Running a media outlet is not necessarily an expensive enterprise, especially if you don’t pay the people running it. That has been the experience of the team that brings you Cyber Protection Magazine for the past three years. We’ve earned enough money to keep the operation running as long as we don’t collect a paycheck while doing it.
We have tried other forms of revenue generation, mostly donations, but that didn’t cut the mustard or balance the budget. Advertising is a great way to earn name recognition, but it’s awful for lead-generation, which is what most companies ask for and we when they ask we are honest about that. The dirty secret of trade publications is that they really suck at lead generation, although not as bad as lead-generation companies. In reality, there is no GOOD way to automate a companies ability to SPAM potential customers into buying a product. It is fast and cheap, but never good.
In September, we got a call from Safety National Insurance, whose marketing department reviewed content on multiple cybersecurity publications and offered us a substantial sponsorship fee. You’ll be seeing graphic ads and their name mentioned as sponsors in all our channels in 2024.
Thanks to that sponsorship (did we mention that it was from Safety National Insurance?) we invested in some technology to not only improve our reach but do something we have talked about for a year: subscription-based journalism. This gives us some latitude to do long-form journalism, extending beyond our normal limit of 750-1000 words (usually the limit for online readers). We will also institute a regular schedule of special issues. We are shooting for six this year, subjects were published in our December newsletter (so if you want to know what they are, sign up and get the latest).
That creates some problem for media relations people because it is likely that mentions of their clients in longer articles may not be readable unless the reader has a subscription. There are some workarounds for that.
First, if you are involved in media relations and you have successfully pitched a client into a story, all you need is a subscription to the magazine and you can print out a clip of the mention.
Second, sponsors will get a certain number of gift codes that they can dole out to important potential and current customers giving them a year-long subscription for all the content we produce. This is a significant leave-behind as you build up name recognition and generate leads. If you happen to attend an industry event where we are a media sponsor, you might get your hands on a print version of a special issue, but they tend to “sell out” very fast. In the past they have been available at the RSA conference and it-sa in Europe (but don’t expect us in anything in Las Vegas because we agree with Victor Wembanyama).
Of course, there is plenty of free content on the website that is refreshed every week that doesn’t need a subscription to access but subscribers get full access to all content available online. That includes our long-form articles as well as PDF versions of our special issues the drill down into specific subjects. This month that issue will focus on our predictions for 2024 with our on insights and those of industry experts from around the world. More importantly, though, you get unbiased reporting on some of the most important technology issues facing all of us.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, a free press is good for business, therefore business should support a free press.
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