"In the last year, we learned that the technical infrastructure exists now for even non-technical journalists to build a sustainable site that can receive money from subscribers" Great insights from 404Media's first year in business.
A year ago today we launched 404 Media. Thanks to the overwhelming support of our subscribers, we're very proud and humbled to say that our business and company is sustainable and stable, and more scoops, investigations, stunts, etc are coming in year 2. For years before launching 404 Media, we watched new media companies become obsessed with wild growth and huge valuations only to crash and burn because of mismanagement, venture capital investment, private equity debt taken at terrible rates, bloated executive pay, big tech algorithm changes, ad market crashes, fancy offices in expensive neighborhoods, and bring in revolving casts of clowns to supposedly clean up the mess. “We propose a simple alternative,” in launching 404 Media, we wrote a year ago. “Pay journalists to do journalism. We believe it is possible to create a sustainable, profitable media company simply by doing good work, making common-sense decisions about costs, and asking our readers to support us.” Running a business for one year does not automatically mean we have figured things out. But our strategy is working, we are growing, and we encourage others to try to do the same thing we're doing. Over the last year, so many people have asked us what they can do to help support us and our work. The answer to that question is simple. If you are a subscriber, keep your subscription active. And if you’re not a subscriber and are financially able, buy a subscription. The other thing you can do is tell your friends about us. The biggest challenge that we face is discoverability. To the extent possible, we don’t want to have to rely on social media algorithms, search engines that don’t index us properly and which are increasingly shoving AI answers into their homepages, and an internet ecosystem that is increasingly polluted by low-quality AI spam. We are so thankful for everyone who has subscribed, shared our work, or otherwise supported us. https://lnkd.in/gc79mQE5