I’m a huge fan of PSFK.com. I’ve been following Piers and his team for years. Recently I’ve even started publishing weekly cartoons on PSFK, for no other reason than I think it’s a very groovy crowd to be part of.
PSFK is a well-known strategy, trends and ideas blog, focusing mostly on advertising and design. In the early days Piers mostly wrote it all himself, but these days he has this vast army of volunteers writing guest posts on PSFK’s behalf.
The point of PSFK is to give its readers a constant stream of inspiration and new ideas, stuff they can use to inform their own work.
And it works. Close to three quarters of a million people read it a month, mostly from the ad and design community. In that space, it’s extremely well known [For an industry niche blog, trust me, three quarters of a million people is A LOT].
So how does PSFK make money? Hint: It’s not by selling advertising, like a lot of the big blogs out there.
The thing is, PSFK’s primary business is not publishing blogs. Its main revenue stream is as consultants in the advertising business. They’ve got a small handful of clients and a small staff of super smart advertising futurists, who get paid top dollar to share their brain power with large, global brands.
The blog is just a way to get the PSFK name out, to get their name on the radar screen of potential clients.
Basically, the PSFK blog is just an advertisement for the PSFK consultancy, even if on the blog there’s hardly any mention of the latter.
A “Smarter Conversation”, a smarter way of talking to potential clients, than say, just buying advertising space in one of the big trade publications.
Would this kind of model work for your business? If not, wouldn’t it be great if it did? Just askin’…
