Exposed: New York Times' $6M/Month Cash Flow | Ep. 2624

All right, so we are going to give you a breakdown of New York Times revenue. So Q3 of 2023, they did $600 million, a 9.3% increase over last year. And we want to talk about how we're going to give you the anatomy, the breakdown of how all this works. So check this out, Neil. So this is done by Glenn Osopp, also known as ViperChill. He's been doing these breakdowns on Twitter.

I haven't read any of it yet, but I bet you a good chunk comes from affiliate marketing.

Oh yeah, we're going to talk about that. That's why we're talking about this right now. So Glenn says he estimates that Wirecutter affiliate commissions, that's an acquisition that they did a couple years ago brings in at least $6 million a month and potentially a lot more. So he said, when I analyzed 10,000 product review search results recently, newyorktimes.com was the 2nd most prominent domain overall, picking up 955 first-place rankings. And it says, okay, check this out. They stated that digital other revenues, which consist primarily of Wirecutter affiliate referral revenue, totaled $37 million.

Wow.

Which is interesting. And then we should just call it these points over here and then we can talk about it. So some other highlights over here. New York Times has passed 10 million subscribers. So 9.41 million digital only and 670K print and an operating profit of about $90 million, up 30% year on year. And The Athletic, which is another, I believe they acquired this company, grew 46% year on year thanks to more subscribers and higher ad revenue. The Athletic had an adjusted operating loss of $8 million versus $12 million a year ago. More than 10 million per week are playing games on their site. And then digital ad revenue grew 6.7% year on year to $75 million. All right. What are our thoughts here?

I think affiliate should be a much bigger chunk of the revenue. They could be doing way better on that end.

I think they're just getting started with it. Yeah. That's my opinion. I mean, that's why they bought Wirecutter. I think it's like a 3, 4 year ago acquisition and it's just going to continue to compound. And I do think, look, the 9.41 million versus the 670K print, they've been going in this direction for the last couple of years. And I think you basically pay like $50, $60, maybe $100 a year just to subscribe to the New York Times. And they've had this successful transition to a digital subscription media company. And most companies haven't been able to do that.

Yeah. And they are publicly traded. You know, they're a $7 billion company. So they've been doing quite well. I'm looking at their stock price right now. They got creamed in '09, but they've been climbing nicely since then. And yeah, their numbers aren't that bad. The big thing is like once you have like a powerhouse site with tons of authority, there's just so many ways to make money. And what a lot of people are doing is they're like, hey, we're a really authoritative site. Let's just hire these marketers and start spinning up pages to generate income from things like affiliate marketing, or let's create community-based content and scale up our page views because we already have a big ad sales team. So then that way, will end up generating more ad income. Kind of like how LinkedIn has community members creating a lot of content for them. Percentage-wise, it's not much traffic for LinkedIn, but it'll scale up nicely. All this kind of stuff can really juice your numbers. If you have an authoritative site, hiring people to focus on affiliate marketing and SEO is a really easy way to juice your numbers.

I also think that the New York Times is doing a good job with protecting themselves long-term because if you have 10 million subscribers, then You aren't— if let's say your SEO traffic just completely tanks overnight and that probably won't happen, but it might start to decrease over the next 5, 10 years or so, you've kind of insulated yourself and you own that audience, so to speak, or you have a little more control over it. And the fact that you have multiple revenue sources now, you have affiliate, you have subscriptions, and then not only do you have subscriptions for news, you have subscription for sports news as well. And then you also have review sites. So they're basically acquiring more attention. And they're figuring out other ways to also diversify too. So they're not putting all their eggs into one traffic basket because as we know, SEO is going to change quite a bit in the next 5 to 10 years or so.

The other thing they've done an amazing job is building a brand. If you want to do well in marketing, you got to build a brand. They have one of the oldest, biggest brands when you look at the publication space and it's done wonders for them. You know, when you're trying to build a brand, yes, great product, great service, great content, it all helps. But another factor that helps build a great brand is just time. And most people aren't patient. You know, forget a 5-year outlook or a 10-year outlook. How do you have 20, 30, 40-year outlooks? That's how you build a big, amazing brand. Kardashians maybe were able to do it sooner, but that's not most of us.

That's a sexy thing now. It's no longer just a decade. You think in 20, 30, 40 years or so, and that's how you do it. And what I will say is this, I would argue that they've been very consistent with high-quality content for the longest time, probably since what, like the early 1900s or so, maybe even sooner than that. So, they're trusted.

New York Times. Let's see. They were started in 1851, 170 years ago.

That's even older than the How to Win Friends and Influence People book, right? That's very Lindy. So, if it's been around since 1850, right? So, 1850, what is that? That's like 173 years. It will probably be around for another 173 years.

No, 172, 172.

172, okay. Well, there you go. So look, that is it for today. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Hope you found this helpful, and we'll see you tomorrow.