{"id":34106,"date":"2020-09-28T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T07:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/?p=34106"},"modified":"2020-09-28T09:00:33","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T08:00:33","slug":"insights-on-growing-a-membership-driven-media-business-from-black-ballad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/insights-on-growing-a-membership-driven-media-business-from-black-ballad\/","title":{"rendered":"Insights on growing a membership-driven media business, from Black Ballad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p>This week, we hear from Tobi Oredein, Co-Founder and CEO of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blackballad.co.uk\/\">Black Ballad<\/a>, a UK-based lifestyle platform for Black British women. She talks about what drove her to found the site, why they decided to launch memberships ahead of the curve in 2016, and the impact of their\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/entry\/black-ballad-huffpost-uk-takeover_uk_5f2d2b9ec5b6b9cff7f07be2\">recent HuffPost takeover<\/a>. She also outlines how their Future of News Funding will help them better serve and grow their audience outside London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-soundcloud wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Black Ballad Co-Founder and CEO Tobi Oredein on growing a membership-driven media business by Media Voices\" width=\"710\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F896617021&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=710&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;dnt=1\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>In the news roundup, the team goes deep into Trump v. TikTok and its implications for publishers, looks at what good news means for The Telegraph around subscriptions, and discusses the BBC failing to close its gender pay gap. A slip of the tongue leads \u2018directors\u2019 to become \u2018dictators\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/voices.media\/transcript-tobi-oredein-co-founder-ceo-black-ballad\/\">See the full transcript here<\/a>, or edited highlights below:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>What drove Tobi to set up Black Ballad?<\/strong><\/p><p>It really came from a place of passionate frustration\u2026I was freelancing a lot, and I couldn\u2019t get a permanent job. I didn\u2019t quite have the language to think of why\u2026but being completely honest now, I just didn\u2019t fit what a staff writer at a women\u2019s magazine looked like at that time.<\/p><p>I was kind of like, if no one can see what I\u2019m offering, if I can see that everybody looks alike and I don\u2019t look like these women who are getting these jobs, I need to change tactics. I need to, a phrase we use in media, I need to pivot! And I decided to start Black Ballad because I wanted to give myself a job.&nbsp;I thought, if no one\u2019s going to take a chance on me, I might as well take a chance on myself.<\/p><p><strong>On starting a media company rather than a blog<\/strong><\/p><p>I realised that my opinions didn\u2019t represent every black woman. And that was why I knew that it needed to be a fully fledged media company. It couldn\u2019t just be based on my opinions and values as a black woman, because with all categories of women, or identities, there\u2019s always nuance.<\/p><p>So I was like, it can\u2019t just be me, it just can\u2019t be my thoughts or feelings and opinions. I want it to be a diverse range of black women who are speaking to another diverse range of black women.<\/p><p><strong>Launching memberships ahead of the curve<\/strong><\/p><p>We weren\u2019t getting anything in advertising, because advertising, especially back then, was about scale, how big is your audience. Black people make up 3% of the country, if black women make up half of that, that\u2019s 1.5%\u2026people didn\u2019t see the scale, they didn\u2019t see the value. So we knew that advertising was not going to bring us money, especially at that time, because we had a much smaller community then.<\/p><p>So [co-founder Bola Awoniyi] was like, \u2018The only way we can make money really, at this point is to have a membership.\u2019&nbsp;The membership gave us a sustainable income that didn\u2019t rely on brands, but actually put black women first in terms of, we have to make the membership the best it is, so black women actually pay us. And then the flip side of that is by having a paywall, we\u2019re actually protecting black female writers who don\u2019t get opportunities to write about their stories or interview people that they want. They get to do that in a safe space as well.<\/p><p><strong>Proving the doubters wrong<\/strong><\/p><p>We were so early [to memberships], and if I\u2019m honest, people didn\u2019t think it was going to work. There was a thing of like, this small, independent brand led by a black woman is having the balls to make people pay for content. People did not think it was going to work. But three years on, we are still standing and the membership has grown so, so much.<\/p><p><strong>On the importance of their&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blackballad.co.uk\/directory\">business directory<\/a><\/strong><\/p><p>Media functions as a platform to advertise businesses, and black businesses don\u2019t often get those opportunities to advertise to customers, because they don\u2019t get funding for their businesses to pay the rates that you would have to pay to be a mainstream magazine.<\/p><p>So for us, that\u2019s our version of advertisement in terms of, we create very fair prices for black-owned businesses to be in that directory, and hopefully do some content with them and around their business to advertise to members.&nbsp;And then it doubles up as a nice lifestyle perk. It\u2019s nice that black women, or whoever\u2019s a member can see this black-owned business and be like, \u2018Oh okay, that\u2019s a great product for my hair,\u2019 or \u2018That\u2019s a great service.\u2019<\/p><p><strong>Finding voices outside London<\/strong><\/p><p>One thing that I\u2019ve been very clear on to the team is that I\u2019m not going to repeat the mistakes of mainstream media. And what I mean by that is, there\u2019s not going to be one dominant voice in this publication, and that dominant voice is the black female Londoner.<\/p><p>So for nine weeks later on in the year, we\u2019ll have an editor from a specific region in the country take over Black Ballad with all content from their area\u2026from Scotland, Wales, the North West, East of England, South West, South East. And the stories and content that\u2019s being produced, I\u2019m just so excited for it.<\/p><p>I want to be clear, this isn\u2019t just the beginning and the end of us doing content that really puts a spotlight on black women outside London. It\u2019s just the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Republished with kind permission of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/voices.media\/\">Media Voices<\/a>,\u00a0a weekly look at all the news and views from across the media world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, we hear from Tobi Oredein, Co-Founder and CEO of\u00a0Black Ballad, a UK-based lifestyle platform for Black British women. She talks about what drove her to found the site, why they decided to launch memberships ahead of the curve in 2016, and the impact of their\u00a0recent HuffPost takeover. She also outlines how their Future [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17611],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[5814,29188,1396,7647,1250,3341,1596,1769,1791,2813],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34106"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}