PROVEN Strategies for Quality Content Creation

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   Intro

   1. BTBen Thompson0:00

      Revealing my secrets, podcasts are easier to do [chuckles] than writing, so it feels easier today than it was back then. I think it's a very distinct skill and capability to come up with interesting things consistently.

   2. BGBen Gilbert0:11

      Every piece of content you create is a churn opportunity.

   3. BTBen Thompson0:15

      Creator is not making money. Well, the consumer may get what they want, which is free content, but they're not gonna get it for very long.

   4. BGBen Gilbert0:20

      We've done surveys over the years of our audience, and we say, "What is the number one topic that you'd wanna see us cover, or person we should have on the show?" And your name comes up many, many times. So, um, excited to be doing this.

   5. BTBen Thompson0:30

      You promised me I was number one. Now I feel like there's a bit of a letdown going on. [chuckles]

   6. BGBen Gilbert0:33

      We asked who the number one was, and you were very high in the rankings. [chuckles]

   7. DRDavid Rosenthal0:36

      Well, we have another number one, though, that is very near and dear to our hearts. Ben was searching his email today, and he sent me an image over text that was very sweet. It was the first email between us, and it was about Stratechery. [chuckles]

   8. BTBen Thompson0:49

      Okay, fine.

2. 0:50 – 2:00

   Uber piece

   1. BTBen Thompson0:50

      I'll take that.

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal0:50

      [laughing]

   3. BGBen Gilbert0:51

      David and I, I think, got drinks, and were talking about Uber, and it was your Don't Blame Uber piece from 2014.

   4. BTBen Thompson0:58

      Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting in retrospect to, uh, think about that. I think that was about healthcare, and rights, and workers, and things along those lines. It's pretty interesting. You could probably write a similar piece about easy money, and the macroeconomic environment, and lots of pieces. So I mean, it's funny, I haven't thought about that piece in years and years. Uh, I usually have a very good memory of everything that I've written, but every now and then, I will encounter a piece, whether someone linked to it, or it'll come up when I'm searching for... I mean, I'm the number one user of [chuckles] Stratechery Search.

   5. DRDavid Rosenthal1:29

      [laughing] You built that for yourself.

   6. BTBen Thompson1:32

      I completely forgot that I wrote about that, and, uh, usually I go back and read, I'm like, "Oh, that was- that wasn't bad." Sometimes you go back, like, "Ugh, I don't know, I don't know about that one." Um, but yeah, it is what it is. That, that is what happens when you've written thousands of posts over approaching 10 years now, so.

   7. BGBen Gilbert1:46

      It's just prolific. It's interesting, I went back and just read the early days preparing for this. You have posts that you imported from a Tumblr in 2009 that are, like, all the way back in the back catalogue.

   8. BTBen Thompson1:56

      Yeah, I've started multiple blogs through the years. I thought they were relevant

3. 2:00 – 3:25

   Back catalogues importance

   1. BTBen Thompson2:00

      and interesting, and also, I think it's useful to have a, a back catalogue when you launch. And that's something that I do when I, when I launch podcasts now is, it's important to sort of establish the first time someone encounters you, that this isn't just a flash in the pan sort of thing. It's something that is interesting.

   2. BGBen Gilbert2:18

      You mean, like doing 30 episodes of Dithering before you released a single one?

   3. BTBen Thompson2:22

      You know, in that case, we really wanted to figure out what that, what that podcast should be. And then also, working with Johnny, he can be a bit of a perfectionist, so it took us that long-

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal2:32

      [laughing]

   5. BTBen Thompson2:32

      ... to get the website looking just how he wanted it to.

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal2:34

      Gosh, I don't know anybody else like that.

   7. BTBen Thompson2:36

      There was a technical component that went into that as well, but I think it's good for both sides. It's good for the creator because, I mean, if you can't have the discipline and sort of stamina to build up a back catalogue, you're probably [chuckles] not gonna have the discipline and stamina to keep going for a long time. So it's almost good internally to sort of get that done. But then also, when someone encounters it, and then they feel, "Wow!" There's an excitement, not just an anticipation of new episodes that'll be down the road, but, "Wow, there's already a whole bunch of stuff here for me to listen to." And if you like the first one, you can listen to a second one, and I think that sort of second one is super important.

   8. BGBen Gilbert3:13

      Yes.

   9. BTBen Thompson3:13

      This is a point I've made about writing in general. Anyone can come up with one really good post or one really good podcast. I, I don't mean to say that dismissively. I think there's a lot of people out there with very smart insights. I think it's a very distinct

4. 3:25 – 6:19

   Consistency

   1. BTBen Thompson3:25

      skill and capability to come up with interesting things consistently, and the sooner you can demonstrate that to someone, the sooner they are going to take advantage of whatever means you have to follow, or to subscribe, or whatever it might be. Because it's not just a promise of consistency, but it's evidence of that, and I think that's really important to online businesses in general.

   2. BGBen Gilbert3:50

      I think about that element a lot. I also think about every piece of content you create is a churn opportunity. David and I regularly look at each other mid-episode, and we're like: Okay, is this of Acquired quality, or is it actually net negative for us to release this episode, because we've now reduced the average quality of a thing that someone comes to expect from us?

   3. BTBen Thompson4:12

      Yeah, I mean... Well, thanks for putting the pressure on me, uh, right up there. [laughing]

   4. BGBen Gilbert4:15

      [laughing]

   5. BTBen Thompson4:15

      I better make sure this is interesting. But it's interesting because I would push back against that a little bit, and this is why the consistency part is important. I mean, there, there's um, there's an ongoing sort of discussion. I think there's that new social network, Post News or something, and I just saw a thing on Twitter I didn't actually follow through, but they're gonna- they wanna do micropayments for articles, which I think are terrible. And there's a tendency in a lot of things to get overly indexed on the consumer, which kind of sounds wrong. Like, why wouldn't you want to give the consumer exactly what they want? But just to take the most obvious example, if a creator is not making money, well, the consumer may get what they want, which is free content, but they're not gonna get it for very long. There is a short-term perspective versus a long-term perspective, which, well, no, by charging for this, I can do this over the long run. But from a microtransaction perspective, I think one of the issues is, to create the piece of content is very time-consuming, and then, obviously, you get the free distribution on the back end, so you have zero marginal cost on the back end. But the problem is, you have a timing mismatch with microtransactions between when the payment's made and when the investment is made. And so you wanna put a lot of time into an article, and then hope it gets traction, so I can not just make money, but also repay what I'm doing from there. And I think that the way to think about publishing online is, what are you selling? I think when you get in the trap of thinking you're selling a single episode or selling a single article, that's actually getting the incentives wrong. What, what I'm selling to my subscribers is consistency and ye- yes, certainly a quality bar. When I, when I write something that I'm not happy with, I'm miserable for the next 24 hours, a- and... Or if it's at, you know, the end of the week, [chuckles] I have to wait till next week, and that, that really sucks. Because I certainly have the drive and compulsion to make sure that what I put out is high quality, but at the same time-... there's an aspect of what I'm actually selling to my subscribers, and this is more of an implicit promise, but I think it's the reality, is the consistency, and the regularity, and the knowing that, that I'm gonna have... You know, if something happens, you're gonna be able to get my take on it. And I think that's where subscription

5. 6:19 – 7:35

   Subscriptions

   1. BTBen Thompson6:19

      pricing does make much more sense for content production, because in this case, you're actually getting the money up front. The money is funding the work, as opposed to the work being a speculative bid for the money. And one thing that I've pushed over time, and I'm very happy about, is trying to get people to sort of annual subscriptions. So I think my, my audience at this point is, like, 70% annual subscriptions.

   2. DRDavid Rosenthal6:42

      At 150 bucks a year? Is that right?

   3. BTBen Thompson6:44

      It's $12 a month, or $120 a year, so you do get a $24 discount by being annual.

   4. DRDavid Rosenthal6:49

      You save on the Stripe fees. [chuckles]

   5. BTBen Thompson6:50

      Yeah, it's like a $16 difference, so it- that certainly makes a big difference. But then also, I just think it's good for me, and it's good for my customers to know that, "Look, I have a chance to make it up to you."

   6. DRDavid Rosenthal7:02

      Your internet media business about the business of technology is a very different business than our internet media business about the business of technology across a number of dimensions, right? There's obviously the business model, your primary business model versus our primary business model, you being subscriptions, us being advertising, but there's also the periodic nature of content. I think one of the reasons we feel such pressure on each episode is we're only dropping one, maybe two episodes a month. How many pieces of content are you doing a week at this

6. 7:35 – 8:31

   Content quantity

   1. DRDavid Rosenthal7:35

      point?

   2. BTBen Thompson7:35

      Well, less than I once did, believe it or not. Usually three written pieces, one interview, two Sharp Tech episodes, and two dithering episodes. So I guess that is eight, e- e- eight pieces of content. When I first started the daily update, I was doing two free articles, five paid articles, and a podcast, so that was eight. So I guess I'm doing more now, but revealing my secrets, podcasts are easier to do [chuckles] than writing, so it feels easier today than it was back then. It certainly is a lot. I don't think that will always be the shape of it forever, but yeah, there definitely is a lot more than two per month, so it's a fair pushback.

   3. SPSpeaker8:12

      [singing] Who got the truth? Hmm. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way. Who got the truth? Who got the truth now? Hmm.

Episode duration: 8:32