versus like
(16:03):
let's really like study what'sworking now and like it's not
hard, like you can get on themarket list, you can get on, uh,
some of the other lists thatare out there and sign up and
see what copy is being sent outover and over again and that
tells you what's working right.
I mean, we'll have people sendus like 20 lists and say you
(16:24):
know, run some of these and likeokay, but like we're not going
to send 20 lifts, right, sowhich ones are good?
Um, um.
So I think if we did some morework on like really trying to
write good emails on the frontend, versus like trying to just
write a bunch of them and seewhich ones are good, I think
that is important.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Um um, um I think there's probably a little bit
too much trend chasing of likeai was hot six months ago.
So there are people like justnow coming out with ai stuff,
like, uh, you know, nvidia peakfor at least in the near term,
and just kind of coming backdown like that, that's kind of
(17:08):
that.
That's a trend.
It's already come and goneright, right, um, so it's you
kind of got to be ahead of thatcurve a little bit and like
don't worry about, like, whatpeople in finpub are doing now.
Like worry what you know peopleare talking about on in the
news and on reddit and kind ofin the culture today.
Like, um, like that's one thingporter stansbury does really
(17:29):
well with, like as soon as, likejd vance got elected, like he
had this, uh, you know, um, Idon't know, I don't know
creative, like I know the.
The email title was like here'sthe real hillbilly elegy or
whatever it was, yeah, and likehe was like right on top of that
.
But you gotta base your promosand your copy and your creative
(17:50):
based off like here's what'shappening in the news today
versus like here's the thingthat worked six months ago that
everyone else you know is stillrunning yeah, and that's that
like people need a speed tospeed the production on on
things, uh, to catch up withthat.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But also like the I remember b Brian Hunt talking
about, like you know, kind ofthe.
In one sense the business isfiguring out what where the
attention is publicly and tryingto you know, steer into that
constantly and so, like thisyear it's all been political
things, it's been, it's beennews around that and we know
(18:26):
that the customer based on thenewsletter side in particular is
that older conservative guy, um, and so that's like kind of
where they've been versus, youknow, the.
It also has, I think, a nice,nice component of.
There's an emotional piece ofthat.
When it comes to politics,people are heavily invested and
(18:47):
so, like you're getting likeagreement, um, from a lot of
folks if you have this, if you,if you're kind of aligning with
that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
But, um, I do think you're right that the kind of
the swipe mentality in finpubhas gotten over overdone, where
it's like we'll just look atwhatever, what, what somebody
else trying, we'll just try thatum versus having like a real
perspective as a publisher, um,and writing promo for that based
(19:13):
on what's going on in the worldyeah, I think one person who's
done a good job of kind of notfalling for I don't know
whatever the hot thing is andkind of doing their own thing
really well lately is, uh, uh,tim sykes and kind of the stocks
to trade website.
Like they have done.
They've built a fantasticwebsite.
They've put hundreds ofthousands of dollars in that.
Anybody in our space thathasn't been to StocksToTradecom
(19:36):
lately should go check it out.
It's really good.
That's a great website to studyand say, okay, this is the bar,
let's try to get there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, and their business is doing really well
too.
I don't hear a lot of peopleright now I mean more than more
than more than last year um whoare putting up really good
numbers.
But they've been, they've beendoing some pretty substantial um
numbers and are in a great,great spot too.
Uh, but do you see more of thelike investment versus trading
(20:09):
kind of stuff, like stocks totrade now, or do you see more of
the investment versus tradingkind of stuff, like
StocksToTrade now, or do you seea good mix of both?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I mean, I'd say it's still a big mix of both.
The thing that's really takenoff is the gold offers, and
those firms have gotten reallycompetitive with each other.
They'll pay $39 all day longfor somebody to fill out a lead
form.
The gold offers and those firmshave gotten really competitive
with each other and, um, youknow, they'll pay $39 all day
long for somebody to fill out alead form and, uh, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I can add up pretty quickly and that's like the, the
gold IRA kind of firms andthings like that, or yeah, um,
like priority goal, golden crest, uh, gold co, and they're all
kind of doing the same thing.
Yeah Well, that's definitely aspace that's growing.
I think Jeremy Blossom was onthe market call yesterday and he
(20:58):
was saying the same thing thatthey're.
I think they were going tomanage gold and they were paying
something like that $39 to $40a lead.
So that's substantial.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I mean that's very substantial.
I mean another big trend for usthis year is doing lead gen for
other companies has been anincreasingly large part of our
universe.
There are a lot of companiesthat want to buy kind of the $5
picked opt-in leads that way,like you know, maybe you know I
(21:31):
want to go to a financialpublishing company.
You know I need to build myuniverse, my audience, but maybe
I'm not 100% sure, like thecurrent offer is, like this is
the thing that's going to likegenerate a ton of sales.
So a lot of people are movingtowards like, well, I'd just
rather get these people on myfree newsletter and then that
way I can, if this thing doesn'twork, it's on the next thing or
(21:51):
the next thing.
So we've seen a lot more ofthat this year, a lot more kind
of lead share type deals.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
That's been a growing trend for us.
For somebody who wants to dothat with you guys, what's kind
of the threshold?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
of spend for them to get in there.
Our starting point for anybodywho wants to work with us is
probably $25,000 a month.
These days we have at least 40people that do that on volume.
We just can't be dealing withpeople that were have like a
(22:30):
five or 10k a month kind ofbudget.
Um yeah, so that's kind of thestarting number, I mean whether
it's cto or whether it's umanything um yeah, I mean like
sometimes we're you know, youmeet somebody fms and they're
the brand new like maybe you'regoing to give them a chance.
But um, for an ongoingrelationship where we're really
looking for kind of 25 as astarting point.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Nice.
Okay, that's good to know.
So you've been, obviouslyyou've been doing this for a
very long time, right Like what?
2005, 2006,.
You started MarketBeat.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, my Google AdSense account dates back to
December 26th of 2006.
So that's kind of, in my mind,the starting date of the
business.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So you've seen a lot of change and you've seen more
change this year.
How do you look at the?
What do you think about?
You know, beyond this year,we've had a ton of changes in
the industry.
We've had a bunch of thingshappen Like I think there's, you
know, new sectors coming up up,like the reggae space and
things like that.
So when you're talking aboutthis retail media world, what do
you see out there right now?
(23:36):
What are you thinking, whetherit's I know this is going to
happen or I'm just watching thisother trend, how do you think
things are changing here beyondjust this month?
Yeah big open-ended questionyeah, big open-ended question.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Um, you know, I I think it's going to be harder to
buy media in the next few years.
Yeah, um, you know we saw thisyear a bunch of people had their
adsense accounts or adwordsaccounts get get banned for
whatever reason.
Um, so, maybe election year,maybe not, but I think the bar
(24:15):
in the future is going to belike to have a real brand.
You know there are a lot ofpeople out there some of our
good friends that have, you know, maybe financial websites, but
maybe it's a brand nobody's everheard of.
I think it's going to betougher and tougher to operate
that way.
I think you really have to belike a real brand that has faces
(24:36):
associated with it and socialmedia accounts, and like a
physical address and like apicture of your team.
And you know, I think the baron like what people are willing
to put up with, especially from.
You know, google's new searchalgorithm is very focused on
like brand search, like thenumber of people that like type
in Mark beat in Google.
So, like you're a no namewebsite, obviously nobody's
(24:59):
going to be typing in the nameof your brand.
You're not going to get anyorganic traffic.
Yeah, so I think it's brand isa huge, huge trend.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
That's an interesting .
So I've I've I've been thinkingabout that trend too, but, like
I was thinking about it notbecause I'm not a media buyer
and I never considered it fromthat perspective um, I've been
thinking about it from like kindof customer relationship, um,
and marketing side and how, likeI think that the same thing
like the, the opportunities toto build a brand, that kind of
(25:30):
stakes out a position in themarket and kind of like builds a
, an ongoing audience, andthat's where you're trying to
get a customer who stays longer,has a higher ltv maybe he's a
little more qualified, um, but Ihadn't considered that aspect
of it too, that the.
So that does seem, then, fromfrom multiple directions, that
(25:50):
that building a brand and whatthat means for people, because I
think a lot of people in directresponse have always kind of
had a negative idea on brand,like, oh, it's a wasted thing
and it's not sales and this andthat, but, um, it does matter,
oh, absolutely and even fromlike uh, you know we have an sms
shortcode and we know peoplethat couldn't get approved for
(26:11):
one because they're like, whoare like, like, who are you Like
?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
are you a company?
Are you real?
So, like, if you know, if youwant access into all of the
things that, like, allow you tobecome a scalable company.
Like when your vendors Googleyou, like they want to know that
John Newton's a real person andhe has a real company and
there's a real office somewherewith real people inside.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, I'm blown away when I look up people in the
space and look at their websitesand like I could not if I
didn't know that they were thatit was their business.
I would have no idea who ran itLike.
That blows my mind.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, you know we try to try to hit the
bar for that.
And if you go to like markmecomslash about about, you see a
picture of our office, you seeall of our team members, you see
some of the community projectswe've been involved with.
Anybody that's working atGoogle and looking at our
AdWords account and saying whois this company is going to look
at that and say, oh yeah,they're legit.
(27:05):
I mean, these are real peopleand I go to their LinkedIn
profiles and see all theirwriters.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
And you do a great job on social yourself across
multiple platforms.
You're really solid on theretoo.
It is it's business.
But every year that goes by,there's more tasks that a
business has to do to do well,Doesn't it seem like there's
(27:32):
just more and more things thatwe have to do?
You have to be better at moreaspects of the business than you
used to have to be.
Like 10 years ago, it wasreally easy to kind of throw
something up there and throwsome webinars out and buy some
cheap media.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
But I mean there's also some real benefits from
like doing that work of.
Like when we post a jobapplication, 50 people apply
every time and like we get DMson everything saying, hey, I'm a
copywriter, I'm this and this,can I come work at MarketBeat,
I'd love to work for you?
And, like you know, it makes itreally easy to find talent too.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That's huge.
I mean that's huge.
So, no, I love that, love thatperspective, um, and then I
guess the like, what?
What am I not?
Cause I love how you're you.
You, you know, obviously Ithink very differently than you
in general in terms of how Ithink.
Um, you were, you were of amuch better perspective on a lot
of things, and you and you lookat the world differently.
(28:28):
Um, what are you thinking?
Is there anything that you'rethinking about in the industry
that I'm not even talking aboutor thinking about Like, are
there any areas where, likeyou're, like you know, like I
remember our previousconversation, you talked about
how, um, having, like, theability to do actual software
development is becomingincreasingly important, and I
thought that was totally,totally spot on.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Um, I think there's uh, the other, I don't know.
I thing that I'm thinking aboutthese days is the concept of
platform risk.
Some of it is obvious.
My Google AdWords account getsbanned.
That's risk because I'm toodependent on Google.
But we learned this week there'splatform risk with WordPress.
Wp Engine, the biggestWordPress hosting provider, is
(29:13):
in a feud with Matt Mullenweg,the guy that started WordPress,
and Matt Mullenweg is trying toshake down WP Engines.
Now, if you're like on WPEngine with WordPress, like you
can't get updates to yourWordPress and like it's going to
get hacked, so you got to bereally mindful of like what
companies you're being dependenton and like what your risks are
there and how to mitigate them.
And I think there's going to bemore platform risk in more
(29:33):
places that we haven't reallythought about.
I really think there's that'sgoing to be more true with some
of the email service providerstoo.
I don't I probably don't wantto name names, but there's one
that's been making a lot ofnoise lately and doing a lot
with their software.
In a short period of time andwhen you write code fast and
(29:55):
loose, things often break, and Ithink that's has happened and
will continue to happen withsome ESPs that are making a lot
of waves right now.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Interesting, interesting.
Yeah, I used WP Engine.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I didn't realize that that's scary um, yeah, so that
like back everything up, havecopies of your email list that
like aren't your esp.
You can back up your ad,creative on adwords, like
anything that like is onsomebody else's server that you
don't have like try to get abackup of it yeah, that's good's
good advice, that's good advice.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So in the platform risk we've seen, you know, the
biggest one was still, like yousaid, google AdWords.
When Agora got kicked off fortwo years on Facebook and Google
and that was devastating.
In some ways they found waysaround it, but still, like that
definitely happens.
And do you think?
I mean I guess that's kind oflike the that brand issue is
(30:57):
really relevant there.
I feel like, because I feel likea lot of times like these
decisions are not being it's notlike mark zuckerberg is looking
at your, your ads on facebookright, it's, it's a staff member
who's looking at it.
And they are not entrepreneurs,they are not marketers, they
are not whatever, they've got ajob're an employee.
They have who knows what kindof beliefs about business or
marketing that you have, you'regoing to have.
(31:18):
There's thousands of them, soyou're gonna have all kinds of
them and so if they look at yoursite and they're like, oh, this
guy's a scammer, you're at muchhigher risk than if they look
at your site and like, oh, thisis just a good business.
And for the longest time, Ifeel like the Motley Fool is the
one publisher who did a reallygreat job building a brand
(31:41):
Investor Place did a really goodjob too, and then now, I think,
stansberry Marketwise has movedthere, but the Motley Fool
definitely stands out as onethat yeah, I mean the founder's
names are all over the website.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It's an established brand, but motley fool does,
really well I say, advertise onlike places that other people
don't, and like they advertiseon quora.
Nobody advertises on quora.
Like I couldn't even getapproved on quora, like that's
interesting.
So and I see their names likewhenever I think I found like
(32:12):
some new innovative likemarketing thing.
Like Motley Fool is alreadydoing it, like they're they've
done a really good job of likefinding like advertising
channels that like peopleoutside of our industry have
used and like been successfulwith, and like making it work in
FinPub when other people can'tmake it work in FinPub.
So I've yeah, I heard at onepoint they were doing like $40
(32:33):
million a year in advertisingspend, which is really
impressive.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, yeah, they've done a lot of really interesting
things over the years andthey've adapted to.
I remember they had a blognetwork because that was one of
the things that allowed you toget into Yahoo News back in the
day, and then when all thosekind of news sites stopped
taking blog networks, they justkind of shut it down because the
(32:56):
whole point wasn't to have theblog network, the whole point
was to have the traffic, and sothey've been really good at
these kind of big picture moveson traffic.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, the other big traffic thing we're working on
right now is really syndicationof how do we get MarketBeat in
more places.
And you know we've got a guyworking kind of full time on
like how many different placescan we get MarketBeat's news
content just to show up and likeI don't even care if the
content's on our website.
(33:28):
Like I want people reading ourstuff, whether it's on the
MarketBeat website or NASDAQ.
Like there's a new StockBitscompetitor launching soon called
TraderVerse.
Yeah, I think it's calledTraderVerse, TraderVerse, but I
don't know They've got someinteresting it's.
Yeah, I guess it'sTraderVerseio, but you know
(33:49):
they've got some interestingstuff and like you know they're
going to launch soon and likewe're going to be on there on
day one and like maybe it'll gosomewhere and be awesome, maybe
it won't, but like how many ofthese places can you, can we get
our content is one of the rolesyeah, that's where I know one
group a couple years ago was.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
You know they were doing more ir work, but they're.
They had some news like theystarted getting picked up in
bloomberg and that was a hugething for them and so, having
that and I know you are at theNASDAQ, you are- on NASDAQ.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, we're on NASDAQ , we're on MSN, we're on
Entrepreneur, a few sets likethat, but we're not on Robinhood
.
We would love to be onRobinhood.
We don't know how to do that,or we're working on it.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah yeah, and the syndication, I mean, that's
probably one of the moredifficult sides of this, isn't
it?
Because it's not just brand,it's the quality content, the
volume content, it's a lot ofthings.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, and they're all one-off biz dev deals so
they're hard, but if you getthem done they last forever.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, that's right.
I know a guy who helped oilprice do a lot of syndication
and he was like, oh, I got himon Yahoo news and this and that
and his thing was like, well, Iused to like I'm best friends
with the head of Yahoo news andso it's like it's an easier
conversation.
Yeah, um like.
Yeah, that's.
It's not always easy forsomeone to get into so um cool,
(35:14):
but uh awesome.
Get into so um cool, but uhawesome, matt.
Well, I appreciate it.
This is.
This has been super helpful.
Um, I love getting yourinsights into everything.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Um and uh, thanks, yeah, yeah, great chatting.
Um, yeah, anybody wants to workwith mark b?
It's uh, markbcom advertising.
We got a media kit.
Well, his email is on there.
Uh, happy to talk to anybody.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yep, awesome, and anyone who's in the FMS pro
group, like Matt's in there.
He's been, you've been awesome.
I really appreciate all theinsights and help you've given
people and kind of willing toshare and talk there and then
we'll see you at FMS in January.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, we'll be at FMS and highly recommend the FMS
pro group.
A lot, a lot of value in there.
Appreciate that Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Awesome Thanks, John Thanks.
All right, hey everyone.
I'm here with Dr Matt Paulsonfrom MarketBeat.
How are you doing, Matt Good?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Happy to be here again.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah, great to have you back.
I wanted to get your take on awhole bunch of things.
Your perspective on theindustry is a really great one,
because you kind of see all theexternal that's going out
through the various CPA offersand things like that, and we've
had a lot of change.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, it's September of this year versus January.
It is two very differentenvironments.
What's working has changed,what's hot has changed.
The election has created agiant distraction.
Obviously, some big changes atMarketWise.
Crowdfunding has really takenoff.
Just a whole lot, a lot ofdifferent things happening.
That's really um shaking up theapple cart yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So it's almost like it's not like one major thing.
There's been a ton of majorchanges.
So I mean, how would you, howwould you like basically
characterize then, like januaryto now, um, like the shift then?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
yeah, it a it's definitely a weaker environment.
Um, you know, I heard from afew people kind of that first
quarter is probably the bestquarter a lot of people ever had
.
And now we're we're almoststarting to look like some of
the 2022 numbers again where,like you know, for us we're
probably down 25, 30% top lineum Q1 compared to Q q3 and it's
(01:26):
just a more challengingenvironment and I think the
election has something to dowith that.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Uh, the changes that market wise, uh, certainly
haven't helped um and um, youknow, just the conversion
environment's weaker than it wasyeah, yeah, and so with the for
people who maybe not as awareof everything that happened at
MarketWise, which is that I meanyou had the legacy shut down
and then you had changes andPorter came in, came out a lot
(01:55):
of disruption there, a lot feweroffers coming out and I mean, I
think the big thing was thatthere are initial price points.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The company decided that their kind of front end
initial cart was going to be 200, up from maybe 70, and that's
uh, that's definitely going toimpact your number of
conversions right, right.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
So it's big.
It's a big kind of like impact,since they were probably the
largest external advertiser forthe last year or two at least.
Yeah, for a lot of people,absolutely yeah, yeah.
So then, um, when you thinkabout like the, just kind of
like the, the impacts then fromkind of the weaker environment,
changes in market wise and allthat like what do you think are
(02:39):
like?
How's that impacting everybodyelse?
How's that impacting uh, kindof what, what's working for
people, what they're doing likestrategy?
I mean, there's a lot changing.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, right now with the election, it does seem like
the political angles are workingreally well on copy.
We've seen Porter Company andWeiss and behind the markets do
really well with some differentpolitical angles.
All of the gold companies arereally using political angles
and they're having a lot ofsuccess with that.
And you know, I think thatprobably dies down after the
(03:13):
election, but right now it seemsto be one of the things that's
working well.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, no, I think that's like the gold connection
with politics when gold is hot,has always been strong um I know
that paradigm had that order,that, that promo, doing like a
just 500 or a thousand orders aday at one point, yeah, um, and
then porter's been pretty.
He's been pretty consistentright as a, as a publisher,
(03:41):
talking about kind of morepolitical kind of conversations,
which has worked well for him.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it's like you have to either do it
consistently or never at all,cause if you don't talk about
politics and you start talkingabout politics, you know your,
your audience, may not like that, cause they you know I you
listen to Taylor Swift for hermusic.
Then all of a sudden she startstalking about politics and say,
hey, I like your music, but Idon't really need to hear your
political opinions.
(04:07):
And I think that can be truewith kind of FinPub too, like if
you're, you know, I'm here foryour investment opinions, not
your political takes.
And if you go from not doingthat to doing that, I think some
people might not like that.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah it's definitely one of those, those you know
message mismatches.
If you're not, it's either partof your.
It's either part of your ethosor it's not.
Yeah, and if it is, it's greatwhen it's around, but it's not
always great, and I think that'sthat's one of those things that
if you have a particular ethoslike you just have to accept
there's times when it's hotterthan than other times and
election years are one out ofevery four years, so not like it
(04:43):
works this well every year.
But that kind of market-wiseraising their prices on the
front end, I mean obviously itimpacts their total number in
the door.
But the kind of general trendalso seems to be a little bit of
this.
That high volume kind of likeI'm not so worried about churn
(05:04):
approach to acquisition haschanged too, hasn't it?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, I think you know there's a lot of people
that will purchase a $50 product, that may never purchase a $200
product, right?
And I think for a while thegame was to see, okay, how many
people can we just get in thedoor?
And that was certainly the gamein 21.
And I was cooled off in 22, butkind of came back in 23 of,
(05:30):
like, you know what is thatinitial checkout price?
That makes sense and you know,I think for a lot of people it's
still that $79 to $99.
But you know, if your companyis struggling with new sales and
profitability, like you know,maybe you try that $199 entry
price point and see if you canpay for your customer
(05:50):
acquisition cost in day one.
We don't really try to do thatFor us.
We're lucky to break even after90 days and we're happy with
that.
But things are tight, like Iwould just try to cut back on
the stuff.
That doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It doesn't break even as quickly, right, right, right
, and that's the.
I mean, the smaller, thesmaller pubs have have, I'd say
like they don't have as much.
Well, they can't handle therisk as high as some of the
other ones, obviously.
So, um, scaling up, I mean, Idon't know.
I hesitate to say that it'sbetter to go higher price when
(06:28):
you're smaller, um, becausethere's so much variability.
But it definitely seems likewe're seeing more of that like
kind of drive to like, hey,maybe I can, you know, get a
higher price point on the frontend, um, and it makes my media
buying work sooner um it, justthere's not the scale that you
would have as you, as you golower, so that is.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
That is the big trade off you, when you're working
with people like Charles Plagleand George Mecham and ourselves,
like we're going to send outthe thing that makes us the most
money all like all day, everyday.
Right, If something is, youknow, a higher price point,
we're going to see lowerconversions, we're making less
money, so we're probably notgoing to send out the volume we
(07:09):
would otherwise.
So you have to find thatbalance of like what number
makes sense for you know you asa publishing business but also
what numbers will make sense forthe people who are sending you,
your customers.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, yeah, and so the you know you bring up, you
bring up you know, charles andgeorge and um, I'm I don't say
surprised, I'm a littlesurprised.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
actually, in the discord you guys have been
sharing, like which which offerswork for you versus what, what
their hot offers are, and andthere's a lot more variability
in there than I would haveexpected- yeah, I, my hunch
would have been that we all hadkind of the same top offers, but
that's not really the case andI think that what that says is
that, like you know, those guysuse different kinds of channels
(07:55):
than we do on acquisition.
You know, they're both very biginto AdWords and we're not as
big into AdWords.
So it just tells me you know,we've got different lists with
different interests and that'sgood, because that means we're
not just all trying to send thesame people to the same
advertisers.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and so how would you characterize as
somebody who's like, hey, I'dlove to be able to target your
traffic better and deliversomething for you that can get a
lot more scale?
What kind of offers would yousay, and kind of thematics work
really well for you?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
You know for MarketBeat, the stuff that
really kind of tells a story andgives a glimpse into the future
or what the future might belike.
Like Californication, early inthe year, just crushed it like
nothing has had since 2019.
But it gave people a glimpseinto like this is what a year
from now it like like nothinghas had since 2019.
Uh, but it gave people aglimpse into like this is what a
year from now might be like.
(08:49):
Uh, maybe neither biden ortrump is president and you know
they didn't get gavin newsomright, right.
But like you know who thoughtwe were going to have kamala
harris as a presidentialcandidate a year ago?
Like it didn't seem likepossibility but they really
pointed you in that directionand said, oh, this really could
happen and here's why.
And it did happen.
So that kind of stuff worksreally well.
(09:13):
The storytelling is reallyimportant.
Here's what the future lookslike really is important.
But then also that personalrelationship where it's not like
here's something that mighthappen.
It's got to be like a personwith an opinion, like if Porter
Stansberry sends you a personalletter or what looks like a
(09:34):
personal letter, people justengage with that more than like
some generic copy that lookslike it's an advertisement.
Like you know, I think peoplestill do want that personal
connection to a publisher, likethey say I'm this person's guy
and like I really like theirstuff.
And like you have to developthat personal brand as a
(09:54):
financial publisher so that youcan kind of have that connection
.
And, like you know, this weekPorter had a bunch of people out
to his farm his customers, likefor a live event for two days
and you know not many people aredoing that right.
Like you know, you want to giveyour best people that kind of
access they're looking for sothey can continue to develop
that personal connection.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, I do think that the people overlook the
especially newer people in theindustry.
They overlook the power of theguru and the relationship and
how.
I mean even this was truethroughout the history of FinPub
, but with, like, the rise ofsocial media, I mean everything
is personality, everything'spersonality now, and so like to
not have personality in thepromo seems like a missed
(10:36):
opportunity for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, I do think there's a disconnect with um.
You know, some of the biggergurus over the years have really
kind of fallen short on theirpersonal brand outside of like
their publications.
Like if you're going to be thatexpert and talking about a
subject you know a lot about outand have a publication where
you're charging for it, like youshould be on podcast, you
(10:57):
should be on twitter, you shouldbe on some of the platforms
talking about some of the samethings, so that, like, like you
know, hikatori, like in hispublications, like versus like
him elsewhere on the internet.
Like I don't want to say likehe's just on twitter, like you
know, there he could tour you,like in his publications, like
versus like him elsewhere on theinternet.
Like I don't want to say likeit just on Twitter.
Like you know, there's not muchof a presence on other
platforms.
There's just not much of apresence Like if you're, if you
(11:19):
are going to advertise yourselfas, like I'm the expert, I know
a ton about this topic and I caninform you about it and teach
you about it.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Like you got to be the other places too yeah, yeah,
I think people are nervoussometimes too because in twitter
like twitter is not a kindplace and people get uh, people
have no problem calling you outon stuff.
But I think that's not, um,that's not fundamentally
negative uh, if you're, ifyou're doing good stuff, um.
(11:44):
But no, I think you're right onthe uh, and I think it also
goes to a little bit to the theway that we would build gurus in
the past, um, since they neverhad any direct conversation,
right, it's all the copywriterfiltered kind of stuff.
Um, you could take somebody whodidn't have as much personality
(12:05):
and build them up bigger Uh,but if they're not out there now
nowadays, it's harder to kindof hide that um yeah, I think,
like like somebody who's doing areally good job with this is is
duneberg.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Um, you know he's anonymous and a lot of people,
including we, kind of know whohe is.
But, um, and you know he'll, hewill speak at an event every
now and then, as long as there'sno cameras, um.
But I mean, he's got a Twitteraccount with a quarter million
followers.
He does podcast interviews, buthe's still got, you know, the
paid subscription offering andhe's probably making several
(12:38):
million a year doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, yeah, I think there are.
I mean this is conjecture, butfrom talking to people with
Substack and other places, Ithink they're around four to
five.
They're one of the best ones onSubstack.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's the number I kind of heard too, but I didn't
know if that number was publicor not.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I've heard.
I mean it is now.
I've heard enough people.
I mean I don't have any directknowledge of it, I just have
lots of people who've been usingthat number that seem to be
familiar with their business,and so Maybe it's not quite
accurate, but they're doing agreat job for sure.
And, like the you mentionedbefore, like the crowdfunding is
(13:15):
picked up and things like thatso how have you seen that space
develop this year for you?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, really the reggae kind of stuff is really
taking off and a lot of that hasto do with Dealmaker and a lot
of that has to do with dealmaker.
They have done a nice job ofkind of being the I don't know
the agency that sits in betweenpeople like MarketBeat and kind
of.
You know these companies thatwant to raise money and you know
I don't know everything they do, but they have come to us.
(13:41):
You know they're picking uptalent.
They've come to us with a lotof companies and said, hey,
we're trying to do a deal withthis company and you know, do
you think you could drive some?
You know, um, you know, drivesome interest and um, they're
working.
I mean, this is I don't sayit's it's not like what uh,
(14:12):
excuse me, you know it's notwhat IR was in, like 2021, but
for there to be five, six, sevendifferent reggae companies kind
of out there at once looking tobuy traffic, like that's pretty
meaningful and they're buying alot.
They are.
They picked up Georgia fromStrikepoint and she's done a
nice job of making thoseconnections again and they've
got a lot of volume.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, no, I think, like Rebecca and those guys over
there, jonathan Stead, on themarketing side, they have done
like a really great job kind of,because they realize that in
order for the crowdfundingreggae raises to work, you need
distribution and digitaldistribution, and without it it
doesn't work.
So they did a great job likebuilding out that capacity.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
um, yeah, yeah, mobile still out there doing a
bunch of direct buys too, that's.
They're kind of a bit unique inthat that they're, you know,
really trying to go through asmany direct channels as they can
.
Um, yeah, we've seen a lot ofvolume from them and as well
yeah nice.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So I wanted to ask you too, like this you test.
It seems like you test.
You test almost everything thatcomes out when people are
putting offers out.
You're willing?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
to test everything.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Um, what do you see is kind of some of the big
problems that people are havingfrom conversion standpoint, like
what are they doing wrong?
Not anyone specific, maybe, butyou you've got.
You've got to see a lot ofthings that like this stuff
never works, or like we'll testthis but it doesn't work,
probably, and fair enough, itdoesn't like.
What do you see from that side,or what's your perspective on
(15:41):
that?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, um, I think we've kind of gotten lazy on
copy as an industry, um, and itseems like a lot of people will
just want to do a spray and prayapproach of like here's 20
lifts, test them all and to seewhich one works, versus like
(16:03):
let's really like study what'sworking now and like it's not
hard, like you can get on themarket list, you can get on, uh,
some of the other lists thatare out there and sign up and
see what copy is being sent outover and over again and that
tells you what's working right.
I mean, we'll have people sendus like 20 lists and say you
(16:24):
know, run some of these and likeokay, but like we're not going
to send 20 lifts, right, sowhich ones are good?
Um, um.
So I think if we did some morework on like really trying to
write good emails on the frontend, versus like trying to just
write a bunch of them and seewhich ones are good, I think
that is important.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Um um, um I think there's probably a little bit
too much trend chasing of likeai was hot six months ago.
So there are people like justnow coming out with ai stuff,
like, uh, you know, nvidia peakfor at least in the near term,
and just kind of coming backdown like that, that's kind of
(17:08):
that.
That's a trend.
It's already come and goneright, right, um, so it's you
kind of got to be ahead of thatcurve a little bit and like
don't worry about, like, whatpeople in finpub are doing now.
Like worry what you know peopleare talking about on in the
news and on reddit and kind ofin the culture today.
Like, um, like that's one thingporter stansbury does really
(17:29):
well with, like as soon as, likejd vance got elected, like he
had this, uh, you know, um, Idon't know, I don't know
creative, like I know the.
The email title was like here'sthe real hillbilly elegy or
whatever it was, yeah, and likehe was like right on top of that
.
But you gotta base your promosand your copy and your creative
(17:50):
based off like here's what'shappening in the news today
versus like here's the thingthat worked six months ago that
everyone else you know is stillrunning yeah, and that's that
like people need a speed tospeed the production on on
things, uh, to catch up withthat.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
But also like the I remember b Brian Hunt talking
about, like you know, kind ofthe.
In one sense the business isfiguring out what where the
attention is publicly and tryingto you know, steer into that
constantly and so, like thisyear it's all been political
things, it's been, it's beennews around that and we know
(18:26):
that the customer based on thenewsletter side in particular is
that older conservative guy, um, and so that's like kind of
where they've been versus, youknow, the.
It also has, I think, a nice,nice component of.
There's an emotional piece ofthat.
When it comes to politics,people are heavily invested and
(18:47):
so, like you're getting likeagreement, um, from a lot of
folks if you have this, if you,if you're kind of aligning with
that.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
But, um, I do think you're right that the kind of
the swipe mentality in finpubhas gotten over overdone, where
it's like we'll just look atwhatever, what, what somebody
else trying, we'll just try thatum versus having like a real
perspective as a publisher, um,and writing promo for that based
(19:13):
on what's going on in the worldyeah, I think one person who's
done a good job of kind of notfalling for I don't know
whatever the hot thing is andkind of doing their own thing
really well lately is, uh, uh,tim sykes and kind of the stocks
to trade website.
Like they have done.
They've built a fantasticwebsite.
They've put hundreds ofthousands of dollars in that.
Anybody in our space thathasn't been to StocksToTradecom
(19:36):
lately should go check it out.
It's really good.
That's a great website to studyand say, okay, this is the bar,
let's try to get there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, and their business is doing really well
too.
I don't hear a lot of peopleright now I mean more than more
than more than last year um whoare putting up really good
numbers.
But they've been, they've beendoing some pretty substantial um
numbers and are in a great,great spot too.
Uh, but do you see more of thelike investment versus trading
(20:09):
kind of stuff, like stocks totrade now, or do you see more of
the investment versus tradingkind of stuff, like
StocksToTrade now, or do you seea good mix of both?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, I mean, I'd say it's still a big mix of both.
The thing that's really takenoff is the gold offers, and
those firms have gotten reallycompetitive with each other.
They'll pay $39 all day longfor somebody to fill out a lead
form.
The gold offers and those firmshave gotten really competitive
with each other and, um, youknow, they'll pay $39 all day
long for somebody to fill out alead form and, uh, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
I can add up pretty quickly and that's like the, the
gold IRA kind of firms andthings like that, or yeah, um,
like priority goal, golden crest, uh, gold co, and they're all
kind of doing the same thing.
Yeah Well, that's definitely aspace that's growing.
I think Jeremy Blossom was onthe market call yesterday and he
(20:58):
was saying the same thing thatthey're.
I think they were going tomanage gold and they were paying
something like that $39 to $40a lead.
So that's substantial.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I mean that's very substantial.
I mean another big trend for usthis year is doing lead gen for
other companies has been anincreasingly large part of our
universe.
There are a lot of companiesthat want to buy kind of the $5
picked opt-in leads that way,like you know, maybe you know I
(21:31):
want to go to a financialpublishing company.
You know I need to build myuniverse, my audience, but maybe
I'm not 100% sure, like thecurrent offer is, like this is
the thing that's going to likegenerate a ton of sales.
So a lot of people are movingtowards like, well, I'd just
rather get these people on myfree newsletter and then that
way I can, if this thing doesn'twork, it's on the next thing or
(21:51):
the next thing.
So we've seen a lot more ofthat this year, a lot more kind
of lead share type deals.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
That's been a growing trend for us.
For somebody who wants to dothat with you guys, what's kind
of the threshold?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
of spend for them to get in there.
Our starting point for anybodywho wants to work with us is
probably $25,000 a month.
These days we have at least 40people that do that on volume.
We just can't be dealing withpeople that were have like a
(22:30):
five or 10k a month kind ofbudget.
Um yeah, so that's kind of thestarting number, I mean whether
it's cto or whether it's umanything um yeah, I mean like
sometimes we're you know, youmeet somebody fms and they're
the brand new like maybe you'regoing to give them a chance.
But um, for an ongoingrelationship where we're really
looking for kind of 25 as astarting point.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Nice.
Okay, that's good to know.
So you've been, obviouslyyou've been doing this for a
very long time, right Like what?
2005, 2006,.
You started MarketBeat.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, my Google AdSense account dates back to
December 26th of 2006.
So that's kind of, in my mind,the starting date of the
business.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
So you've seen a lot of change and you've seen more
change this year.
How do you look at the?
What do you think about?
You know, beyond this year,we've had a ton of changes in
the industry.
We've had a bunch of thingshappen Like I think there's, you
know, new sectors coming up up,like the reggae space and
things like that.
So when you're talking aboutthis retail media world, what do
you see out there right now?
(23:36):
What are you thinking, whetherit's I know this is going to
happen or I'm just watching thisother trend, how do you think
things are changing here beyondjust this month?
Yeah big open-ended questionyeah, big open-ended question.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Um, you know, I I think it's going to be harder to
buy media in the next few years.
Yeah, um, you know we saw thisyear a bunch of people had their
adsense accounts or adwordsaccounts get get banned for
whatever reason.
Um, so, maybe election year,maybe not, but I think the bar
(24:15):
in the future is going to belike to have a real brand.
You know there are a lot ofpeople out there some of our
good friends that have, you know, maybe financial websites, but
maybe it's a brand nobody's everheard of.
I think it's going to betougher and tougher to operate
that way.
I think you really have to belike a real brand that has faces
(24:36):
associated with it and socialmedia accounts, and like a
physical address and like apicture of your team.
And you know, I think the baron like what people are willing
to put up with, especially from.
You know, google's new searchalgorithm is very focused on
like brand search, like thenumber of people that like type
in Mark beat in Google.
So, like you're a no namewebsite, obviously nobody's
(24:59):
going to be typing in the nameof your brand.
You're not going to get anyorganic traffic.
Yeah, so I think it's brand isa huge, huge trend.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
That's an interesting .
So I've I've I've been thinkingabout that trend too, but, like
I was thinking about it notbecause I'm not a media buyer
and I never considered it fromthat perspective um, I've been
thinking about it from like kindof customer relationship, um,
and marketing side and how, likeI think that the same thing
like the, the opportunities toto build a brand, that kind of
(25:30):
stakes out a position in themarket and kind of like builds a
, an ongoing audience, andthat's where you're trying to
get a customer who stays longer,has a higher ltv maybe he's a
little more qualified, um, but Ihadn't considered that aspect
of it too, that the.
So that does seem, then, fromfrom multiple directions, that
(25:50):
that building a brand and whatthat means for people, because I
think a lot of people in directresponse have always kind of
had a negative idea on brand,like, oh, it's a wasted thing
and it's not sales and this andthat, but, um, it does matter,
oh, absolutely and even fromlike uh, you know we have an sms
shortcode and we know peoplethat couldn't get approved for
(26:11):
one because they're like, whoare like, like, who are you Like
?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
are you a company?
Are you real?
So, like, if you know, if youwant access into all of the
things that, like, allow you tobecome a scalable company.
Like when your vendors Googleyou, like they want to know that
John Newton's a real person andhe has a real company and
there's a real office somewherewith real people inside.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, I'm blown away when I look up people in the
space and look at their websitesand like I could not if I
didn't know that they were thatit was their business.
I would have no idea who ran itLike.
That blows my mind.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean, you know we try to try to hit the
bar for that.
And if you go to like markmecomslash about about, you see a
picture of our office, you seeall of our team members, you see
some of the community projectswe've been involved with.
Anybody that's working atGoogle and looking at our
AdWords account and saying whois this company is going to look
at that and say, oh yeah,they're legit.
(27:05):
I mean, these are real peopleand I go to their LinkedIn
profiles and see all theirwriters.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
And you do a great job on social yourself across
multiple platforms.
You're really solid on theretoo.
It is it's business.
But every year that goes by,there's more tasks that a
business has to do to do well,Doesn't it seem like there's
(27:32):
just more and more things thatwe have to do?
You have to be better at moreaspects of the business than you
used to have to be.
Like 10 years ago, it wasreally easy to kind of throw
something up there and throwsome webinars out and buy some
cheap media.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
But I mean there's also some real benefits from
like doing that work of.
Like when we post a jobapplication, 50 people apply
every time and like we get DMson everything saying, hey, I'm a
copywriter, I'm this and this,can I come work at MarketBeat,
I'd love to work for you?
And, like you know, it makes itreally easy to find talent too.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
That's huge.
I mean that's huge.
So, no, I love that, love thatperspective, um, and then I
guess the like, what?
What am I not?
Cause I love how you're you.
You, you know, obviously Ithink very differently than you
in general in terms of how Ithink.
Um, you were, you were of amuch better perspective on a lot
of things, and you and you lookat the world differently.
(28:28):
Um, what are you thinking?
Is there anything that you'rethinking about in the industry
that I'm not even talking aboutor thinking about Like, are
there any areas where, likeyou're, like you know, like I
remember our previousconversation, you talked about
how, um, having, like, theability to do actual software
development is becomingincreasingly important, and I
thought that was totally,totally spot on.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Um, I think there's uh, the other, I don't know.
I thing that I'm thinking aboutthese days is the concept of
platform risk.
Some of it is obvious.
My Google AdWords account getsbanned.
That's risk because I'm toodependent on Google.
But we learned this week there'splatform risk with WordPress.
Wp Engine, the biggestWordPress hosting provider, is
(29:13):
in a feud with Matt Mullenweg,the guy that started WordPress,
and Matt Mullenweg is trying toshake down WP Engines.
Now, if you're like on WPEngine with WordPress, like you
can't get updates to yourWordPress and like it's going to
get hacked, so you got to bereally mindful of like what
companies you're being dependenton and like what your risks are
there and how to mitigate them.
And I think there's going to bemore platform risk in more
(29:33):
places that we haven't reallythought about.
I really think there's that'sgoing to be more true with some
of the email service providerstoo.
I don't I probably don't wantto name names, but there's one
that's been making a lot ofnoise lately and doing a lot
with their software.
In a short period of time andwhen you write code fast and
(29:55):
loose, things often break, and Ithink that's has happened and
will continue to happen withsome ESPs that are making a lot
of waves right now.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Interesting, interesting.
Yeah, I used WP Engine.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I didn't realize that that's scary um, yeah, so that
like back everything up, havecopies of your email list that
like aren't your esp.
You can back up your ad,creative on adwords, like
anything that like is onsomebody else's server that you
don't have like try to get abackup of it yeah, that's good's
good advice, that's good advice.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So in the platform risk we've seen, you know, the
biggest one was still, like yousaid, google AdWords.
When Agora got kicked off fortwo years on Facebook and Google
and that was devastating.
In some ways they found waysaround it, but still, like that
definitely happens.
And do you think?
I mean I guess that's kind oflike the that brand issue is
(30:57):
really relevant there.
I feel like, because I feel likea lot of times like these
decisions are not being it's notlike mark zuckerberg is looking
at your, your ads on facebookright, it's, it's a staff member
who's looking at it.
And they are not entrepreneurs,they are not marketers, they
are not whatever, they've got ajob're an employee.
They have who knows what kindof beliefs about business or
marketing that you have, you'regoing to have.
(31:18):
There's thousands of them, soyou're gonna have all kinds of
them and so if they look at yoursite and they're like, oh, this
guy's a scammer, you're at muchhigher risk than if they look
at your site and like, oh, thisis just a good business.
And for the longest time, Ifeel like the Motley Fool is the
one publisher who did a reallygreat job building a brand
(31:41):
Investor Place did a really goodjob too, and then now, I think,
stansberry Marketwise has movedthere, but the Motley Fool
definitely stands out as onethat yeah, I mean the founder's
names are all over the website.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
It's an established brand, but motley fool does,
really well I say, advertise onlike places that other people
don't, and like they advertiseon quora.
Nobody advertises on quora.
Like I couldn't even getapproved on quora, like that's
interesting.
So and I see their names likewhenever I think I found like
(32:12):
some new innovative likemarketing thing.
Like Motley Fool is alreadydoing it, like they're they've
done a really good job of likefinding like advertising
channels that like peopleoutside of our industry have
used and like been successfulwith, and like making it work in
FinPub when other people can'tmake it work in FinPub.
So I've yeah, I heard at onepoint they were doing like $40
(32:33):
million a year in advertisingspend, which is really
impressive.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, yeah, they've done a lot of really interesting
things over the years andthey've adapted to.
I remember they had a blognetwork because that was one of
the things that allowed you toget into Yahoo News back in the
day, and then when all thosekind of news sites stopped
taking blog networks, they justkind of shut it down because the
(32:56):
whole point wasn't to have theblog network, the whole point
was to have the traffic, and sothey've been really good at
these kind of big picture moveson traffic.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, the other big traffic thing we're working on
right now is really syndicationof how do we get MarketBeat in
more places.
And you know we've got a guyworking kind of full time on
like how many different placescan we get MarketBeat's news
content just to show up and likeI don't even care if the
content's on our website.
(33:28):
Like I want people reading ourstuff, whether it's on the
MarketBeat website or NASDAQ.
Like there's a new StockBitscompetitor launching soon called
TraderVerse.
Yeah, I think it's calledTraderVerse, TraderVerse, but I
don't know They've got someinteresting it's.
Yeah, I guess it'sTraderVerseio, but you know
(33:49):
they've got some interestingstuff and like you know they're
going to launch soon and likewe're going to be on there on
day one and like maybe it'll gosomewhere and be awesome, maybe
it won't, but like how many ofthese places can you, can we get
our content is one of the rolesyeah, that's where I know one
group a couple years ago was.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
You know they were doing more ir work, but they're.
They had some news like theystarted getting picked up in
bloomberg and that was a hugething for them and so, having
that and I know you are at theNASDAQ, you are- on NASDAQ.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, we're on NASDAQ , we're on MSN, we're on
Entrepreneur, a few sets likethat, but we're not on Robinhood
.
We would love to be onRobinhood.
We don't know how to do that,or we're working on it.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yeah yeah, and the syndication, I mean, that's
probably one of the moredifficult sides of this, isn't
it?
Because it's not just brand,it's the quality content, the
volume content, it's a lot ofthings.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, and they're all one-off biz dev deals so
they're hard, but if you getthem done they last forever.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, that's right.
I know a guy who helped oilprice do a lot of syndication
and he was like, oh, I got himon Yahoo news and this and that
and his thing was like, well, Iused to like I'm best friends
with the head of Yahoo news andso it's like it's an easier
conversation.
Yeah, um like.
Yeah, that's.
It's not always easy forsomeone to get into so um cool,
(35:14):
but uh awesome.
Get into so um cool, but uhawesome, matt.
Well, I appreciate it.
This is.
This has been super helpful.
Um, I love getting yourinsights into everything.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Um and uh, thanks, yeah, yeah, great chatting.
Um, yeah, anybody wants to workwith mark b?
It's uh, markbcom advertising.
We got a media kit.
Well, his email is on there.
Uh, happy to talk to anybody.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yep, awesome, and anyone who's in the FMS pro
group, like Matt's in there.
He's been, you've been awesome.
I really appreciate all theinsights and help you've given
people and kind of willing toshare and talk there and then
we'll see you at FMS in January.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah, we'll be at FMS and highly recommend the FMS
pro group.
A lot, a lot of value in there.
Appreciate that Thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Awesome Thanks, John Thanks.
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