Axios' new revenue stream: communication itself | WARC | The Feed

Axios' new revenue stream: communication itself

‘Smart brevity’ newsmonger Axios is planning to diversify its revenue beyond supplying information: by selling its bullet-pointed in-depth short-form style as a service.

Publishers are pursuing new revenue streams, whether that was through events, pre-pandemic, through advisory or consultancy services, or through product or content licensing.

What’s new about AxiosHQ, the new communications platform reported in the WSJ, is that it’s a subscription software product – the publisher’s first – that allows its customers to update employees using Axios’ signature style.

Part of bigger plans: Subscribers also have the option to access a specialist team of editors (separate from the company’s news operation) to give writing tips, and tools to check grammar and word-choice based on a database of Axios content.

Already a significant business: with $1m already booked and the aim of doubling that figure by year end, co-founder Roy Schwartz tells the journal that 20 clients, each paying at least $10,000 (more depending on the size of the organisation), have signed up.

Axios: Famous as much for its steady stream of scoops as for its user-focused writing style, the company is a real outlier among American publications for thinking about the efficient transfer of information as its key selling point. It's currently sustained by advertising on its extremely popular newsletters, with more than $60m made in 2020.