How Active Norcal builds, prices & packages 20 million social follows

When Zach O’Brien attended his first Niche Media Conference ten years ago, he was inspired to found ActiveNorcal, a bi-monthly magazine on outdoor activities in Northern California. O’Brien enlisted other family members and used his background working in PR for the NBA. Originally he posted all the articles on Facebook when the magazine was published.

By 2016, however, O’Brien noticed something unexpected. While the magazine circulation was 10,000 every other month, the website traffic had 50,000 visitors.

“We were putting 99% of our effort into the print magazine but getting quadruple the unique visitors online. A digital native, he decided to discontinue the physical magazine and transition his customer base to an all-digital business model.

There was just one catch.

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