This is a conversational interview with Dr. Matt Paulson (MarketBeat) about shifting trends in investment-newsletter acquisition between January and September of the same year. Paulson characterizes the current environment as substantially weaker — citing top-line declines relative to Q1 (he estimates roughly 20–30% lower) — and attributes causes to the election drawing attention, MarketWise raising its front-end price, and broader market shifts. Key topics: MarketWise raised its initial front-end cart from roughly $70 to about $200 (reducing conversions); political angles (especially around gold) are performing well during the election cycle; publishers face a trade-off between higher entry prices that allow faster payback on media vs. lower-price, higher-volume approaches; different publishers use different channels (AdWords vs. email lists), producing variability in top offers; and storytelling/personal/guru branding remains central to promo effectiveness.
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All right. Hey, everyone. I'm here with Dr. Matt Paulson from MarketBeat. How you doing, Matt?
Good. Happy to be here again.
Yeah. Great to have you back. I wanted to get your take on a whole bunch of things. Your, your, your perspective on the industry is a really great one because you kind of see all the external that's going out through the various CPA offers and things like that. And we've had a lot of change.
Yeah, it's, you know, September of this year versus January are just two very different environments. And what's working has changed. What's hot has changed. The election has created a giant distraction. Obviously some big changes at market wise. Crowdfunding has really taken off. Just a whole lot of, a lot of different things happening. That's really shaken up the apple cart.
Yeah. So it's almost like it's not like one major thing. There's been a ton of major changes. So, I mean, how would you, how would you like, basically characterize then, like January to now, like the shift then?
Yeah, it's. It's definitely a weaker environment. You know, I heard from a few people kind of that first quarter is probably the best quarter a lot of people ever had. And now we're, we're almost starting to look like some of the 2022 numbers again where like, you know, for us we're probably down 20, 25, 30, top line Q1 compared to Q3, and it's just a more challenging environment. And I think the election has something to do with that. The changes at market wise certainly haven't helped. And you know, just the conversion environment's weaker than it was.
Yeah. Yeah. And so with the. For people who maybe not as aware of like everything that happened at market wise, which is that, I mean, you had the legacy shut down and then you had changes in Porter came in, came out, a lot of disruption there, a lot fewer offers coming out.
I think the big thing was that there are initial price points. The company decided that their front end initial cart was going to be $200 up from maybe 70, and that's, that's definitely going to impact your number of conversions.
Right, right. So it's a big, it's a big kind of like impact since they were probably the largest external advertiser for the last year or two, at least.
Yeah. For a lot of people. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. So then when you think about like the. Just kind of like the, the impacts then from kind of a weaker environment, changes in market wise and all that, like, what do you think are, how's that impacting everybody else? How's that impacting kind of what, what's working for people, what they're doing, like strategy. I mean, there's a lot changing.
Yeah, right. Right now with the election, it does seem like the political angles are working really well in copy. You know, we've seen Porter Co. And Weiss Behind the markets do really well with some different political angles. You know, all the gold companies are really using political angles and they're having a lot of success with that. And you know, I think that probably dies down after the election, but right now it seems to be one of the things that's working well.
Yeah, no, I think that's like the gold, the gold connection with politics, when gold is hot, has always been strong. I know that paradigm had that order, that promo doing like A, just 500 to a thousand orders a day at one point. Yeah. And then Porter's been pretty, he's been pretty consistent. Right. As a, as a publisher talking about kind of more political kind of conversations, which has worked well for him.
Yeah. It's like you have to either do it consistently or never at all. Because if you don't talk about politics and you start talking about politics, you know, your, your audience may not like that because they, you know, you listen to Taylor Swift for her music, then all of a sudden she starts talking about politics and they say, hey, I like your music, but I don't really need to hear your political opinions. And I think that can be true with kind of, kind of fin pub too. Like if you're, you know, I'm here for your investment opinions, not your political takes. And if you go from not doing that to doing that, I think some people might not like that.
Yeah, it's definitely one of those, those, you know, message mismatches. If you're not, it's either part of your, it's either part of your ethos or it's not. And if it is, it's great when it's around, but it's not always great. And I think that's, that's one of those things that if you have a particular ethos, like you just have to accept there's times when it's hotter than other times and election years are one out of every four years. So not, not like it works as this well every year. Yeah, but that, that kind of market wise, raising their prices on the front end, I mean obviously it impacts their, their total number in the door, but the, the kind of general trend also seems to be a little bit of this that high volume kind of like I'm not so worried about churn approach to, to acquisition versus has changed too, hasn't it?
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 the game was to see okay, how many people can we just get in the door. And that was certainly the game 21 and obviously cooled off in 22 but kind of came back in 23 of like, you know, what, what is that initial checkout price? That makes sense. And I think for a lot of people it's still that 79 to $99. But you know, if your company is struggling with, with new sales and profitability, like you know, maybe you try that 199 entry price point and see if you can, you know, pay for your customer acquisition cost in day one. And the, you know, we don't, we don't really try to do that. You know, for us like we're lucky to break even, you know, after 90 days and we're happy with that. But yeah, you know, things are tight. Like I would just try to cut back and the stuff doesn't work and doesn't break even as quickly.
Right, right, right. And that's the, I mean the smaller, the smaller pubs have have, I'd say like they don't have as much. Well, they can't handle the risk as high as some of those ones obviously. So scaling up, I mean, I don't know. I, I hesitate to say that it's better to go a higher price when you're smaller because there's so much variability. But it definitely seems like we're seeing more of that like kind of drive to like, hey, maybe I can, you know, know get a higher price point on the front end and it makes my media buying work sooner. It just. There's not the scale that you would have as you, as you go lower.
So that is, that is the big trade off you when you're working with people like Charles Plo and George Me in our, in ourselves, like we're gonna send out the thing that makes us the most money all like all day, every day.
Right.
If something is, you know, higher price point, we're going to see lower conversions, we're making less money. So we're probably not going to send out the volume we would otherwise. So.
Right.
You have to find that balance of like what number makes sense for, you know, you know, you as a publishing business. But also what numbers will make Sense for the people who are sending you your customers.
Yeah, yeah. And so the. But, you know, you bring up. You bring up, you know, Charles and George. And I'm say surprised. I'm a little surprised, actually, in the discord you guys have been sharing, like, which offers work for you versus what their hot offers are. And there's a lot more variability in there than I would have expected.
Yeah. My hunch would have been that we all had kind of the same top offers, but that's not really the case. And I think that what that says is that, like, those guys use different kind of channels than we do on acquisition. You know, they're both very big into 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, you know, that that's good because that means we're not just all trying to, you know, send the same people to the same advertisers.
Yeah. And so how would you characterize as somebody who's like, hey, like, I'd love. I'd love to be able to target your traffic better and deliver something for you that. That can get a lot more scale. What kind of offers would you say in kind of thematics work really well for you?
You know, for marketbee, the stuff that really kind of tells the story and gives a glimpse into the future or what the future might be. Like, Like, Californiacation early in the year just crushed it. Like, like nothing has had since 2019. But it gave people a glimpse into, like, this is what a year from now might be like, maybe neither Biden or Trump is president. And, you know, they didn't get Gavin Newsom. Right. But, like, you know, who thought we were going to have Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate a year ago, like, it didn't seem like possibility, but they really pointed you in that direction and said, oh, this really could happen, and here's why. And it kind of did happen.
Right.
So, like, that kind of stuff works really well. The storytelling is really important. The kind of, here's what the future looks like really is important, but then also kind of that personal relationship where it's. It's not like, here's something that might happen. It's. It's got to be like, a person with an opinion. Like, if Porter Stansberry sends you a personal letter or what looks like a personal letter, people just engage with that more than, like, some generic copy that looks like it's an advertisement. Like, you know, I think people still do want that personal connection to a publisher. Like, they say, I'm. I'm. I'm this person's guy, and, like, I really like their stuff. And, like, you have to develop that personal brand as a financial publisher so that you can kind of have that connection. And, like, you know, this week, Porter had a bunch of people out to his farm, his customers, like, for a live event for two days. And, you know, not many people are doing that right. Like, but, you know, you want to give your best people that kind of access they're looking for so they can continue to develop that personal connection.
Yeah. I do think that the people overlook the. Especially newer people in the industry. They overlook the power of the guru and the relationship and how. I mean, even this was true throughout the history of finpub, but with the rise of social media, I mean, everything is personality. Everything's personality now. And so to not have personality in the promo seems like a missed opportunity for a lot of folks.
I do think there's a disconnect with, you know, some of the bigger gurus over the years have really kind of fallen short on their personal brand outside of, like, their publications. Like, if. If you're going to be that expert and talking about a subject you know a lot about and have a publication where you're charging for it, like, you should be on podcast.
