Lessons to Grow Your Publication From the Ground Up

This week’s research comes courtesy of Trendster Steph Smith, whose new e-book “Doing Content Right” is a comprehensive guide to building and scaling your own publication. She’ll teach you how to define your niche, decide what to write for whom, test and scale distribution platforms, and grow a loyal audience — through 200+ pages of insights and dozens of exercises to help you learn.
The following report, adapted from her book, represents just a tiny sliver of her expertise. To learn more, buy “Doing Content Right” here. Trends members get 50% off with the code “TRENDSONLY”.
Key takeaways
- It’s not too late to get started. Why start another publication in 2020, when there’s more information out there than ever? Simple: If you can identify a clear advantage, you can win.
- Understand your monopoly. You must solve a new problem or be better (even just a little bit better) at solving an existing one.
- Paid or free? Before deciding, understand your value proposition. If you plan to charge, you need to be a painkiller — not a vitamin.
- Either way, you’re probably not thinking enough about distribution. People think, “If I build it, they will come.” Quite the opposite. The CODES framework will teach you how to think through the pros and cons of different channels, and incorporate them into your strategy over time.
- SEO can be the most valuable tool in your toolbox. It takes some upfront investment of time or money, but it is often the most overlooked channel that leads to sustainable growth over the long run.
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Don’t press snooze on this opportunity: sleep supplements
The signal: As meditation becomes mainstream, people may be surprised to find that searches for sleep apps double their meditation counterpart. As people invest in getting a better night’s rest, there’s opportunity abound, including physical products like weighted blankets or premium PJs, supplements, popular insomnia drugs having their patents expire, companies paying their employees to sleep better, marketing for sleep specialists, or online sleep education (ex: sleep apnea test has 27k searches per month).

The alternative milk market is getting frothy
The signal: As more people wave goodbye to dairy, alternative milk is slowly taking over; it has already cornered 13% of the market. With the exception of soy milk, all of the alt-milks have been on the up, with some of the newer entrants including hemp milk and pea milk. Other alt-products are getting attention, including cashew cheese, with 18100 searches per month.

Capitalizing on the Airpods market, making more money than Shopify
The signal: Since killing the headphone jack, Apple has graced the world with AirPods, which did an estimated 60m units in 2019. That means AirPods alone are bringing in approx ~$10b in revenue, more than Twitter, Shopify, or Spotify, to name a few popular tech giants. Opportunity lies in Apple opening up SiriOS or the wave of iPhone accessories (including cases, cleaning kits, hooks, and keychains) which have shown “hockey stick” growth alongside their hardware predecessor.
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