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4 Comments

Is there any way of validating a media brand?

I think there is an opportunity for a new entrant into a niche I'm in that isn't very up to date, technology-wise (it's classical music lol). The current top classical music blogs are verrry dated/90s looking, yet still get 100k visitors/month. The subreddit for this niche has over 1.2 million subscribers. I think there is an opportunity to start a media company - a blog maybe with associated paid newsletter, paid podcast, paid community - that caters to this niche in a way that's more up to date with present design standards.

Is there any way of validating a potential media company?

It seems different from just "talk to users about their needs" - the standard advice here -- this isn't really a "need" in the way a SaaS business is - it's a media company. The product is access to the paid content - how do you validate that?

Thanks for any advice!!

  1. 2

    First you'd probably want to define what "validation" means to you and this niche.

    I prefer to set effort based goals when I don't know if there will be readers/sales/users. When I started Better Sheets, I launched it in a day and set a personal goal to record 100 videos. Now I'm well past 300 videos and 1k sales but the sales weren't the initial goal.

    When I started my newsletter a couple years ago I just knew I had to get 50 issues out, no matter what.

  2. 2

    Is it really any different? The typical validation a business is looking for is, can we provide a service that someone is willing to pay for. Ideally, over and over again.

    Why is a media company different? Will this media company provide something that fills a gap in my life? Will I keep going back to it again and again. Ultimately, will I be willing to pay for the media they produce, again and again.

  3. 1

    If you've noticed a niche, the first step would be going to your audience.

    Don't pitch, but be a listener to know their pain points. The trick is not dig into their needs, cuz sometimes users don't know about their needs. Try not to pitch your idea but understand their behaviour towards the industry/ sector.

    All the potential solutions you mentioned above are totally possible.

  4. 1

    This is a tough one to validate I think without putting in significant upfront work. I would normally recommend validation by running paids ads.

    In this example, organic probably be the main source as it is for most media companies. You could build a shell site of what you want that has say 1-3 articles that those other sites have, but designed up to your standards, then run Google Ads for that specific keyword and see how the traffic interacts. It's not going be perfect, may not even give any good data, but it might let you see how the niche would react before building out a full site filled with awesome content (which will take a long time).

    Another thing you could do if you got capital, is to go these outdated looking sites and offer to buy them. Sometimes people aren't passionate or care about the site anymore, so you take these sites and you merge them into the new brand you're creating. You can do individual 301 redirects with the old content to the new content and have built in ton of traffic, content and backlinks to the more up to date site all for fairly cheap in the grand scheme of things.

    We sold recently a content site for $1.2 million, they actually had a paid premium newsletter as well that earned great MRR for them. So it's definitely possible it can be done, not sure abut this niche but have seen it in the B2C space :-)

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