Lessons from a 50-Year Whistleblowing Legacy

Welcome to the Paywall Podcast, where we discuss paywalls and paywall strategies for news and magazine publishers. This episode of the Paywall Podcast is brought to you by LeakyPaywall. LeakyPaywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more at leakypaywall.com. And now for today's episode.

What happens when a 50-year-old brand built on whistleblowing and independent journalism has to figure out digital subscriptions? Today's guest runs a membership site charging $228 a year, sells 51 individual product guides, hosts 2 podcasts, acquired a legacy print publication that was losing subscribers, and the whole thing started because his father got fired from Memorial Sloan-Kettering in '77 for refusing to lie about cancer research. Search. And he ended up on 60 Minutes and was in the New York Times for the whole thing, right?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that's a fair statement. You know, back when that all happened in the '70s, there was quite a little— a lot of media attention given to the situation that my father was exposing. And it was, it was an interesting time to live through, but it wasn't the, wasn't the sort of life's mission to make trouble for, uh, right. You know, big pharma, except where they were doing things that were truly nefarious and, uh, and harming people and, uh, to the exclusion of other worthwhile sort of methods of treating disease that, uh, they refused to look into because there wasn't enough profit in for them. So our, our platform was built on two different things. One was The sort of industry practices. And the other was what else is out there in the world of, in this case, cancer treatment, uh, that we're not hearing about, you know, around the world, for example, Mexico and Germany and so forth. So my dad was a reporter and he would go back and he would visit these places and come back and write up his experiences. And it was the only place in the world to. Find that information. And to this day, we still sort of offer some very unique content to around that, you know, those types of experiences, but also in analyzing and looking at the research science that exists in sort of natural, less toxic approaches to fighting cancer and disease more holistically.

Now for our listeners, you're Ben Moss, you run the Moss Report and you're, your publication, it's independent and it focuses on integrative and alternative cancer treatment. That's, that's the main focus. So, so how did the mo— give us a little background on how, how it all started up. I mean, obviously, you know, these things happened and then did, uh, was the idea to, to, to create a publication right out of the gate? And then how did you get involved?

Well, my involvement started at age 10. I'm 58 now. Um, I used to, um, hang around and watch my parents lay out their newsletter with what they called linotype or Letraset, you know, where you have to put each individual letter down for the headlines. And then you'd— anyway, it was a— and we had a mimeograph machine. Anyway, that was the beginning, back in pre-digital age. And yes, it was a publication called Second Opinion, and it was basically an insider look at what was happening at Sloan Kettering, and that was in the '70s. Later on, after that era sort of, sort of went by, there were books written. My dad wrote a number of different books on different topics relating to cancer. He was brought in as a writer on some biographies and other tangential topics. And he became sort of the spokesperson for alternative cancer back when really there weren't any people like that. There were clinicians, but there weren't any reporters on the subject other than my dad. So he established a name for himself in that sort of very, you know, specific niche, which he says, you know, if you knew him, he was famous. So in his world, in his niche, he was very well known. But outside of that, you know, you wouldn't hear much about him. And still that sort of persists today, unfortunately. But then it migrated, right? So it became from Second Opinion, it became Cancer Chronicles, which was a newsletter and a subscription-based newsletter printed. And That then became the Moss Report. And so it's been, it's basically been the same publication with a few different rebrands throughout.

That's, that's, that's interesting. And so you run the Moss Report, you also run the Townsend Letter, which you recently picked up, which is more holistic information. So it doesn't, doesn't seem like it crosses, it's related, it's like adjacent as the kids would say today, but it's not. Do you get a lot of crossover between the two?

There is a fair bit. Yep. Because a lot of the audience for The Moss Report and for Townsend Letter are practitioners and very curious laypeople. Not all. I mean, we have a good percentage that are patients seeking some clarity around some of these topics, but we also serve the practitioner and the sort of, you know, student set where they're trying to find out what is available, what is written on some of these more, I guess you'd call them fringe topics. If you're thinking of the mainstream as being conventional Western medicine, we cover all the topics that sort of don't fall into that category.

Interesting. My, just, just my, my grandfather was a, was a, a doctor. He was a holistic doctor in Sweden. And you know, back in the day when they made house calls, but he, he was a, He was a general practitioner. But, and I hear this was pretty common back in the day that holistic medicine just always worked kind of hand in hand with, with GPs, you know, the science of medicine.

In, in Sweden perhaps, and in Germany certainly, and other areas around the world. Not so much here in the US.

Let's talk about paywalls and membership. You, you have You know, we've been working together for, I think, a few years now. And as far as I can tell, both your publications are doing pretty well. And you have really a membership model, which is a little different than most of our publishers. We do have membership content publishers, but you have, let's just talk about the Moss Report that we're looking at here for a second. The way it's set up is like when you hit the, when you hit the homepage, you get the sort of the benefits right up front of what this is and what you're going to learn. And you do have, I think, 1,200 or plus articles on here, plus all the books. You have the two podcasts and all that. And you have sort of, and if you're watching this on YouTube, you have essentially right out, right out of the gate, you have two offers, right? You have like the free offer. Which requires just a registration. And then you have the paid full access approach. And I know that on the backend, I've seen your backend and we won't get into it here, but it's got a whole like custom dashboard for the paid members to really be able to sort through your archives and get access to a lot, a lot of content. But the free part is what really makes me curious in terms of the funnel from going from free to paid. So I took a quick look at this, get our free resources. Looks like you get a package of some kind. And so can you, can you kind of get a sense for what your thinking is on how this, this flow goes from free to paid?

Well, this is actually a fairly new implementation of our paywall strategy. Previously, we had the sort of traditional leaky paywall, you know, nag with a couple of free articles and then you need to subscribe. And that worked fine, but I wanted to see if we could do more in terms of onboarding people who were coming to the site and then choosing not to subscribe at that time. And I wanted to get more of those people converting to become free subscribers. And also, I wanted to give them more and have them have less frustration. So, What we did was we created a landing page that is a set of articles that we call the Essentials of Cancer.

Mm-hmm.

I think we have something like 20 articles or so interspersed in the story that we're trying to tell. So it, it sort of tells you about who we are, where we're coming from, and gives you really high-quality content to get you up to speed with the basic concepts of cancer as a disease and how it can be understood both from a sociopolitical standpoint, but also from a biological, biochemical standpoint. So that really gives people a good reason to come in and, and put their email address in to access those articles. And more so than just having a random article, maybe they came across on a search engine and then were able to access that plus another. And that was, I say, it was working. It just, it felt like we were leaving a lot of people cold. So we warmed it up a little bit by opening up over 20 articles to the public for free and then lock down everything else. So rather than having the customer come and pick which article they want to read. We're giving them the set of articles that we feel have the highest value for them as newcomers to our site and our platform and almost our philosophy, I guess you'd say.

So it's like a starter pack, like you're, you, it's free, you get enough content to get value, but also want more. Is that, is that the idea?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I'd did such a terrific job on that page of enticing people to go, come get more. I think the idea was for them to get enough value and hear our voice enough to then be introduced to us and realize that if we have other good content like what we're offering, that they would want to have access to that. And there are some different things that are not part of the essential of cancer, um, certain video series, the Help Yourself Heal video series and, um, and so forth. And I, I'm on the fence about my podcast actually, because right now the podcast is one of the primary ways that we produce content and we did it. We are currently including it in among our free content. Uh, and it is of course free on podcast platforms, but there are value-added aspects to seeing it on the site. So. Anyway, right now that is also all free as well.

Okay.

Let me—

so you got two things there. Let me break down. So the first one now, this, The Essentials of Cancer, which we're looking at here, this, the 20 articles, etc., is that— do you have any sort of, sort of preliminary feel for is this working, putting this package together? Are you getting any more free registrations or any— are you getting any more conversions off of it? Do you have any sense of that at this point?

Well, I would say it's, it's a little new for us to make a full-on assessment. We are going to be leveraging some of the new tools that you've rolled out for the analytics aspect of it. And we've just sort of started with that. So we're still letting that data accumulate. But I would say overall, just looking at the stats, that the paid conversion numbers are close to the same. We've just come through February, which for us has historically been a slow month. So I wouldn't say that that's a certainty. And definitely, the free subscriber rate has gone up. I would say probably 20% to 30%. I think there's some refinement that we can do still to optimize both the content and what people are getting, but also the way that it brings people into our paid content and how it onboards people. For the free content. So we're refining it, but it's, it's a step forward for us. We used to have what I would call information overload. You'd come to the homepage and you would basically see a menu with 15 different categories and then maybe 6 or 7 subcategories in each of those. So you would really be confronted with all of our content. Which on one level looked great. It was like, wow, look at all this great content. But it also didn't offer people a clear entry point to the content or direction as to how they should proceed. And I think that this is also helping to guide people in that way, like start here kind of an idea.

Yeah, simple, a simple sort of path forward, a framework forward. So you said something just That just blew me up actually a little bit here. So all things being the same, I mean, you created the Essentials of Cancer, but the, the— and that— and you basically, when you, when you click on it and you pop up, you get the sort of like the, the landing page of what all the benefits are that you're going to get for free. Or if you hit an article, you get a pop-up and you get some benefits. So that's different. You increased your, your free registration conversion rate between 20 and 30%. That is amazing. That's a big deal.

It is. And I think we can even do better. I, it's just a, you know, this is sort of version 1 of the new iteration of The Essentials. I actually want to write some more content specific to this section rather than trying to repurpose some of the other work that we have, um, some of the writing from my dad that we just kind of plugged in where it made sense in those sections. It helps to tell the story, but it's, I think I can do better. I think, in fact, I, I know I can. I'm going to be working on that. I spent about, well, several months actually working on the new interface and the Essentials page and so forth. And I, I, I was negligent in my duties as the content producer. So now I'm getting back to doing some content and the spring is, you know, going to be me, and luckily we have all these rainy and cold sort of late winter, early spring days to, uh, for me to dig in and, and generate a lot of content. And ultimately, I think that that's where the rubber meets the road for us is, are we putting out good content? Are we sending relevant and meaningful emails to our audience?

So on the podcast, so why are you doing it? What's, what's the motivation and how is it affecting your paid subscriptions?

Well, the podcast was always meant to be the really, the, the, the top of the funnel.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't like to talk about things in marketing terms. We, we're giving this content away. We, we publish it freely on our podcast platform and we on, on YouTube as well. And it, it basically gives people a free insight into what we feel are the most important topics of the day, as well as who are the most important thought leaders in pushing some of the research science that goes into this stuff. I'm fortunate because my father's notoriety and his longevity in this field means that when I call or email folks, they will almost always respond positively to, to join us for the conversation. And that might mean going to a clinic to go visit with someone around the world, or it might mean, um, a conference, or it might mean just having a, a Zoom call or, or a podcast recording with somebody. Um, in, I could give you some examples, but, but basically when we knock, uh, the door opens. So that's, that's a real plus for us and it, it means that we can have the high-level conversations with the thought leaders on our subject, which is, that's where, you know, we feel like there's a lot of value for, for people and we're not trying to be stingy with it.

Yeah.

These are topics that we, we want people to know about. We're not trying to hide them.

Yeah.

So, but again, you know, I do feel as though it would be nice to also have some kind of, uh, compensation sometimes for all the work that goes into producing these videos and podcasts. Um, so it's a balancing act of basically driving traffic. In the last 3 years, we've put together our YouTube channel, it's got about 53,000 subscribers now. Um, which has done pretty well for people who are in our little niche. That's, that's pretty good. Um, excuse me. So yeah, uh, I don't know, I'm not really answering your question very well.

No, no, I know, it's, it's good. The thing that, that I found, and, and all points of marketing, is the more you give away, it's like there's like a free line, right? You know, and the more you move that free line and give away stuff, the better, um, really the better marketing or better response you get. People appreciate free, and sometimes You know, sometimes I get questions from publishers that are like, well, I don't wanna give too much away. And there's certainly a balance point between how much you give away and how much you don't give away. You've decided to put together this essentials package, you know, which, which is a big chunk of content. You're giving the podcast away and, and it, it builds trust. It, you know, it's a human thing. You hear, you hear a voice and all that. And that when, when you build that kind of trust and you're giving away that kind of high value content and somebody really is in need, then you're really, you're really, uh, nurturing the relationship, which is really the whole idea in most businesses, especially in, in publishing.

Yeah.

Um, so I, I applaud that, and I think you— I think it will pay off for you. I really, I really do.

Thank you. Um, I still get my share of emails like, how dare I charge for information about cancer? You know, it's a hard thing. And I send them the links to the, you know, the YouTube. It's like, we're putting everything we can out there. For free, uh, just to be continued. I mean, the reason that my father built his audience and did what he did was not based on profit. It was based on sort of serving the greater good. And for him as a creative person, and I call him an artist, I guess he's a writer, um, even a science writer has artistry behind their work. Um, you know, he wanted to do his art and so, uh, there really wasn't, you know, we didn't come at it from like, oh, here we see an opportunity to make a, a ton of money.

Yeah.

And we're not.

Yeah.

Um, and the other thing I wanted to mention was that I think, uh, many of our subscribers, um, what they do is they subscribe much in a way that people might sign up for a Patreon.

Mm-hmm.

And they support what we do. You know, we're actually doing something. We're going out and we're, we're trying to get to the bottom of some of the big questions of chronic disease and, and cancer and even things like what is the cause of cancer that we still don't know even with all of our technology and everything else. Right. And that's one of the things that we go into in The Essentials of Cancer is talking about the, the sort of shift from the previous theory of what cancer is and was to the more modern theory of what it is that we understand based on really good research science. I mean, this is, we don't pull stuff out of our ear here, you know what I mean? We're, my father is a very analytical person and he only looks at hard science to make his assessments of, you know, whether something has value in the realm of, well, we call it alternative. It's not really called alternative anymore. That was, that's a term that's kind of gone by the wayside now. It's more known as integrative. Gotcha. But in the old days, yes, it was, it was alternative medicine, but integrative maybe might be better because it, it integrates with, you know, yeah. Conventional. Well, and natural.

I think it makes sense. So you don't have to sell me on it. So as far as the, the integrating the podcast into the content site, into the Moss Report, do you, do you do any kind of summarizing or, you know, do you, do you flex the content from the, from the podcast recording into the site at all or is it kind of just go straight in as a—

Well, I put a lot of effort into making sure that the transcripts are as well transcribed as they can be. And with some of these topics, of course, there's a lot of medical terminology and so forth. So that means I've got to read it all very carefully and that transcript, you know, one reversal of a phrase could make a big difference in terms of the kinds of topics we're talking about. So a lot of effort goes into that. I don't really expand too much on the topics that we get into for those posts that we create on the website. It's usually just the video and the podcast recording and the transcript. But I'm starting to do a bit more As you might think, you know, like as you mentioned, sort of adding more content. So recently I went to a, um, press conference that I was invited to sort of out of the blue, uh, at the Department of Health and Human Services down in DC. And they sent me this invite like 2 days before it was actually occurring. So I had to— I saw that post and go to, uh, and go to DC. And that was a very interesting experience. And I I wrote it up as an article and a story, as well as produced the video to go along with it. And I like that format, you know, and I was torn if I'm including that. Is that a podcast? Well, it's not really a podcast. So I think really what I'm, as I'm making more of a migration from the content that was mostly focused around my dad's work. And including more of my own reporting, I'm thinking less of it as being The Moss Report, quote, podcast, end quote, and more of just The Moss Report as a sort of blanket term for the articles that we produce and, and the content and the videos and everything. So I, I'm not even sure that the podcast as the podcast separate from The Moss Report is going to be a thing so much going forward. Well, we'll see. These are just the things I, these are the things that I'm percolating on.

I agree. You have the Moss Report where, and people consume content differently, you know, like I'm very auditory. I love to listen. I love to talk. And, but some people are, some people want to watch a video. Some people, I know with our podcast, I hear publishers say, yeah, I just wait for the YouTube video to come and then I, and then I watch it. And some, and other Readers wanna scan text, they wanna read text. So, you know, you're taking all the contents in the same umbrella. It's just different. Like podcast means audio. I mean, that's all it is. But it's, and you know, like maybe summarizing a podcast as an article adds value. And one thing I do know is that people pay for convenience. You could have all the content for free over here and it's a big pile and you gotta sift through it. But as soon as you organize it and make it faster and easier for someone to get to, take my money, right? Because time sells. Like, you can, you can charge for, for convenience and time savings.

Yeah.

Anyway.

Yeah. Well, and, and because I'm the web developer as well for both of these sites that I'm running, it does— all of that takes up a lot of my time. And I think I find that I'm sometimes not acting on moving with the times in as timely a way as I might want, just because I know that the heavy lifting of the web development is going to have to fall to me. So I'm trying to get myself to a place where our company really can afford to do two things. One is hire a full-time web developer to be putting out the content and also on social media and so forth. And the other is I'm trying to hire my son, who's a videographer and a video editor at USA Today, away from them. But that means, you know, that's a pretty big, a big, you know, commitment for the company to make with him. And I hope to get there one of these days.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're making progress for sure. Okay. Let's, let's switch, shift gears and talk about the newsletter, which we started talking about earlier. Um, I signed up as a free account just to kind of set the stage. And I, uh, this was February 5th, and I made— I actually counted, I got a bunch. Was it a dozen emails since then from you or something like that? Maybe more. Um, and, uh, and the last email I got, the cost of uncertainty. So yeah, walk, walk Walk me through your sort of, you know, how you use your email newsletter for the business.

Well, there's two aspects of it, really three actually. So one is to provide timely updates about new content that's been released to our existing paid membership. And they get one email that's from, in my voice that says, hey, you know, I did this or I went there, I talked to this person. We learned this and here's what that looks like and here's that article or 2 articles, however many it may be. And then we have the onboarding of non-subscribed people. In other words, people who haven't signed up for a free registration. So they get their own email that says, okay, here's some content that you can access with your free registration. And here's some content that if you subscribed, you would have access to.

Okay.

And so that looks like one, that's another email, and it might include that same more recent content as well. And then there would be a third email that goes out, and that is to our free subscribers where basically we're doing almost the same as with the non-subscribers where we're introducing them to the content that they can access. And in fact, I've set something up recently where I, I, I can make posts available to them automated for a certain period of time so that then they, they go back behind the paywall. So that gets them coming to the site with some urgency to read the latest content. And then while they're there, maybe, you know, we're hoping that they'll, they'll make the choice to, to onboard with us either free or paid. But then what you're talking about though is these, is what we call our drip campaign. I guess that's the standard term for it. And that is also relatively new. And let me tell you, good copywriting is the hardest thing of all of it. It's harder than web development. It's harder than, than I think, you know, it's not even marketing so much as it is just good writing. It's very hard, I found. And so I actually worked with a consultant who, you know, we used all of his, his experience and his writing skillset, all of mine, all of my dad's, and whatever sort of AI corrections or additions in terms of helping to frame things. We really didn't rely on it too much. Not to disclaim AI, it has its purposes, but, but there are certain things that it can't do and what people really need and what they want and I don't blame them, I feel the same way, is authenticity in writing. And I think people are becoming very attuned to the sort of ways that the voice of AI projects in emails and in writing in general. And so I try to keep it very much in my own voice and as I would say or write it down when I'm writing to people. And even throughout those, you know, well, I think there's 18 total, so you've got a few more to get.

Yeah.

So we try to do something very particular in those emails, which is to not just share the content that they've accessed through their free account, which is how you get the drip campaign by signing up for the free account. But, but we try to have some value added to the email as well. So if there's an article about this, but we're also giving them a nugget of information that they're not getting in the article, then, then that adds something of value for people to want to actually read the newsletter as well. So, you know, again, it's, it's the kind of thing that our previous iteration of this got very stale. It, we didn't change it for a couple of years at least. Um, and we had it on a different platform. We previously were using MailChimp as our mail delivery. And what I found was with the, with the quantity of emails that I was sending out and the frequency and also having it be a separate platform from where I'm working every day in WordPress, I didn't really like MailChimp. And I, and there were technical things about it too that I didn't like. So I was very glad when you contacted me about your product. That you launched, which is the Flowletter and the backend system in WordPress to be able to deliver content right from WordPress. It was a real boon for us. It kind of consolidated where we work every day into a single system, and that platform continues to evolve and improve. And so now I'm quite satisfied and happy with it. And right now, and I think, uh, we're gonna make even more use of it going forward. I think the newsletter is a, a key factor in the onboarding. I certainly see every time I send out a newsletter that there's a, a spike in our, uh, onboarding of, of paid subscribers and even free subscribers if we're sending them out to that audience as well.

Yeah, for sure. Oh boy. So many good things you just said there. Um, thanks for the compliment on Flowletter. Appreciate that.

Well, I mean, there's nothing else that really does that. No, there's nothing else that really is a newsletter system inside of WordPress that works the way that yours does directly with all of our content. So that it just populates and looks beautiful and it gets delivered cleanly. That's another thing. I mean, I would design emails in that other platform and they would get delivered and they would look different. And I would say, well, what is, what is even happening here? And I'd go back and I'd fuss with it and fuss with it and it, it still would look different. Point sizes and fonts and things, things were all messed up. You know, this one, it's very, very clean, very straightforward. When it hits the email, it looks just like it does when you're building it out. And those are real important things for us, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And the newsletter is such an important tool in this whole, it's a reason we got involved in it. We learned a few years ago that subscriptions really lean on the newsletter. Like it's just, if you're gonna nurture somebody from just a casual person to, paid, that requires time. And the only way you're going to buy time is to get the Miner Newsletter. And that's where that free registration really becomes so important.

I want to, I want to say something that you might not ask me about.

Okay.

It's a, it's unprompted and unpaid. I'm not getting anything in compensation for this conversation, you know. So I want to just say that, that for me, the biggest boon of working with you, Pete, and your company and LeakyPaywall is that there's a personal relationship that, that we have. Um, when I have questions of tech support, um, I, I know who I'm talking to. I always get a very prompt reply. Um, when I have things that are of a business nature that I need to speak with you about, you're always responding to me. And this is my business. And for me to be in business and not have a personal contact with the folks who are providing me with the platform or the service that I'm using to have my business. I mean, that would feel inappropriate and, and, and that would not feel comfortable for me to, to not be able to know that I could pick up the phone, so to speak, and, and have the person who's taking responsibility for making sure that everything is right answer the phone. So I wanna thank you for being partner with me in the last, I think it's almost 6 years now, Pete.

Wow.

Maybe more.

Wow. That's amazing.

Well, thanks. Thanks for that. And, you know, I feel like, you know, we've done, we've done well and I do feel like the process of my building my platform has been collaborative with, with you folks at LeakyPaywall. So thank you.

That's great to hear. Boy, that's, that's, that's the quote of the day for me. I mean, we're personally, this whole business is about taking publishers, which generally historically have been struggling, especially going from print to digital and, you know, knowing how important it is, whether it's whether you're a niche publisher like yourself, magazine publisher, local news, whatever it is, it's, you know, everyone needs help. You know, Google and Facebook have come in and stolen ad money, you know, almost all of it. They've just sucked it out of the ecosystem. And the opportunity is real, though, as you have discovered for, for reader revenue and and working with that. At some point, maybe we should talk about sponsorships. I don't know if you've gone down that path.

I think, I think the opportunity is real. I think if a person is putting out content that has value, then they can find an audience and have success.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So back to the newsletter. You said, you said a few things. One is you send content that's not on the website in the newsletter. To get people to read the newsletter.

Correct.

That's, that's a good takeaway for someone who's listening to this. The second thing I heard, which I didn't know, is that you, you archive, as I would call it, you put a time wall up on some of the content so it's free for a period of time and then afterwards you have to be a paid subscriber to get access. Is that correct?

That's right. There was actually a very inexpensive paid plugin I can share with link with you afterwards if you'd like to include that in the podcast description. That allows you to change the status of a post based on a time period. So in this case, I have LeakyPaywall set up to include a post as part of the Essentials, which is our free with, with registration content. And then after a period of time, it drops that category. And so therefore becomes part of the, you know, the regular content on the site.

Okay. Is that, is that one of, I mean, we have that, we have that extension.

You do?

Called, we do. I don't know if you're using that one or something different.

No, it's not one of yours.

Okay.

I didn't know that you had one of the, I mean, I know you have a number of extensions, but maybe I'll have to look into that.

Yeah. And it, but you know what I'll say is cool that you can work with third-party plugins into, in LeakyPaywall because LeakyPaywall is a native What is the, what is the extension?

I know you, I'm, I'm surprised I missed that.

I think it's called, I think it's called Archiver.

Okay.

It's either Archiver or Archiver.

I should have emailed you. That's my lesson. That's before buying any add-ons. I should always email you to see if you include that as part of what you have available.

Hey, but you did what, what, uh, you know, you did what you needed to do and you found the solution in the, in WordPress, which, which I wasn't, I wasn't big expense and it works well. Yeah. Yeah. The whole open source thing is, is amazing. So we're, I don't want to jump into the Townsend Letter too much, but I wouldn't, wouldn't mind kind of having you share like how that experience has been. You, you acquire, you acquired the Townsend Letter. It was a print publication, I think. And you, you moved it from print to digital and I think it was COVID and subscribers kind of exploded a little bit and I'll tell you, don't worry if you want me to. Yeah. Yeah, go for it.

So Townsend Letter came to us because the previous publisher of this printed magazine was gearing up to retire. And in fact, the year before that, he had stopped putting out the printed magazine because he was losing money. It was an ad-based revenue and the cost of printing and everything had gone up to the extent where It just was not affordable for him to continue to do that. So he didn't have the technology or the wherewithal to make a successful transition to the digital platform, nor did he really have the inclination to try. And so he called me up, having done some consulting for him in the past. Plus, my father was a contributing writer for decades, so he knew both our ethos And he also knew my technical ability and he wanted his baby, his, his, his magazine that he put so much of his life into over 40 years, um, worth of his time and energy, uh, to continue. And he knew that we could do it. We could do it with the, the proper point of view. And, uh, and I had the technical ability to pull it off. So basically we inherited all of the content and the brand. But, and we had a mailing list, but we had no, we had zero subscribers in a digital sense. And the, the print subscribers doesn't really translate to, to digital. Now, fortunately for me, I already had the Moss Report going as my primary enterprise. So this was something that I could launch and roll out as a side project, I guess you'd say. And I also had a kind of a responsibility to keep the two women who had been with the publication for over 30 years gainfully employed, I guess you'd say, uh, with the publication. So there was some, so there was some pressure for me to, to make a go of it. And that was about, oh, I guess almost two years ago, the first conversation with the, the former publisher, uh, came about and we were able to get about 4,500 past articles, which was only about the last 10 or so, 12 years, 10 or 12 years, I guess, worth of articles. But the magazine goes back 40 years, but I figured that was enough. And really, I think people are just more interested in what the news is on the COVID You know, uh, they're just following along, see what's, what's on the radar, um, day by day. But one of the nice things is that, uh, because I already had the Moss Report and experience with you, that we were able to get the whole thing from the backend set up very quickly. And if you look at the way this site is set up, it's more or less the way that the Moss Report was set up before, where there's a lot of categories and subcategories and it doesn't really have a clear path. But this is more of a magazine than the Moss Report is, which is almost more of a a resource or a catalog of information and writing. So I'm not so sure if I'm going to follow the same exact improvements that I've made on the Moss Report here on Townsend Letter, but I am certainly thinking about ways to, to do that. And of course, I'm using the Flowletter system to send out the newsletter. Every 2 weeks, and it's the same newsletter that everybody gets. They just get one newsletter, and this has the traditional leaky paywall, uh, with the nags, and, uh, and people get it. It just makes more sense for them. And right now the magazine is not providing me a huge income, but I'm keeping the 2 women who have been working for the magazine employed, uh, and now it's going on 2 years, so Gotcha. I'm very happy about that. I feel like not only did I help to keep a magazine that held a very important place in the world of alternative medicine alive and going into the future, but I brought on board some new writers. I'm producing good content. It gives me a platform for my own writing endeavors as well, more so than The Moss Report because that was more historically about my dad's writing. And the, and Townsend Letter has now become sort of my platform. And in a way it's, it's the warmup platform for me. You know, at some point I'll, my father will retire. He's 83, 83 going on 84 in May. Mm.

Oh, good for him.

So, you know, yeah, it's, it's been great. And it's a great magazine and I've been able to, it's very well known actually in some place, some ways it's better known than The Moss Report.

Hmm. Interesting.

If you think about like all the chiropractors and naturopaths, uh, sort of around the world, this would be the magazine that would be in the waiting room. Oh, it was the magazine for that.

I'll have to ask my chiropractor. Yeah.

If they're old enough, they would know it.

Yeah. Interesting. I, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. He's, he's, he's not that old at 40, forties anyway. Yeah. Um, uh, so You started somewhere around zero email subscribers for the newsletter?

No, we had the email mailing list of somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 subscribers. And that was, it was just a mailing list though. It wasn't, they were, nobody had subscribed at that point.

Hmm. Gotcha.

So when we started with Leaky Paywall, we basically started where we were waiting for our first actual subscriber, you know.

Wow. How, how— so what do you think turned it around? What was— well, if it was declining when you picked it up.

Yeah, right.

I mean, obviously print is, is an anchor. It's, it's— unless you're printing, you know, 100,000 issues, it's— and the ad revenue, oh, it's, it's been rough lately. So—

well, I didn't— I— you see, The Mosher Report never had any advertising. We never wanted to be compromised by having somebody who was paying us to say something. And there have been publications that have been sort of pay-to-play also, where people would pay money to have their, you know, their writing published in a journal even. And that's, you know, none of that to me sits well. Um, I like to have my autonomy, as did my dad. And so we've never had any advertising. We wanted to build this as a reader-supported, a reader-funded-only model. And so when I took over, I basically had to call the old advertisers from the print magazine and say, I'm sorry, but we're not, we're not even, we're not even interested in your money at this point. We're, we're just trying to do that. And what I found was that people appreciated that. They appreciated not being sort of inundated with, with all these ads and they, seem to trust the voice. I mean, this is something, honestly, Pete, that you can't buy, no matter what the price. And that is that my father's writing and his interactions with so many thousands of people over the years has engendered a trust in his objectivity and his sincerity and his intelligence that you can't put a price on. And my goal is to not screw that up by somehow getting greedy or trying to take, you know, somebody's off dangling something in front of me.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm a little bit more entrepreneurial, I would say a little bit more interested in trying to, you know, make an honest living out of what I'm doing. But I'm not willing to compromise the value and the trust that my father built. Um, that is our brand identity and our, and the value of our brand. So we got rid of advertising and for Townsend Letter, because as I said before, my father's name opens doors. I was able to reach out to some really terrific thought leaders in major fields of medicine. And I still can and do because of the notoriety of Towns and Letters and the Moss Report and my father's work. When I call people up and say, will you write for us? They will generally speaking, be glad to do that. So my costs are very low in terms of what I pay my writers. And so the overhead is basically what it's my leaky paywall. Subscription with Flowletter. It's hosting and it's the salaries that I'm, I'm paying the, the two other employees and, and that's about it. So yeah, any, any amounts of, you know, subscriptions that we get, it's all good. It all goes in, you know, to pay for those things. And so we're, we're just at about break even right now, maybe a little bit better, uh, for my effort, but that's still pretty good for a year or two outta the gate and building. A brand from scratch.

Yeah, trust is so important. It really is in every walk. It really is in every walk of life. It's just, I mean, it's the foundation. And you get to sleep better at night too, you know.

Oh, I sleep like a baby.

All right, so I got a couple, a couple of, uh, sort of left-field questions for you. Sure. And then we can, we can wrap it up. Um, okay, so these are the ones, these are, these are I like asking these. One is, one is what you mentioned earlier is AI. Are you concerned about sort of AI theft that's going on right now? Because AI can come in and, you know, pull your content. If it's not hard locked, it'll pull your, pull your content into its, you know, database. And, you know, as in, you know, the data is very clear, we are using AI more and more like a search engine and research, of course, and all that. Is that— have you— is that keep you awake at all at night?

I would say it keeps me awake at night, Pete. I would say it's certainly something that's on my mind every day. We're seeing the ways that AI is changing our society. The way that it's affecting my business directly is less of a concern, I think, even than some of the other ways that it's affecting society. Um, I think it erodes trust very broadly speaking. People aren't We're just learning now that it's a machine talking to us. People, you know, there's videos of people like, oh, they're on hold talking to somebody and trying to figure out, is it an AI or is it a human being? And it, you know, it's like, how do, who do you trust and, and why do you trust them? This is why I said our brand is trust. And, and the other thing that I mentioned that I think relates to me personally in my business is that many people will come and support what we do, they'll support Townsend Letter. You know, it's a, it's a trade publication for people who are in the natural medicine field, so they can deduct it as an expense. And the same likewise for, for The Moss Report. But it's, it's almost like a Patreon support that I feel is, mm-hmm, is being offered when people come and subscribe.

Yeah.

And we don't, we haven't put that language on. The sites. We're still, and maybe, maybe we need to rethink that as AI becomes more prevalent, is to have it really be about who we are and what our mission is and what our values are. And, and that if you're coming on board to either of our platforms there, that you're doing so in part to access all the content, which is terrific, but also in part to support us, uh, like a Patreon account.

Yeah, I agree with that. Um, we have some for-profit, uh, publishers in the local news space that I can think about, and their approach, even though they're for-profit, and you read their like welcome email, it reads like a nonprofit, and it's basically like, hey, we're on a mission to, uh, the one I'm thinking about is, um, The Salem Reporter in Oregon, and they are, they really are leaning into government, you know, and corporate nonsense that's going on. And they're reporting on that. And they will go, they've gone as far as literally emailing their list saying, hey, we're covering this particular issue. We need this much more budget. Maybe it's $1,500 or whatever they need to pay the reporter to get to really dig in on this story. And they get it like every time. Right. So, I mean, they're really running it as a mission-based nonprofit, even though they're, you know, technically for-profit. And I think that speaks to, like, if you're local news, you got your community, you know, if you're, you know, you're dealing with people who are in a tough spot with cancer, it's like you have this community, you know, and, and, um, you know, you're, you're, you're helped, like you just said, like you're here to help people first. It's like your number one priority. And so I would reflect that in the language for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, it's difficult to write copy on our topic because it's such a sensitive subject.

Yeah.

You can't, you know, it's not like we're selling widgets where we can just get as, as, you know, wild out there with the marketing language as we want and see what sticks and see what works. You know, we, we can only talk about it in a, in a very measured way. And so it's, it's hard from a marketing standpoint, and it's hard to even talk about marketing. Like, I don't even like to talk about money or marketing or any of that. It just is kind of contrary to what we're doing. We're just doing our thing, you know. We're just reporting, and we have the support of our subscribers. And yes, we need to craft some careful language around how to encourage that support without You know, it's gotta walk a line there too between too needy and too, you know, desperate seeming and, uh, or, you know, I don't know. I just don't, I, this is why I said copywriting is the hardest thing. So you can come up with ideas all day long about how to strategize, uh, onboarding people to, you know, to get their email, to add them to the list or, or get them into a paid subscription. Um, but at the end of the day, I feel like all we can do is be who we are, be our honest selves, speak from the heart, write from the heart, and, um, and do the good, honest reporting that has the value that people, uh, have come to expect from us, uh, and that they will continue to get. And, and they, they know that if they've been following along. And The trick is for people who are new to us to get them up to speed with everything we've done. There's a lot there, you know? So that's the hard part is like, how do you present yourself immediately when you have got such a nuanced and rich backstory and there's so much trust that's built into your brand, but some people who are coming to you, they don't know about that trust. How do you, How do you get that trust? How do you tell them, oh, you should trust us?

I think you're doing a pretty good job from what I can see. I mean, you give away a lot of free content. You know, there are 18 emails that come after somebody signs up. You know, there's a lot of nurturing happening there. I mean, I'm sure, you know, you can always, you can always improve on things, but from what I can see, I think you're doing a pretty damn good job.

Thank you, Pete.

I got one last, I got a hard question for you. It's the last one. Okay. You ready? Okay. What is, what is your biggest failure in publishing? And if you can think back and think of all the things that, you know, over this sort of track, you know, I've had a very rich track for the last bunch of years. And, and the hard, the really hard part is what did you learn from it?

Yeah. My biggest failing has been not using and trusting my own voice to talk to our subscribers more. In a way, there have been gaps of time where I was producing content. I was doing a lot of, doing a lot of other things, but I wasn't having the conversation and talking to our audience. And I find that the more that I do that now, the more interest and correspondence and activity I see.

Hmm.

That's key. People want to be part of the, they want to be included. They want to feel like you're talking to them. You're not ignoring them.

Yeah.

And it's, so it's one thing to have a website with a lot of content. It's another thing to be talking to your audience as though you were having a, you know, you were sharing something with them.

Yeah. So authentic, authentic self, right?

Learning to, learning to trust myself to speak to our audience is something that I'm still growing into. Mm-hmm. But I think it's, I think it's the thing that had I had more confidence or had I understood the importance of that earlier on, I would've been doing that more.

Yeah. That's a, that's a great piece of advice. Confidence is, is important. And being, you know, some of us are private too, right? It's hard to be really, you know, you're in a public space now and then you gotta be a little more sharing about your own sort of personality and quirks and all that. But yet that's what people want. Like you just said, this is, This is what people want.

Well, we have our, we have our YouTube channel. Our most popular video has nearly half a million views right now.

Wow.

And so I think about that, it's like, wow, you know, that's quite a number of people who have sat there and listened to me and my dad talk about some study, uh, some natural food or something like that, you know? And, um, I think part of, you know, all of that, all of those experiences of, of producing the content and putting myself out there in front of audiences and having meaningful conversations with some of the thought leaders. I mean, some of the people we're talking to are very, very influential and important scientists and, and doctors in the world of cancer. And so, and other, and other fields of health as well. So awesome. I guess all of that has led me to feel a little bit more confident in my own voice. You know, when I came into this, I was like, oh, I'm the legacy. You know, I'm just trying to I'm just trying to promote and, and put my dad's writing out there. And that's what I did. And, you know, I cataloged all of his articles and, you know, everything that he had produced. That's where, that's what The Moss Report is essentially, is a republication of, of everything that my dad's produced over the last 50 years.

Well, you beat the odds.

And now I did, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to now make that segue. From it being all about my dad to it being more about, you know, the curated voices that I'm choosing to work with for Town and Letter and my own voice for the Moss Report. You know, I'm the future of the Moss Report and I need to have that confidence to talk to our audience as though I'm the Moss Report now, you know?

Yeah.

And that took some growing into, so I guess you could say it's a regret, but it was a growth process for me.

Yeah. No, that's tough. That's tough. I was involved in a family business. I read a lot about it, and the transitioning from father to child usually doesn't work out statistically. So if you can pull it off, you know, you're winning, you're beating the odds. So Ben, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you? Give us, give us the lowdown.

Yeah, themossreport.com, townsendletter.com, and on YouTube, look up The Moss Report. You'll find us.

Okay. Awesome. This was great. That's all. Thanks for sharing everything you've shared.

Of course, Pete. And thank you for all the work you do with Leaky Paywall. And as I said, being in a partnership with you has been really great for us as a publishing platform. We continue to look forward to the developments that you're coming up with for the platform. And I know there's some new things we've added and I'm looking forward to learning more about them. Thanks again.

Yeah, same, same right back at you, Ben. Catch you later.

Okay.

Bye-bye now.

Thanks for listening to the Paywall Podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription strategy, go to leakypaywall.com. See you next time.