The overhaul of its revenue composition has been a yearslong project, driven in equal parts by desperation and desire.
Competing against technology and social media platforms for ad budgets has proven a losing battle for publishers, forcing outlets to seek alternate lines of revenue besides advertising, according to eMarketer analyst Ross Benes. While the transition has been difficult, those who managed it have found the reliability of recurring revenue more appealing than the fickle business of advertising.
To accomplish the shift, Outside has acquired a grab bag of businesses and reoriented itself around them.
The company first began as an editorial roll-up, buying every legacy outdoor title of note, including affinity publications like Ski, Backpacker, Yoga Journal, and Peloton Magazine. It bolted on marketplaces, like Pinkbike, mapping services, like Trailforks, and fitness apps, like MapMyFitness. It snapped up services that catered to outdoor enthusiasts, like the photography platform FinisherPix, and those that facilitated their activities, like the booking platform Inntopia.
As more assets joined the Outside family, the company bundled their offerings to create the Outside+ subscription, which offers users access to everything from editorial content to mapping features.
Now, the company has more than 1 million paying subscribers, although that figure has remained largely flat in recent years and includes people paying for the bundle, as well as those paying for individual services. In total, Outside brings in 35% of its total revenue from the line item.
It also built out its travel and events services division, which includes assets FinisherPix, athleteReg, and Inntopia, the last of which powered more than $1 billion in hospitality bookings last year for over 250 customers, according to Thurston. These three businesses alone now represent 25% of the Outside business.
Outside has also spun up new ventures internally, including the rapidly growing Outside Days, a three-day event in Denver that Thurston envisions as the South by Southwest for outdoor enthusiasts. The event, which will host its third iteration this May, nearly doubled its revenue in its second year and more than doubled its participants. In the future, Thurston hopes to have more than 100,000 attendees to the festival.
All of these initiatives have succeeded in diversifying the Outside business away from advertising, allowing the platform to use the brand halo afforded by the Outside name to power businesses with better unit economics, according to media analyst Brian Morrissey.
Outside is not alone in making this transition. Events are perhaps the most salient example of this phenomenon, but publishers are increasingly looking to interlock their assets into a broader flywheel.
Some of the most successful digital media companies today are beginning to think more like brands, using their editorial to attract like-minded consumers before funneling them into line items with better margins. Dow Jones, for instance, has lately sought to more effectively cross-promote its assets, using business titles like The Wall Street Journal to lure in leads that it can then steer toward its higher-priced products, like its Leadership Institute or Factiva.
