How to validate a content site?
Validating a software product seems fairly straightforward. Talk to users, understand their problems, build a solution, get them to pay for it. If they pay for it, that's validation.
But how does one validate a content site?
With a content site it seems like the main thing to 'validate' is whether or not you can get enough traffic to eventually monetize.
Is there a faster way to validate that than just putting out content for a while and seeing what happens?
With software products, you can validate before you write a line of code, but for a content site it seems like you have to create the content to validate it.
I know that NomadList (@levelsio) and No CS Degree (@petecodes) validated by launching, so maybe that's the fast way to test it out?
Starter Story (@patwalls) and Marketing Examples (@harrydry) seem like they took a more linear growth path. And I think @patwalls mentioned somewhere that he was thinking of quitting in the early days.
I'm really just wondering what the right approach to a content site is as I work on techfolks.io
A few things to think about...
Growth Model
You need a model/framework for how your site will grow over time.
The most common failure mode is having low acquisition numbers and low retention numbers. You can have one or the other, but not both.
If you have low acquisition and high retention, you need to stick with it and grow slowly over time. If you have low retention and high acquisition, you're not going to grow over time until you fix it, but perhaps you're already popular enough to attract sponsors/advertisers.
Churn and Linear vs Compounding Acquisition
Just because someone becomes a subscriber or a regular reader doesn't mean they won't churn eventually.
If you have some > 0% churn (which you will) but a fixed number of people joining (as opposed to compounding percentage-based growth), that leads to slower growth over time. For example, if you have a mailing list of 5000 and you're adding 100/week and churning 1%, you'll finish the year having added only ~2000 subscribers, and the next year you'll only add ~1000 subscribers, and continually less and less until your growth plateaus at around 10,000. That's the equilibrium point where the 1% that churns each week equals the 100 who join every week.
So it's good to have minimal churn, and it's good to have compounding growth instead of linear growth. The latter usually comes because you're growing in part due to word-of-mouth, meaning the more subscribers you have, the more you get.
Problem
Even more important is to know what problem your content solvoe for readers. You need to talk to readers for this, but some theorizing can help, too. Why are they reading what you put out? Perhaps because they're trying to learn something? Both it's not always so concrete and utilitarian. Sometimes it's subtle and emotional. Maybe they read because they're bored during the work day and just want some stimulation.
This matters, because people's reading habits are dictated by the nature of the problem that they're solving by reading.
For example, nobody ever churns from getting bored during the work day. That's a perennial problem built into the human mind. It's also frequent, as it happens several times per day. Therefore, if you can solve that problem well, you can end up with very low churn readers who visit several times per day.
(Note: That isn't an easy problem to solve, as it requires large amounts of novel content to keep up with that frequency so your readers can develop a habit. Twitter and Facebook accomplish this, but most bloggers can't.)
Alternatively, imagine if the reader's problem is, "I want to feel confident about getting into a tech career." Well, that's a problem with a stopping point. At some point, it's solved, they're confident, and they can move on. This is true for lots of educational stuff. Nobody goes to school or takes the same class year after year after year, forever. Most education is high churn. Arguably the entire point is to churn/graduate.
An exception would be a different educational problem like, "I want to become a better developer over the course of my career." That lasts as long as a career, so readers you may never churn.
So work backwards from the problem. Who's reading your stories? Why are they reading them? What do they get out of it? What problem is it solving? And what's the nature of that problem?
Generally speaking, your want your content to solve a problem that's high in reach (affects lots of people), that's specific to a niche of people, that has a frequency that matches your output (so they're ready to read about when you're ready to publish), that's high value (so they'll convert to subscribers, free or paid), and that's perennial (so they won't graduate and unsubscribe, unless they're paying you, in which case it's okay). And then you actually have to solve that problem by tailoring your content to the right people, publishing consistently, making it super good, and making it novel.
The last thing I'll say is that producing novel content is hard. Few things are novel enough to keep people entertained for long. It's hard to have that many new ideas yoursel. So it often helps to tie your content to current events, aka news, which is by definition always new. The blogs with the most longevity tend to do that. Gruber, Stratechery, etc.
People and their stories have a lot of variety, too, so interviews can be novel, unless all your interviews are about the exact same kind of topic or story. The IH interviews have lots of churn. Few people want to read 450 interviews on the same topic. At some point far before that, they get it.
Jesus. Someone needs to write a bit that posts csallen’s comments as blog post.
I really admire how much thought and effort you put into this nugget.
T.L.D.R. — Write 3 articles. Post them where your audience hangs out. See the response. That's how both me and Pat did it ...
The most foolproof way of validating is by showing an MVP. With a content site your MVP is one article (even if it's not on your own platform). You can write one amazing article in a week. With SaaS your MVP can take months to code ...
So I think it's far easier to validate a content site than a SaaS product.
For example, my very first article I wrote about NomadList's SEO. Pieter Levels shared it on Twitter. From that I had a bunch of people say, “Oh, I like this idea, real world marketing Examples, that sounds cool”. Boom! Validation.
I got lucky. You probably won't get that lucky. But, imagine Pieter never shares the article. I still post it up in the watering holes where marketers hang out: Reddit forums, IndieHackers, LinkedIn, Growth Hackers, SEO slack groups etc ...
And I get a few comments from people saying, “Damn, love this. Keep it up” Well then that's also a sort of validation. If my article got completely ignored people probably aren't interested.
For user generated content it's a bit different. Because it tends to be more organic traffic focused. And like Courtland alluded to, you can have lower retention and higher acquisition. So you don't need to rely as much on things taking off ... Because over time you build 100 articles and they rank on Google
Validation is pretty much just someone saying, “Damn, this is good ...”. So just post your MVP (one article) in a space where someone can say “Damn, this is good”
And finally, validating a content site and monetisation are two different things. I can get people to read my stuff. But will they pay... My answer focuses exclusively on people reading
I guess it depends what you want to get out of the content site?
@csallen started with interviews and grew traffic (plus advertising) in the early days. Then started a community.
I started a community at Ministry of Testing, drove yet didn't really measure the success on traffic, but got to know the people to then create something of value.
I kind of think the value is dependent on where you want or need it to take you next. For example:
My traffic is mainly diverse tech talent, and my monetization strategy is to have company profiles/job postings of some kind.
I think I'm mostly trying to figure out how you would know that a content site just isn't working. Is there a good rule of thumb like "If you put out content for a month and see no growth then it isn't working."?
I can see what the success cases look like, but what does a failure look like?
One thought that hasn’t already been mentioned - what else is out there doing something similar? If there’s nothing then it might not be a great space. But if there’s established content sites then you can get a feel for how popular your topic is - are they getting comments on blog posts, followers on social, do they indicate how big their email lists are, how much engagement on posts on social, etc etc You can even get and idea of traffic on similarweb and Alexa.
But, at the end the day, you need to write something and put it out there and see what happens.
Excellent question!
I wouldn't worry if you don't have a good launch necessarily - it's not a deal breaker - but a good launch is a good confidence boost.
I also had a buymeacoffee page - my first $100 were ordinary people giving money to me to support the project so that was a great sign as well as I wasn't giving them any bonuses for doing that.
Without being too deep in the topic of validating a content project I would consider the following options:
Keyword research: Coming from the SEO space, but the idea being it is naturally valid for content sites too: finding out if people actually search for the content/information you are planning to provide
Posts on Reddit (easier) or Twitter (harder): You can produce some of the content you considering and try to find your audience on social media. Reddit with it's incredible number of subreddits seems a natural fit. Otherwise Twitter might work, but the missing audience makes it a bit a "chicken egg" problem.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago