Ziff Davis Magazine Evolution
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A story about how Ziff Davis built a publishing empire through niche industry magazines and digital properties.
"Ziff Davis was basically a publishing company that's still around today with a $5 billion market cap and over $1 billion in revenue. They got their start in probably the sixties because they owned magazines in super specific but high-end industries.
They owned the most popular magazines on popular electronics, sailing, flying, and something called Mac Week. They eventually started what would become CES. Masa San later bought CES from them.
Today they own properties like Speedtest.net which gets 100 million visits a month and 10 million visits a day. On their website, they have 5 different ad placements. At a $15 CPM on 10 million visits a day, that's $50 million a year just from ads. Plus they sell enterprise solutions. This simple webpage could be a $200-300 million a year business.
I read their annual reports and they just acquired a company they want to integrate for mobile speed testing. It's grown from niche magazines to a massive digital publishing company worth billions."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.