Welcome to A Media Operator 2.0
Four years ago, I wrote about why I decided to leave Substack and what went into my rebuild. This was back when the options available were spinning up a Ghost or using a WordPress plugin—Beehiiv didn’t exist then. So, I went with what I knew: WordPress.
It worked. AMO launched with a very newsletter-first homepage and clean story design and I was happy with it. But there were limitations. For example, when it was just me writing, everyone assumed every piece was from me. In 2024, I had a number of different freelancers and hired Christiana as a full-time reporter. The need for a byline became obvious.
That increased output from the freelancers, Christiana and myself meant that content was getting buried. During earnings season, it wasn’t uncommon for a story we ran two days ago to be gone from the homepage simply because there were so many other stories. It was untenable.
And so, I called up my friends over at The Code Co and suggested it was time for us to do a rebuild. If you’ve been around for a while, you might recall that Ben and his team (Jackson, in particular) were responsible for the last build of AMO. They’ve been readers for nearly its entire existence and have been my recommended team for many publishers to work with.
Here were my requirements:
- Needs to look like an actual media company, not a newsletter.
- Needs to still prioritize the newsletter because it’s our key distribution engine.
- Needs to have actual bylines.
- Needs to more aggressively promote the Pro subscription.
- Needs to start introducing flexibility for website monetization (like ads).
And so, they got to work. What you see on A Media Operator is what they delivered and I am very pleased with it. In some respects, it’s a very straightforward homepage. Featured story, some editors picks and then a reverse chronological feed. But there’s a reason this design works: readers know where to go and what to do. We’re not trying to overcomplicate things.
If I was going to just relaunch the website, we would have been ready to go back in early November. I said as much at the AMO Summit. Then I started to think more about the business overall and realized that how we had done things might not work going forward. A core part of that was our subscription offering.
When AMO launched, it was a newsletter. Go deep enough into the archive and you’ll see that play out with newsletter-style articles. That meant the “wall” was straightforward: Tuesday was open to everyone; Friday was available to only AMO Pro members.
But what do you do when you’re publishing upwards of 7-10 pieces a week? What about double that when we hire more reporters? What gets gated? What should be free? How do you decide what is going to get a user to convert? We asked all sorts of questions. It got to the point that we were hard-walling every story we published except for the one I wrote for Tuesday’s “free” newsletter.
The issue with a hard wall is it can limit your growth. Believe it or not, people want a taste of what they’re going to pay for before they pay. The decision we made was to transition to a metered paywall. Most of the stories on A Media Operator are free to read, and you are welcome to read one of them. After that, you’ll need to pay to read anything else. Newsletter subscribers will still get articles in the actual newsletter—much like this—but for the average person on the website, it’s one and then gate.
It’s a subtle shift, but I think it will have a profound impact on A Media Operator. We’re no longer litigating whether a story should be free or open. We’ll let user behavior inform that decision. We’ll also test things out. Right now, guests can read one story and then they have to pay. We’ll likely add a middle step in there where users can register for one additional story (growing the audience and first-party data) and then charge going forward.
We partnered with Wallkit to support this. This tool does so much and is a very impressive step up for A Media Operator. Right now, we’re just using it for a straightforward metered paywall. It has predictive paywall technology that is beta testing where you can fire the paywall when the user is more likely to convert. If you’re looking for paywall tech, talk to them and tell them AMO sent you.
We also introduced our updated subscription pricing as part of this. If we’re going to cover the industry in more depth, we should absolutely be charging more. There was no Slack when we launched with the $200/yr subscription price. There was only one paid newsletter a week. It was simple. Now we’re not so simple. We’re building a legitimate media business. And in the world of B2B media, this price point is about what works.
But we also did some research on this with our audience. A year ago, I asked the AMO paid audience what they’d be willing to pay. Some said exactly $200, which I chalked up to no one wanting to pay more, but many said a lot more. I had multiple readers say $500. I took an average of the answers, and it came to $345 per year. With an understanding that there was compression on that average, I decided that $395 per year made sense. Quarterly costs $150 per quarter, but as you can imagine, that’s priced to make the annual subscription a no-brainer.
I also introduced an upgraded VIP offering. I get asked to be a consultant for companies. It can be fun, but it pulls from building A Media Operator. We’re now offering AMO VIP. This costs $5,000 per year and includes a full year subscription plus four one-hour advisor sessions in that 12 month period. If you’re interested in any of our subscription offerings, you can sign up here.
The last thing we’ve done is introduce an AI Search Engine. We partnered with Direqt to seamlessly roll this out. It is trained exclusively on AMO content going back to when we launched. As time goes on and we cover more aspects of the media industry, I see this becoming another interesting part of how people can engage with AMO.
What’s particularly helpful about this is it acts as a conduit to our stories. Since it’s using our content, it’ll drive users to our archive where they’re more likely to hit the paywall. I don’t have to worry about it spitting out bad information since it’s trained on what the team and I have written. If you’re considering rolling something like this out on your site, check them out.
A Media Operator started as a solo newsletter. It has now become so much more. These changes—the website, upgraded subscription offering and the AI-powered chatbot—ensure that we can continue to grow. We’ve got a lot cooking for 2025 and I hope you’ll join us on this ride. Sign up for AMO Pro here.
