Social Media Insights Blog

Q & A With Michael Stelzner on the “Launch” of Social Media Examiner

I’ve known Michael Stelzner, the man behind the popular online magazine Social Media Examiner, for years. So I was delighted to get a review copy of his new book Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition which lays out the secrets of Social Media Examiner’s success.

Full disclosure: he mentions me in the book. In fact, he reminded me of something I had completely forgotten.

In December 2005 I published the annual Best Free Downloads issue of my e-newsletter, WordBiz Report. At the time, I had over 17,500 subscribers. When they saw the link to a FREE download of Mike’s original White Paper Writer Industry Report, they grabbed it. As Mike writes on page 159 of Launch: "To my amazement, more than 4,000 people downloaded it… I went on to sell the report, but it never really did as well as when I offered it for free."

The secret? Publish great FREE content

And therein, in a nutshell, is the story behind Social Media Examiner: offer great content, offer it for FREE and then sit back and watch amazing things happen.

I spoke with Mike on the phone to get a few more details about his new book and the success of SME. The site, started in October 2009, publishes fresh content (in the form of blog posts) about social media six days a week: irresistible case studies, how-to’s, interviews with experts, reviews and news stories. If you sign up for the daily email, you’ll join 87,000 other subscribers who get updates about the new content. SME also pushes out updates on the new stories via Twitter and Facebook.

So what’s the revenue model?

So what’s the revenue model, you may be asking? It’s not advertising. Visit SME and you’ll notice there is not a single outside ad on the site (although discrete sponsor ads do appear in the daily emails). Revenue, lots of it, comes from online mega conferences, which SME calls "summits," that push deeper into the content areas covered on the site.

Mike corrals experts into presenting hour-long Webinar sessions so no one has to leave their office (neither presenter nor attendees). I spoke at SME’s Blogging Success Summit 2011. Hundreds of marketers sign up to attend, paying $300 - $600 a ticket, depending on how early they register. You do the math. This is a highly profitable business. Mike told me that total revenue was $1.7 million in 2010, including events and email sponsorships.

Q & A with Michael Stelzner

DW: Tell me about the distinctive "jungle" design of Social Media Examiner.

MS: The design was a big part of the plan for SME. Most of the sites in the world of social media are very bland and one-dimensional. I wanted to make our site visually stunning so that when people first arrived they would say, "Huh, this must have been around for a while." So we could overcome the "who are you" objection.

DW: SME is publishing new content six days a week. Where do you find all your contributing writers. Are you paying them?

MS: Initially, I asked a group of "experts" (including Jason Falls, Mari Smith and others) to write one article a month for the site. This was exposure for them and the chance to be part of something new. But then people started coming out of the woodwork. In the last two weeks, we’ve had 20 people apply to be writers. And no, we don’t pay any of them. We have four different editors so we run the site like a magazine.

[My note: Mike is the executive editor. There is also a managing editor and a copyeditor and an exacting editorial process. SME has only three full-time staff. The other seven staffers are part-time.]

DW: Tell me about your philosophy of "no advertising."

MS: When people come to the site and see that no one is trying to sell them anything, they want to be a part of it and they want to tell their friends about it. If you completely eliminate the marketing messages, they can receive the content as a gift. And this works as long as there is an audience that has a passion for your content.