FMS FinPub Pro

MarketBeat's Dr. Matt Paulson: The Changing Trends in Acquisition Media

• John Newtson

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Join us for a must-listen conversation with Dr. Matt Paulson from MarketBeat, where we unravel the latest shifts in the financial publishing landscape. 

FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

Speaker 1:

All right, hey everyone. I'm here with Dr Matt Paulson from MarketBeat. How are you doing, Matt Good?

Speaker 2:

Happy to be here again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great to have you back. I wanted to get your take on a whole bunch of things. 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.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's September of this year versus January. It is two very different environments. What's working has changed, what's hot has changed. The election has created a giant distraction. Obviously, some big changes at MarketWise. Crowdfunding has really taken off. Just a whole lot, a lot of different things happening. That's really um shaking up the apple cart yeah.

Speaker 1:

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, um, like the shift then?

Speaker 2:

yeah, it a it's definitely a weaker environment. Um, 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 25, 30% top line um Q1 compared to Q q3 and it's just a more challenging environment and I think the election has something to do with that.

Speaker 1:

Uh, the changes that market wise, uh, certainly haven't helped um and um, 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 everything that happened at MarketWise, which is that I mean you had the legacy shut down and then you had changes and Porter came in, came out a lot of disruption there, a lot fewer offers coming out and I mean, I think the big thing was that there are initial price points.

Speaker 2:

The company decided that their kind of front end initial cart was going to be 200, up from maybe 70, and that's uh, that's definitely going to impact your number of conversions right, right.

Speaker 1:

So it's 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, um, when you think about like the, just kind of like the, the impacts then from kind of the weaker environment, changes in market wise and all that like what do you think are like? How's that impacting everybody else? How's that impacting uh, kind of what, what's working for people, what they're doing like strategy? I mean, there's a lot changing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right now with the election, it does seem like the political angles are working really well on copy. We've seen Porter Company and Weiss and behind the markets do really well with some different political angles. All of 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.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I think that's like the gold connection with politics when gold is hot, has always been strong um I know that paradigm had that order, that, that promo, doing like a just 500 or a thousand orders a day at one point, yeah, um, 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.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's like you have to either do it consistently or never at all, cause if you don't talk about politics and you start talking about politics, you know your, your audience, may not like that, cause they you know I you listen to Taylor Swift for her music. Then all of a sudden she starts talking about politics and 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 FinPub 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.

Speaker 1:

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. Yeah, 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 than other times and election years are one out of every four years, so not like it works this well every year.

Speaker 1:

But that kind of market-wise raising their prices on the front end, I mean obviously it impacts their total number in the door. But 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 acquisition has changed too, hasn't it?

Speaker 2:

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 in 21. And I was cooled off in 22, but kind of came back in 23 of, like, you know what is that initial checkout price? That makes sense and you know, I think for a lot of people it's still that $79 to $99. But you know, if your company is struggling with new sales and profitability, like you know, maybe you try that $199 entry price point and see if you can pay for your customer acquisition cost in day one. We don't really try to do that For us. We're lucky to break even after 90 days and we're happy with that. But things are tight, like I would just try to cut back on the stuff. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

It 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 the other ones, obviously. So, um, scaling up, I mean, I don't know. I hesitate to say that it's better to go higher price when you're smaller, um, 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, get a higher price point on the front end, um, and it makes my media buying work sooner um it, just there's not the scale that you would have as you, as you go lower, so that is.

Speaker 2:

That is the big trade off you, when you're working with people like Charles Plagle and George Mecham and ourselves, like we're going to send out the thing that makes us the most money all like all day, every day. Right, If something is, you know, a 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 you have to find that balance of like what number makes sense for you know you as a publishing business but also what numbers will make sense for the people who are sending you, your customers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, and so the you know you bring up, you bring up you know, charles and george and um, I'm I don't say surprised, I'm a little surprised.

Speaker 2:

actually, in the discord you guys have been sharing, like which which offers work for you versus what, what their hot offers are, and and there's a lot more variability in there than I would have expected- yeah, I, 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 you know, those guys use different kinds 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 that's good, because that means we're not just all trying to send the same people to the same advertisers.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so how would you characterize as somebody who's like, hey, I'd love to be able to target your traffic better and deliver something for you that can get a lot more scale? What kind of offers would you say, and kind of thematics work really well for you?

Speaker 2:

You know for MarketBeat, the stuff that really kind of tells a story and gives a glimpse into the future or what the future might be like. Like Californication, early in the year, just crushed it like nothing has had since 2019. But it gave people a glimpse into like this is what a year from now it like like nothing has had since 2019. Uh, but it gave people a glimpse into like this is what a year from now might be like. Uh, maybe neither biden or trump is president and you know they didn't get gavin newsom right, 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 did happen. So that kind of stuff works really well.

Speaker 2:

The storytelling is really important. Here's what the future looks like really is important. But then also that personal relationship where it's not like here's something that might happen. 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 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 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.

Speaker 1:

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, like, the rise of social media, I mean everything is personality, everything's personality now, and so like to not have personality in the promo seems like a missed opportunity for a lot of folks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do think there's a disconnect with um.

Speaker 2:

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 you're going to be that expert and talking about a subject you know a lot about out and have a publication where you're charging for it, like you should be on podcast, you should be on twitter, you should be on some of the platforms talking about some of the same things, so that, like, like you know, hikatori, like in his publications, like versus like him elsewhere on the internet. Like I don't want to say like he's just on twitter, like you know, there he could tour you, like in his publications, like versus like him elsewhere on the internet. Like I don't want to say like it just on Twitter. Like you know, there's not much of a presence on other platforms. There's just not much of a presence Like if you're, if you are going to advertise yourself as, like I'm the expert, I know a ton about this topic and I can inform you about it and teach you about it.

Speaker 1:

Like you got to be the other places too yeah, yeah, I think people are nervous sometimes too because in twitter like twitter is not a kind place and people get uh, people have no problem calling you out on stuff. But I think that's not, um, that's not fundamentally negative uh, if you're, if you're doing good stuff, um. But no, I think you're right on the uh, and I think it also goes to a little bit to the the way that we would build gurus in the past, um, since they never had any direct conversation, right, it's all the copywriter filtered kind of stuff. Um, you could take somebody who didn't have as much personality and build them up bigger Uh, but if they're not out there now nowadays, it's harder to kind of hide that um yeah, I think, like like somebody who's doing a really good job with this is is duneberg.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know he's anonymous and a lot of people, including we, kind of know who he is. But, um, and you know he'll, he will speak at an event every now and then, as long as there's no cameras, um. But I mean, he's got a Twitter account with a quarter million followers. He does podcast interviews, but he's still got, you know, the paid subscription offering and he's probably making several million a year doing that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think there are. I mean this is conjecture, but from talking to people with Substack and other places, I think they're around four to five. They're one of the best ones on Substack.

Speaker 2:

That's the number I kind of heard too, but I didn't know if that number was public or not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've heard. I mean it is now. I've heard enough people. I mean I don't have any direct knowledge of it, I just have lots of people who've been using that number that seem to be familiar with their business, and so Maybe it's not quite accurate, but they're doing a great job for sure. And, like the you mentioned before, like the crowdfunding is picked up and things like that so how have you seen that space develop this year for you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, really the reggae kind of stuff is really taking off and a lot of that has to do with Dealmaker and a lot of that has to do with dealmaker.

Speaker 2:

They have done a nice job of kind of being the I don't know the agency that sits in between people like MarketBeat and kind of. You know these companies that want to raise money and you know I don't know everything they do, but they have come to us. You know they're picking up talent. They've come to us with a lot of companies and said, hey, we're trying to do a deal with this company and you know, do you think you could drive some? You know, um, you know, drive some interest and um, they're working. I mean, this is I don't say it's it's not like what uh, excuse me, you know it's not what IR was in, like 2021, but for there to be five, six, seven different reggae companies kind of out there at once looking to buy traffic, like that's pretty meaningful and they're buying a lot. They are. They picked up Georgia from Strikepoint and she's done a nice job of making those connections again and they've got a lot of volume.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I think, like Rebecca and those guys over there, jonathan Stead, on the marketing side, they have done like a really great job kind of, because they realize that in order for the crowdfunding reggae raises to work, you need distribution and digital distribution, and without it it doesn't work. So they did a great job like building out that capacity.

Speaker 2:

um, yeah, yeah, mobile still out there doing a bunch of direct buys too, that's. They're kind of a bit unique in that that they're, you know, really trying to go through as many direct channels as they can. Um, yeah, we've seen a lot of volume from them and as well yeah nice.

Speaker 1:

So I wanted to ask you too, like this you test. It seems like you test. You test almost everything that comes out when people are putting offers out. You're willing?

Speaker 2:

to test everything.

Speaker 1:

Um, what do you see is kind of some of the big problems that people are having from conversion standpoint, like what are they doing wrong? Not anyone specific, maybe, but you you've got. You've got to see a lot of things that like this stuff never works, or like we'll test this but it doesn't work, probably, and fair enough, it doesn't like. What do you see from that side, or what's your perspective on that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, I think we've kind of gotten lazy on copy as an industry, um, and it seems like a lot of people will just want to do a spray and pray approach of like here's 20 lifts, test them all and to see which one works, versus like let's really like study what's working now and like it's not hard, like you can get on the market list, you can get on, uh, some of the other lists that are out there and sign up and see what copy is being sent out over and over again and that tells you what's working right. I mean, we'll have people send us like 20 lists and say you know, run some of these and like okay, but like we're not going to send 20 lifts, right, so which ones are good? Um, um. So I think if we did some more work on like really trying to write good emails on the front end, versus like trying to just write a bunch of them and see which ones are good, I think that is important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um um, um I think there's probably a little bit too much trend chasing of like ai was hot six months ago. So there are people like just now coming out with ai stuff, like, uh, you know, nvidia peak for at least in the near term, and just kind of coming back down like that, that's kind of that. That's a trend. It's already come and gone right, right, um, so it's you kind of got to be ahead of that curve a little bit and like don't worry about, like, what people in finpub are doing now. Like worry what you know people are talking about on in the news and on reddit and kind of in the culture today.

Speaker 2:

Like, um, like that's one thing porter stansbury does really well with, like as soon as, like jd vance got elected, like he had this, uh, you know, um, I don't know, I don't know creative, like I know the. The email title was like here's the real hillbilly elegy or whatever it was, yeah, and like he was like right on top of that. But you gotta base your promos and your copy and your creative based off like here's what's happening in the news today versus like here's the thing that worked six months ago that everyone else you know is still running yeah, and that's that like people need a speed to speed the production on on things, uh, to catch up with that.

Speaker 1:

But also like the I remember b Brian Hunt talking about, like you know, kind of the. In one sense the business is figuring out what where the attention is publicly and trying to you know, steer into that constantly and so, like this year it's all been political things, it's been, it's been news around that and we know that the customer based on the newsletter side in particular is that older conservative guy, um, and so that's like kind of where they've been versus, you know, the. It also has, I think, a nice, nice component of. There's an emotional piece of that. When it comes to politics, people are heavily invested and so, like you're getting like agreement, um, from a lot of folks if you have this, if you, if you're kind of aligning with that.

Speaker 2:

But, um, I do think you're right that the kind of the swipe mentality in finpub has gotten over overdone, where it's like we'll just look at whatever, what, what somebody else trying, we'll just try that um versus having like a real perspective as a publisher, um, and writing promo for that based on what's going on in the world yeah, I think one person who's done a good job of kind of not falling for I don't know whatever the hot thing is and kind of doing their own thing really well lately is, uh, uh, tim sykes and kind of the stocks to trade website. Like they have done. They've built a fantastic website. They've put hundreds of thousands of dollars in that. Anybody in our space that hasn't been to StocksToTradecom lately should go check it out. It's really good. That's a great website to study and say, okay, this is the bar, let's try to get there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and their business is doing really well too. I don't hear a lot of people right now I mean more than more than more than last year um who are putting up really good numbers. But they've been, they've been doing some pretty substantial um numbers and are in a great, great spot too. Uh, but do you see more of the like investment versus trading kind of stuff, like stocks to trade now, or do you see more of the investment versus trading kind of stuff, like StocksToTrade now, or do you see a good mix of both?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I'd say it's still a big mix of both. The thing that's really taken off is the gold offers, and those firms have gotten really competitive with each other. They'll pay $39 all day long for somebody to fill out a lead form. The gold offers and those firms have gotten really competitive with each other and, um, you know, they'll pay $39 all day long for somebody to fill out a lead form and, uh, you know.

Speaker 1:

I can add up pretty quickly and that's like the, the gold IRA kind of firms and things like that, or yeah, um, like priority goal, golden crest, uh, gold co, and they're all kind of doing the same thing. Yeah Well, that's definitely a space that's growing. I think Jeremy Blossom was on the market call yesterday and he was saying the same thing that they're. I think they were going to manage gold and they were paying something like that $39 to $40 a lead. So that's substantial.

Speaker 2:

I mean that's very substantial. I mean another big trend for us this year is doing lead gen for other companies has been an increasingly large part of our universe. There are a lot of companies that want to buy kind of the $5 picked opt-in leads that way, like you know, maybe you know I want to go to a financial publishing company. You know I need to build my universe, my audience, but maybe I'm not 100% sure, like the current offer is, like this is the thing that's going to like generate a ton of sales. So a lot of people are moving towards like, well, I'd just rather get these people on my free newsletter and then that way I can, if this thing doesn't work, it's on the next thing or the next thing. So we've seen a lot more of that this year, a lot more kind of lead share type deals.

Speaker 1:

That's been a growing trend for us. For somebody who wants to do that with you guys, what's kind of the threshold?

Speaker 2:

of spend for them to get in there. Our starting point for anybody who wants to work with us is probably $25,000 a month. These days we have at least 40 people that do that on volume. We just can't be dealing with people that were have like a five or 10k a month kind of budget.

Speaker 2:

Um yeah, so that's kind of the starting number, I mean whether it's cto or whether it's um anything um yeah, I mean like sometimes we're you know, you meet somebody fms and they're the brand new like maybe you're going to give them a chance. But um, for an ongoing relationship where we're really looking for kind of 25 as a starting point.

Speaker 1:

Nice. Okay, that's good to know. So you've been, obviously you've been doing this for a very long time, right Like what? 2005, 2006,. You started MarketBeat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my Google AdSense account dates back to December 26th of 2006. So that's kind of, in my mind, the starting date of the business.

Speaker 1:

So you've seen a lot of change and you've seen more change this year. How do you look at the? What do you think about? You know, beyond this year, we've had a ton of changes in the industry.

Speaker 1:

We've had a bunch of things happen Like I think there's, you know, new sectors coming up up, like the reggae space and things like that. So when you're talking about this retail media world, what do you see out there right now? What are you thinking, whether it's I know this is going to happen or I'm just watching this other trend, how do you think things are changing here beyond just this month? Yeah big open-ended question yeah, big open-ended question.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know, I I think it's going to be harder to buy media in the next few years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, you know we saw this year a bunch of people had their adsense accounts or adwords accounts get get banned for whatever reason. Um, so, maybe election year, maybe not, but I think the bar in the future is going to be like to have a real brand. You know there are a lot of people out there some of our good friends that have, you know, maybe financial websites, but maybe it's a brand nobody's ever heard of. I think it's going to be tougher and tougher to operate that way. I think you really have to be like a real brand that has faces associated with it and social media accounts, and like a physical address and like a picture of your team. And you know, I think the bar on like what people are willing to put up with, especially from.

Speaker 2:

You know, google's new search algorithm is very focused on like brand search, like the number of people that like type in Mark beat in Google. So, like you're a no name website, obviously nobody's going to be typing in the name of your brand. You're not going to get any organic traffic. Yeah, so I think it's brand is a huge, huge trend.

Speaker 1:

That's an interesting.

Speaker 1:

So I've I've I've been thinking about that trend too, but, like I was thinking about it not because I'm not a media buyer and I never considered it from that perspective um, I've been thinking about it from like kind of customer relationship, um, and marketing side and how, like I think that the same thing like the, the opportunities to to build a brand, that kind of stakes out a position in the market and kind of like builds a, an ongoing audience, and that's where you're trying to get a customer who stays longer, has a higher ltv maybe he's a little more qualified, um, but I hadn't considered that aspect of it too, that the.

Speaker 1:

So that does seem, then, from from multiple directions, that that building a brand and what that means for people, because I think a lot of people in direct response have always kind of had a negative idea on brand, like, oh, it's a wasted thing and it's not sales and this and that, but, um, it does matter, oh, absolutely and even from like uh, you know we have an sms shortcode and we know people that couldn't get approved for one because they're like, who are like, like, who are you Like?

Speaker 2:

are you a company? Are you real? So, like, if you know, if you want access into all of the things that, like, allow you to become a scalable company. Like when your vendors Google you, like they want to know that John Newton's a real person and he has a real company and there's a real office somewhere with real people inside.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm blown away when I look up people in the space and look at their websites and like I could not if I didn't know that they were that it was their business. I would have no idea who ran it Like. That blows my mind.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, you know we try to try to hit the bar for that. And if you go to like markmecom slash about about, you see a picture of our office, you see all of our team members, you see some of the community projects we've been involved with. Anybody that's working at Google and looking at our AdWords account and saying who is this company is going to look at that and say, oh yeah, they're legit. I mean, these are real people and I go to their LinkedIn profiles and see all their writers.

Speaker 1:

And you do a great job on social yourself across multiple platforms. You're really solid on there too. It is it's business. But every year that goes by, there's more tasks that a business has to do to do well, Doesn't it seem like there's just more and more things that we have to do? You have to be better at more aspects of the business than you used to have to be. Like 10 years ago, it was really easy to kind of throw something up there and throw some webinars out and buy some cheap media.

Speaker 2:

But I mean there's also some real benefits from like doing that work of. Like when we post a job application, 50 people apply every time and like we get DMs on everything saying, hey, I'm a copywriter, I'm this and this, can I come work at MarketBeat, I'd love to work for you? And, like you know, it makes it really easy to find talent too.

Speaker 1:

That's huge. I mean that's huge. So, no, I love that, love that perspective, um, and then I guess the like, what? What am I not? Cause I love how you're you. You, you know, obviously I think very differently than you in general in terms of how I think. Um, you were, you were of a much better perspective on a lot of things, and you and you look at the world differently. Um, what are you thinking? Is there anything that you're thinking about in the industry that I'm not even talking about or thinking about Like, are there any areas where, like you're, like you know, like I remember our previous conversation, you talked about how, um, having, like, the ability to do actual software development is becoming increasingly important, and I thought that was totally, totally spot on.

Speaker 2:

Um, I think there's uh, the other, I don't know. I thing that I'm thinking about these days is the concept of platform risk. Some of it is obvious. My Google AdWords account gets banned. That's risk because I'm too dependent on Google.

Speaker 2:

But we learned this week there's platform risk with WordPress. Wp Engine, the biggest WordPress hosting provider, is in a feud with Matt Mullenweg, the guy that started WordPress, and Matt Mullenweg is trying to shake down WP Engines. Now, if you're like on WP Engine with WordPress, like you can't get updates to your WordPress and like it's going to get hacked, so you got to be really mindful of like what companies you're being dependent on and like what your risks are there and how to mitigate them. And I think there's going to be more platform risk in more places that we haven't really thought about. I really think there's that's going to be more true with some of the email service providers too. I don't I probably don't want to name names, but there's one that's been making a lot of noise lately and doing a lot with their software. In a short period of time and when you write code fast and loose, things often break, and I think that's has happened and will continue to happen with some ESPs that are making a lot of waves right now.

Speaker 1:

Interesting, interesting. Yeah, I used WP Engine.

Speaker 2:

I didn't realize that that's scary um, yeah, so that like back everything up, have copies of your email list that like aren't your esp. You can back up your ad, creative on adwords, like anything that like is on somebody else's server that you don't have like try to get a backup of it yeah, that's good's good advice, that's good advice.

Speaker 1:

So in the platform risk we've seen, you know, the biggest one was still, like you said, google AdWords. When Agora got kicked off for two years on Facebook and Google and that was devastating. In some ways they found ways around it, but still, like that definitely happens. And do you think? I mean I guess that's kind of like the that brand issue is really relevant there.

Speaker 1:

I feel like, because I feel like a lot of times like these decisions are not being it's not like mark zuckerberg is looking at your, your ads on facebook right, it's, it's a staff member who's looking at it. And they are not entrepreneurs, they are not marketers, they are not whatever, they've got a job're an employee. They have who knows what kind of beliefs about business or marketing that you have, you're going to have. There's thousands of them, so you're gonna have all kinds of them and so if they look at your site and they're like, oh, this guy's a scammer, you're at much higher risk than if they look at your site and like, oh, this is just a good business. And for the longest time, I feel like the Motley Fool is the one publisher who did a really great job building a brand Investor Place did a really good job too, and then now, I think, stansberry Marketwise has moved there, but the Motley Fool definitely stands out as one that yeah, I mean the founder's names are all over the website.

Speaker 2:

It's an established brand, but motley fool does, really well I say, advertise on like places that other people don't, and like they advertise on quora. Nobody advertises on quora. Like I couldn't even get approved on quora, like that's interesting. So and I see their names like whenever I think I found like some new innovative like marketing thing. Like Motley Fool is already doing it, like they're they've done a really good job of like finding like advertising channels that like people outside of our industry have used and like been successful with, and like making it work in FinPub when other people can't make it work in FinPub. So I've yeah, I heard at one point they were doing like $40 million a year in advertising spend, which is really impressive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, they've done a lot of really interesting things over the years and they've adapted to. I remember they had a blog network because that was one of the things that allowed you to get into Yahoo News back in the day, and then when all those kind of news sites stopped taking blog networks, they just kind of shut it down because the whole point wasn't to have the blog network, the whole point was to have the traffic, and so they've been really good at these kind of big picture moves on traffic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the other big traffic thing we're working on right now is really syndication of how do we get MarketBeat in more places. And you know we've got a guy working kind of full time on like how many different places can we get MarketBeat's news content just to show up and like I don't even care if the content's on our website. Like I want people reading our stuff, whether it's on the MarketBeat website or NASDAQ. Like there's a new StockBits competitor launching soon called TraderVerse. Yeah, I think it's called TraderVerse, TraderVerse, but I don't know They've got some interesting it's. Yeah, I guess it's TraderVerseio, but you know they've got some interesting stuff and like you know they're going to launch soon and like we're going to be on there on day one and like maybe it'll go somewhere and be awesome, maybe it won't, but like how many of these places can you, can we get our content is one of the roles yeah, that's where I know one group a couple years ago was.

Speaker 1:

You know they were doing more ir work, but they're. They had some news like they started getting picked up in bloomberg and that was a huge thing for them and so, having that and I know you are at the NASDAQ, you are- on NASDAQ.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're on NASDAQ, we're on MSN, we're on Entrepreneur, a few sets like that, but we're not on Robinhood. We would love to be on Robinhood. We don't know how to do that, or we're working on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, and the syndication, I mean, that's probably one of the more difficult sides of this, isn't it? Because it's not just brand, it's the quality content, the volume content, it's a lot of things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and they're all one-off biz dev deals so they're hard, but if you get them done they last forever.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right. I know a guy who helped oil price do a lot of syndication and he was like, oh, I got him on Yahoo news and this and that and his thing was like, well, I used to like I'm best friends with the head of Yahoo news and so it's like it's an easier conversation. Yeah, um like. Yeah, that's. It's not always easy for someone to get into so um cool, but uh awesome. Get into so um cool, but uh awesome, matt. Well, I appreciate it. This is. This has been super helpful. Um, I love getting your insights into everything.

Speaker 2:

Um and uh, thanks, yeah, yeah, great chatting. Um, yeah, anybody wants to work with mark b? It's uh, markbcom advertising. We got a media kit. Well, his email is on there. Uh, happy to talk to anybody.

Speaker 1:

Yep, awesome, and anyone who's in the FMS pro group, like Matt's in there. He's been, you've been awesome. I really appreciate all the insights and help you've given people and kind of willing to share and talk there and then we'll see you at FMS in January.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we'll be at FMS and highly recommend the FMS pro group. A lot, a lot of value in there. Appreciate that Thanks.

Speaker 1:

Awesome Thanks, John Thanks.