This is awesome and worth reading!

One critique: I think the napkin math for Rogan& #39;s possible indie subscription business is too optimistic.

Why? There& #39;s a deep integration between editorial product and business model, and JRE is not optimized for subscriptions.

(thread) https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1263886403810717696">https://twitter.com/awilkinso...
Andrew& #39;s guess was: 11m downloads per episode x 5% x $5 x 12 months = $33mm in ARR.

I think there& #39;s roughly zero chance he gets 5% conversion on 11m downloads, for a several reasons:
1. It& #39;s not really 11m people. There are a ton of bots and auto-downloads included in that. I bet it& #39;s more like 8m actual fans.
2. You can only convert 5% of an audience to paying if they& #39;re affluent and consider your content as helping them achieve important personal or professional goals.

I would bet JR& #39;s millions of fans are not more affluent than average, and think of it as a fun time killer.
So how many do I think he could convert? (It& #39;s a moot point since he& #39;s at Spotify now, but I can& #39;t resist! haha)

Probably 2.5% of 8m, which at $5/mo would be $12m ARR.
But wait — what about churn? How fast would he be able to grow this if he& #39;s losing people? The more casual your content and fanbase, the less affluent your audience is, the higher your churn.
So, bringing it all together, let& #39;s say JR launches and gets 2.5% of his 8m fans to pay $5 a month, and 3% churn every month. That& #39;s 200k paying subs.

In order to keep growing, he needs to add >6k paying subs a month.

Hard to grow quickly in this scenario.
Now, imagine you& #39;re JR, and compare this to a world where Spotify guarantees you a hundreds of millions in upfront cash, and you don& #39;t have to worry about what content to put behind the paywall or how your subscription business trades off with advertising...
I& #39;m a huge believer in subscription media. But I think there& #39;s a deep integration between content and business model, and it& #39;s not easy to slap subscriptions on after you& #39;ve optimized your editorial product for an advertising-based model.
People only pay for content under particular circumstances. @danshipper are learning a ton about this every week. Right now we& #39;re at ~10% conversion, and it feels like a ratio we can maintain.

The more we learn, the more different we realize the content has to be.

(the end!)
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