Masterclass discussion (host Darci Juarez; guest Dan Kennedy) about the state of the information marketing industry. Kennedy outlines what falls under "information marketing" (publishing, subscriptions, memberships, paywalled online media, seminars, coaching, software tools, done-for-you services/agency work) and notes that most players now combine several revenue types. He warns traditional newsletter publishers face rising fulfillment costs (printing, postage) with the postal system reportedly requesting seven rate increases through next year, making pure-print models vulnerable. He also cites creativity as "rearranging the old into the new" (Mike Vance) to describe industry evolution.
Chapters
There's a very big, I'm not going to name them, but there's a very big, very, very, very big newsletter conglomerate that is in real trouble. Not like a lot of business trouble, but falling because they really don't have many other sources of revenue tied to it. And the cost of fulfillment in the newsletter business is of course gone up and keeps going up. We face the postal system is asked for seven rate increases between now and the end of next year. Cost of papers up, cost of printing's up, et cetera. The answer is not to go all digital. You lose all the subscribers, but you can only raise the subscription price. So far they have some other problems too, but they have that problem. It's a very real problem. So combinations thereof really pretty much defines everybody in the business today.
Hello and welcome to this month's masterclass. I'm Darci Juarez, your host. I'm here with Dan Kennedy. And Dan, today we want to look at the info marketing business again because we have a lot of new people joining us in the diamond membership. We have a lot of lifers that have been there and there's been a lot of changes and some things that have changed, some things that haven't changed in the infomarketing business. So this month I wanted to kind of get your take on that. So can we start by defining or at least trying to, and then we'll tackle these changes in it, good and bad.
Sure. So the information marketing industry is comprised of pieces that have been there for long before I ever used the term information marketing. And also pieces that literally we created all under that umbrella. And so it includes publishing and products. Right. Books, manuals, CDs which were preceded by cassettes, which were preceded by records and multimedia products. It includes subscriptions and memberships and to newsletters, to trade journals, that sort of thing. It includes now online media that's behind a paywall. Our diamond benefits are an example of that. So actually a lot of what was a product has been re migrated into digital content that is behind the membership paywall. Newspapers, for example, are trying to make the paywall work for at least part of their content. Yes, right. Seminars and conferences. It includes speaking and training, mastermind groups and other kinds of groups coaching. And some of what used to have different names is now called coaching. It includes tools that's relatively new where a focus is on software, the dashboard you run your business with, it includes a lot of done for them services. Really the agency business has come under this umbrella and combinations thereof. Right. And it's hard to Find now a pure one of these that is only one of these, because the money bath largely doesn't work. There's a very big. I'm not going to name them, but there's a very big, very, very, very big newsletter conglomerate that is in real trouble. Not like a lot of business trouble, but falling because they really don't have many other sources of revenue tied to it. And the cost of fulfillment in the newsletter business is of course gone up and keeps going up. We face the postal system has asked for seven rate increases between now and the end of next year. Yes, cost of papers up, cost of printing's up, et cetera. The answer is not to go all digital. You lose all the subscribers, but you can only raise a subscription price. So far. They have some other problems too, but they have that problem. It's a very real problem. So combinations thereof. It really pretty much defines everybody in the business today. Mike Vance, who was the, the dean of creativity at Disney for many years, Mike defines creativity as the rearranging of the old into the new. And that's exactly what our industry is really all about at this point.
Okay, so you built your info business model starting in the 70s and kind of through the 2000s to the present. So what's the state of things now most different from those prior years? And then, to use and pardon the term, do the old models still work?
Yes and no. First of all, the fundamental formulas are all still there. They're unchanged because they are about motives. What will people buy and why will they buy it and how much will they pay for it. And those fundamentals are tied to human nature. They're not tied to anything else. And human nature hasn't changed. Right. We're just savages in better claws. That's, you know. But there is a big demarcation between the pre Internet time and the post Internet time. And simple models lived very well in the pre Internet Internet time.
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