I’m a regular reader of Simon Owen’s Tech and Media Newsletter — it’s an insightful rag. For example:
A few weeks ago, Owens wrote a piece about the future of new media startups, and what those will look like.
He made five predictions. One of those was “niche editorial products.”
Here’s a relevant bit from Owens’s article, where he is writing about Axios, a conglomerate of email newsletters (free and paid) that sold for a thumping $525 million back in August:
What most impressed me about the company was how it simultaneously managed to be a general interest news site while also funneling its audience into niche verticals, making it much easier for it to deliver highly targeted advertising and industry-specific subscription products.
In other words, Axios offers general and free newsletters on the front-end… and specific and expensive newsletters on the back end.
When you put it like that, this ain’t nothing new:
1. Write something like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Give it away for free or sell it for $0.46 on Kindle.
2. And then, to the people who bought the book, sell something like the Dale Carnegie Institute’s High Impact Presentations corporate training, which consists of two in-person sessions, and costs $2,195.
So Owens’s prediction might not be new, but it’s still a good reminder for each new generation and each new technology.
And it’s something I’m thinking about, especially in the context of email newsletters. If you have a highly niched offer, it might be something for you to think about also.
Meanwhile, let me remind you that this basic idea is not just about offers. The same idea actually applies to copywriting, marketing, and effective communication of all types.
In fact, everything I’ve just told you is related to “chunking up”, which is the first big and new copywriting insight I had by looking at the bullets of A-list copywriters.
The way I describe it inside my Copy Riddles program, “chunking up” allows you to expand your market 3x, 5x, or more.
Which goes to show:
Once you learn the essence of effective communication — once you learn to make interesting and attractive appeals — you can then apply that from a single sales bullet all the way up to the core structure of a $525-million business like Axios.
Perhaps you’re curious to learn more. Perhaps you want specific examples from print ads, video sales letters, and paperback books.
Perhaps you even want to practice chunking up yourself, so next time you try to get your message or offer across, it comes naturally.
You can do all that, and more, if you buy Copy Riddles, which I am currently selling. For more info on that: