This week we hear from Lauren Kleinman and Lee Joselowitz, co-founders of The Quality Edit. The Quality Edit was founded in 2021 when Lauren, Lee and their co-founder Scott Silver felt there was no digital publisher providing high-quality recommendations around fashion, travel, and beauty products, so they decided to launch their own. The Quality Edit is bootstrapped, profitable, and with 300k UVMs per month, this small but mighty platform has quickly become a force to be reckoned with in the media landscape.
Lauren and Lee tell us about a technique they are terming ‘performance publishing’, about how they persevered through the early years, and how the digital publishing ecosystem rewards authenticity.
In the news roundup Chris and Esther discuss the news that the Independent is in talks to take control of BuzzFeed and HuffPost in the UK, ask what the demise of Vice.com means for digital publishing, and ask if scale is well and truly dead.
Some highlights from the interview, lightly edited for clarity:
How The Quality Edit started
Lauren: It actually started as a side hustle. Authentically, we just could not find a publication that we ourselves would want to read. Every day in the past, we would read blogs like Man Repeller or Into the Gloss, but we felt like there were a bunch of traditional publishers – think of Business Insider or Conde Nast or Meredith – many of them weren’t covering the brands and products that we ourselves were authentically trying and buying and testing every day.
It was four years ago that we started The Quality Edit, and I feel like now a lot of these traditional publishers have caught on, but especially then they were not really covering a lot of new and super exciting brands.
We look for brands that are very mission-driven; usually they have very strong founder stories and reason for existing. And of course our editors as well as content creators are trying and testing these products and making sure that they’re high quality, that they work well, that they actually have really good value.
It may be on the surface it seems like it could be a crowded market. But we ourselves are wrapping our heads around this, the other day, we were just thinking, there’s actually not that many The Quality Edits out there. It’s actually not as crowded as you might expect it to be when you look at how many traditional publishers are out there.
The Quality Edit’s monetisation model
Lee: Our monetisation model combines storytelling and third party validation with a more traditional performance marketing approach. So how can we reach the quality at its audience, but far beyond that: how can we reach massive audiences through our storytelling and through our third party validation, and lean into other platforms to drive that third party amplification and really drive customers for those brands?
Our monetisation model is really unlike any publications’ monetisation model. It contains a tonne of different elements that combine performance marketing, and UGC creative [User-Generated-Content], and landing page testing, and influencer marketing, and storytelling, and editorial marketing, and puts it in one big bow to help brands acquire customers.
Building trust with an audience
Lauren: Last year we did a reader survey that showed that over 90% of our audience trusts our recommendations. For context, as a baseline, a lot of the very top tier most trusted publications… might be something a lot closer to 80-85%. We’re very proud of that, and are going to continue to try and make that stat even higher.
A lot of it goes back to the authenticity of the content, and our true investment in the quality of our content – we’re named The Quality Edit for a reason! We really do try to put out the highest quality content. I think, especially in an ecosystem where you have a lot of the top tier publishers using ChatGPT, doing the very bare minimum, just trying to fulfil either getting clicks using a flashy headline without an interesting article… we pride ourselves in being proud of every single piece of content that we put out.
We put out a lot of content, usually a couple of pieces a day. But 99% of our content is not sponsored, it’s editorially driven. We maintain very high editorial integrity, every editor authentically tries and reviews every product that we test and write about.
I think it comes down to the recruitment of our editors… and then the other thing is consistency. Trust isn’t earned overnight, it’s earned every single day. So whether that’s across our newsletter touchpoints, or our social media touchpoints, or our editorial and on-site experience, just making sure that we’re building those one-on-one relationships with our readers, and delivering on the content that they’re asking for, as well as just maintaining that very high bar of integrity in terms of the types of content that we’re putting out.
The news round-up
The Independent is in talks to take control of BuzzFeed and HuffPost in the UK.
- If the deal went ahead, The Independent would assume all editorial and commercial control of BuzzFeed in the UK under a licensing deal for its various brands including HuffPost UK, Seasoned and Tasty.
- This is – at least in part – a scale play at a time when scale isn’t paying the bills even for the biggest publishers. However, it could well align with the Independent’s ecommerce plans, and would provide some more legitimacy to BuzzFeed in that space.
- Notably the Indy is still profitable, for the sixth year in a row, since going digital-only.
BuzzFeed sells Complex for $108 million to livestream shopping platform NTWRK.
- The publisher acquired Complex in 2021 for $300 million. As part of the sale, it announced plans to cut expenses, including targeting 16% layoffs.
- Shares jumped from $0.22 to $0.50 on the news, a 126% increase.
- Notably BuzzFeed is retaining some of Complex’s franchises, including First We Feast; they might look to create a food brand package deal with Tasty later according to AMO’s Jacob Donnelly.
- The publisher isn’t clear of trouble yet – needs to get its share price above $1 before May 18th or Nasdaq could delist it.
Vice is closing its website and moving to a studio model.
- The way the journalists and workers found out about this was pretty disgusting. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on Thursday, and Vice management was then totally silent in response to queries, prompting journalists to start saving their clippings en masse in lieu of any certainty.
- Gareth Davies, editor of the Bureau Local, called the deletion of articles from Vice “an act of cultural vandalism” – and whatever you think about the content it’s undeniably true that this contributes to the erosion of the internet as an archive and record of events.
- Eventually a memo from Bruce Dixon, the Vice Media chief confirmed that “several hundred” staffers would be laid off and that the brand “will no longer publish content on vice.com”, as the company is transitioning to a “studio model”.
- Refinery29 is to continue; in some ways it was the blueprint for whatever Vice will be now. However Vice is in “advanced discussions to sell this business, and we are continuing with that process”.
- It’s important to note that Vice itself is continuing – it still has a substantial social following. The issue is that the audience isn’t going to the Vice.com website, and social platforms just aren’t prioritising referrals.
