The Newspaper Industry Saw $40B in Annual Revenue Evaporate, Creator Economy Predictions for 2024, There Is Going to Be a Rude Awakening for Influencers This Year

0:00All right, so we're going to talk about how the newspaper industry saw$40 billion in annual revenue evaporate. So I have some charts here that unfortunately we can't screen share right now, but I'm going to tell you what this chart says over here. This is a tweet. So the tweet says, and this is from the Missing Data Depot. It says the beginning of the social media era coincided with nearly a$40 billion collapse in newspaper advertising revenue. So context here. In 2006, Neil, American newspapers collected$49 billion in advertising revenue. In 2022, that number was only$9.7 billion. Wow. And you're talking about physical newspapers or does it also cover the websites?

0:39It's physical. Yeah. But a lot of these guys have shifted to subscriptions and going to all digital. Well, I mean, that's like New York Times. I actually don't – it doesn't break it out here. So it could – here's what it says. Okay, here's the sources. News Media Alliance, formerly Newspaper Association of America. I have to assume it sounds like papers. But like to your point, a lot of them could have transitioned. Yeah. And if you look at New York Times stock, I haven't checked it in the last few days, but overall, it seems like it was doing pretty decent when I looked at like the last five years.

1:09Yep. So the I think what's worth calling out here at the end of the day, it's not really like sometimes a medium will expire. Right. So newspapers, for example, but then the medium actually transitions over to digital. and what matters at the end of the day still like it still is a content business so I don't think it's anything that that's super the number to me that's shocking is that 40 billion dollars is a lot of money and that was pretty fast too it is but if you look at New York Times stock and I just pulled it up over the last five years it's up 95.19 percent but for every New York Times how many how many people are in the graveyard I don't know but here's what's interesting Buffett sold all his newspaper stuff yeah and I'm not saying he's wrong or right I don't know but if you look at like Like annually, if you go back to 2018, they did 1.73 million.

1:57This is in New York Times. Then 2019 was 1.78. 2020 was 1.75. Then 2.05 in 2021 and 2.28 in 2022. So they're slowly climbing up. Their stock is still doubled. And I think the main reason for a lot of this is the shift to digital. But the point I'm getting here is if you look at the revenue, it hasn't drastically gone down like the article. which my guess would be, because New York Times is one of the bigger players in the space, the shift has gone from people spending on the print version to the digital version. I saw something around this recently. I can't remember where I pulled it up from, but basically what it implied was New York Times was the only one that came out strong, and then the rest got destroyed.

2:39Well, Washington Post got bought out by Bezos, right? Yes. And I think they still operate independently. I don't know how well they're - Washington Post is a good one. New York Times is a good one as well. My point is there aren't many good ones. A lot of people - Times has shifted to a lot of digital subscription. There's quite a few, I'm guessing, that have done all right. Yeah. Yeah. So look, I still think 90 % got destroyed. I think the ones that pivoted, great job. But still, what we're seeing at the end of the day, though, the medium doesn't matter as much. It's more so the message. Which goes to our, we were talking on the phone yesterday about this.

3:11When it comes to creating good content, like why is our content getting better? It's because we're putting in the time and effort. Yeah. We're putting in more time and effort. I mean, look, we have this nice setup right now. We got Brad supporting us. Everyone shout out to Brad, right? Brad, what's your video thing called? Record Edit Podcast. Record Edit Podcast. There you go. Dot com. All right. Anyway. What if he's like, it's not dot com? Yeah, it is. Dot com. Good. But yeah, we're putting in the effort. And if you look at a lot of the effort, and I know we've been talking about this as well, you and I have been creating a lot more short form content, which I did a trend analysis when we analyzed, I think it was like 100 and something thousand piece of content.

3:51Was it 6 million? I forgot which post I'm talking about because I post a lot of stats these days on Twitter. But it was a significant sample size. And the winning piece of content on social media over the last 30 days was short form content. Then it was long form content, which was a close number two. And then number three was podcasts or interviews or expert talks. And in theory, you can actually just do long form content like we're doing right now and then chop it up into both short form and leverage expert all at the same time. So you can actually tackle one, two, and three in all one chop.

4:25You know, Mark Manson actually brought this. This actually ties in with one of the things I had around. So he's got some creator economy predictions for 2024. And there's two bullet points that stand out to me. The first bullet point is platforms will quietly start to de-emphasize short form in 2024. And so here's what he says. I kind of agree with this. TikTok is already pushing its creators to create longer videos. Zuck is admitting on earning calls that reels are a loss leader for Instagram. And 90 % of YouTube creators I talk to only make shorts because they feel like they have to, not because they actually want to.

5:00And so he's basically saying, look, we're three years into the short form explosion. Seems pretty clear that the ad revenue isn't there. And so even TikTok, for example, is switching more to try to compete with Amazon more, right? With the shop. Yep. And what's funny is I had a research piece that I rolled out a few days ago, and it kind of goes into the creator economy and it talks about influencers because a lot of these creators are quote unquote influencers. And we did a survey and I said that there was going to be a rude awakening in influencers this year. And I was talking about how one number tells it all.

5:29And that number was$323.19. So we surveyed 5 ,920 influencers, marketers, content creators, and we found that the average monthly income they generate from their social media profiles is$323.19. On shorts. just in general from all social media. And then when we looked at all the users that had between 100 ,000 followers and 999 ,000 followers, so one less than a million, their average income didn't improve by much. It was$1 ,727.29 per month. And then when we looked at all the people who had over a million followers, a million or more, their average income did jump, but it still wasn't that great.

6:11It was$6 ,109.83 a month. Not enough to survive. Yeah, not enough to survive. And it's funny because, dude, people always get asked the question, would you choose a million followers or a million dollars? And in my post, I ended up responding with, this just shows people should just take the million dollars because it would take roughly 13 years to recuperate that money. Yeah, most people should. We did give caveats around this. Well, if it's like, you know, a million of the richest people in the world, you know, I would take that. But like, yeah, in general, you would take the million dollars.

6:47But the reason I think there's going to be a crazy reckoning with content creators, influencer marketers, because most content creators are just trying to build a personal brand, right? They're trying to be quote unquote influencers. The big issue is, is they're going for mass appeal. When you go for the mass audience, it's really hard to monetize. You and I, our audience works because I specifically talk about marketing. I think you talk about marketing and business. That's all we talk about. Right? And I found that it drives leads. And I try to specifically only talk about marketing. And I try to use stats and data so it appeals more to like global 1 ,000 companies versus just saying like before a lot of my content was step one, do this.

7:27Step two, do this. Step three, do this. But the problem is most global 1 ,000 companies don't care to follow the steps. They just want to hire someone. If you're global 1 ,000, you love reading the stats. It's like a nice dopamine hit. I remember when I used to work corporate, I used to always like, oh yeah, stats. And I'd go to the meeting and I'd reveal the stats. And then the stats make you sound smart. So that's why it's actually good to talk about the stats. Most people don't talk about that. Dude, you want to know? Oh, you've never worked somewhere before. You want to know that? I've never worked somewhere.

7:50There's a secret for you. Go ahead. What's funny is I share so much more stats on my reels on Instagram now. And you know when you get the messages on Instagram, like people just messaging you, like it notifies you when they're sharing a story and they tag you on it. I'm getting around like three to four times more people mentioning me in the stories than they were before. And a lot of it, when I look at it, it's mainly them mentioning the stats. Well, there you go. So let me ask you this. So I don't create that. Yeah, I don't create shorts natively anymore. I don't do direct to camera anymore.

8:22You still do. Do you enjoy it when you're doing it? Yes, because it only takes me like today I recorded 17. I did 17 and like 33, 34 minutes. Wow. Okay. So you enjoy it. I hate doing it. I hate doing direct to camera. I like talking like I'm talking to you right now. But how do you do your shorts normally? What's the process? Now they just get chopped up. What was it before? Before it was I would crank out, I would batch record like 10 to 15 at a time. But how did you come up with the ideas? I sat and came up with the ideas from scratch, which you don't do that. I know I do. You repurpose your ideas.

8:58Kind of. I'll break down my process. Okay, so after you came up with the 10, 15 ideas, let's just go 10, easy number. What'd you do after? I would just, oh, you have to write the script for each one. So you would write the script and then you would? Then I would record. And then when you record, you record it word for word? No. So my script, sorry, it's more of an outline. So what I do is I put the headline and I put a couple of bullet points and then I'll have like a little thing that will say, hey, at 10 seconds, like we're going for this, you know, 30 seconds, we're going for this or whatever.

9:28So it's like, it's a high level outline and I just follow it. Then I riff. so what's worked out really well for me is i try to tweet once or twice or three times a day i've been breaking that in the last few days because i've just been busy with some other stuff and then i take the winning variations can you hear my kid it has to be my kid only kid in the building and then i take the winning variations and then i uh you know aj comes with a few guys one is tracking which number we're on the other person is you know has set up all the lighting and camera and then aj is controlling the teleprompter so it's uploaded word for word from the text yeah and i just reading it line for line and i don't have to do much more than that so i can crank him out it's fast i just look into the camera yeah it's been super effective i can never tell you're on the teleprompter there's no point where i can tell the teleprompter is you got to make the script really narrow yeah most people when they use teleprompters they make it wide so you can see the eye scanning left and right so you got to make it narrow so you don't really see as much uh i just i just hate shorts in general i like i like this once we chop it up like are are youtube's getting more and more play now i i think look here's the other point mark had here and we can move on so um he hit the other prediction was youtube will aggressively push podcasts so youtube's already the most popular platform for podcast listening uh maybe for video video podcast i wouldn't say for audio yeah google podcast is shutting down right it's still apple for number one and spotify number two but i do agree with this youtube has the best discoverability algorithm.

10:57And so like an interview I did a couple of weeks ago, that one's popping off. Like I think it's at 140 ,000 views right now. And I think it would just continue to go more. And I think there's going to be a lot more of that. So I enjoy doing this and chopping it up. And the fact that we're live in person, these just do a lot better too. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in and it totally changes the game. Framer is the design first no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production-ready site in minutes.

11:26I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours. Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code. It was easy to use and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together. No issues with versions or miscommunication, whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you.

11:59Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS, framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

12:36The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify has got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.

13:06Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school, Shopify.com slash marketing school.

13:45podcast charts really fast is they're running ads and contests, getting people to subscribe. It helps them climb the charts. And then boom, they're naturally getting other people who are discovering them when they look at categories like business or marketing or health or fitness or whatever you're doing. Great way to hack the podcasting scene on Apple and just skyrocket your quote unquote organic listens. Yep. So go for the subscribes, maybe not so much the ratings and reviews but those are good too um last thing here on on my side i mean this is an interesting prediction too uh so it says last year was peak mr beast and so basically the whole idea here is like people were watching mr beast stuff sometimes people had no interest in youtube or mr beast it's just that people were talking about him so they just started watching it and um he feels like this novelty is starting to wear off and in 2024 we're going to start to see his views per video decline pretty dramatically wait this is from mr beast no this is from mark manson the the author of the, he's an author of a couple of things, but he had some interesting creative predictions here, which this is what we're going through.

14:46But that's what most people, right? Like when you first have Lady Gaga come on scene, everyone's like, oh my God, this is Lady Gaga. Her music's amazing. Or Sia or Tom Cruise or whoever it is. Now everyone's like, yeah, we know Tom Cruise. Cool. I'd rather talk about Justin Bieber. Does it mean Tom Cruise is terrible? No. But people have the latest thing that they want to talk about. and even though Mr. Beast has done extremely well and I think he will still do well in 2024. That's my take and the only reason I say that is the guy's so crazy in a good way on how much he'll spend to get the attention and not in an egotistical way.

15:22He'll spend to just create really high quality production content. Here's an interesting counterpoint here. So here's what he said. I do agree here with what Mark's saying, right? So I also think he's going to find out the hard way that spending more money doesn't necessarily make a video better, but can at times make it worse. I agree with that, but I do think he's spending enough to create something that's high quality that others aren't willing to do. Like his squid game concept. It's hard to create that kind of video for like a hundred grand. It's just, you're not going to get the quality.

15:54Does it mean he needs to spend$20 million? No, I don't know what he spent, but I do agree. There's a balance with how much money he's spending, he can probably save millions of dollars a year, if not way more tens of millions of dollars on production and get similar quality and generate a much better ROI. I think no doubt he'll be popular no matter what. I do think it's going to wane a little bit. So, you know, that's what it is. But I, I, here's what we'll, we'll, we'll end with here. So podcasts on YouTube going to go up. Shorts will still be around. People use it for discoverability. People are realizing you're just not going to make that money, money, that much money off of shorts.

16:28And then, you know, Mr. Beast at the end of the day, he'll wane a little bit, but he'll still be popular. Anything else? Even if shorts, the last thing I would add is even if the networks don't monetize shorts as well, if that's what people want to consume, they'll show up more still. Oh, yeah. Because they want the eyeballs. And then next thing you know, Instagram will just copy TikTok on monetization. Yeah. Well, we'll see where that goes. But that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, read, subscribe. It helps us grow. Someone called us out for begging We are begging So give us a five star review We are