How AsphaltPro, a free magazine, makes $50,000 a year in reader-driven revenue
Typically, high-end courses sold by B2B magazines do well in tech-savvy categories that require certifications, such as accounting, real estate, and insurance.
The success of a course aimed at training manual laborers sounds counterintuitive. However, some fields, such as construction, require training or experience, which can provide an additional profit center for savvy niche publishers.
AsphaltPro Magazine provides a great example of this model.
The need
Anyone can cook a meal or hammer a nail, but drop any intelligent but untrained person into the middle of a busy restaurant kitchen or construction job site, and they will be lost.
An on-the-job understanding of roles, methods, production sequence, and treatment of materials is critical to productivity and consistent results. Meanwhile, experienced employees are not always available.
That’s where savvy publishers can step in to help.
Chris Harrison, publisher of AsphaltPro Magazine, supplies paving companies with a basic course, “Asphalt Paving 101,” which generates a passive revenue stream of $50,000 to $60,000 annually. Even better, the course was simply repurposed from content already published on their website.
It was such a success that he now has four more courses in the works.
Replacing subscription revenue with courses
Harrison learned the value of courses early on in his publishing career. After graduating from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1993, he worked for a B2B publisher who sold courses on paving for $89 on VCR tapes and sent them out in the mail.
After running one of their publications, Asphalt Contractors, for ten years, he struck out on his own in 2007 with a competing title, AsphaltPro. The magazine covers information needed to run an asphalt plant or paving operation, including “legislation, training opportunities, ideas and best practices from industry experts, the latest technology, and the newest equipment,” However, “how to” remains a significant focus.
“The first thing we did was ask how we can do some training?” Harrison said.
While the magazine secured two top manufacturers as advertisers before the first publication, subscriptions remain free, with 6,500 copies distributed at no charge. Courses were a way to “obtain real revenues from readers.”
“Our industry, the asphalt industry, is notorious for not having any new tech”—and thus new advertisers, he said.
“We are a market that’s capped as far as advertisers go. We have to develop other products and peer-to-peer events.”
In short, growth has to come from someplace else. However, asphalt is not as simple to mix and apply as concrete. So the need for training provided an opportunity for an additional revenue stream.
Building the First Course
The first course was “Asphalt Paving 101,” which Harrison said was constructed “like a big library” of modules repurposed from “articles we ‘ve been writing over the years.”
The editor scripted the modules, while the digital manager did the voiceovers.
The team uploaded the modules to Teachable, a platform he read about in a WSJ article about a flower designer who made a killing on course sales (so much for the B2C/B2B divide).
The platform is turnkey, so courses can be sold and utilized without a live instructor. However, while voice-over images were sufficient in some cases, video was needed in others to “show” what things actually look like on a job site.
“The hard part is finding video elements that match the class elements,” Harrison said.
Ultimately, they tapped a paving consultant they worked with, who was already working in the field with paving crews. “He’ll walk around with his camera in hand, showing what to clean and what to check.” Rock-n-roll music was added to play in the background.
The first short module is free and gives a taste of the practical, easy-to-consume, and much-needed information. However, the second one is locked and requires payment.
After toying with a price of $175, Harrison decided on a pricepoint of $599. Paving and asphalt companies did not blink.
The market
The “Asphalt Paving 101″ market has two parts: commercial paving companies and local government Department of Transportation (DOTs), including counties and cities.
“Larger cities have millions of dollars in paving budgets. They have paving crews, and some even have asphalt plants.” About 65% of sales are to contractors, and 35% to public works and DOTs.
The magazine is domestic, but its online reach is international: Mexico, India, and Canada.
“Equipment used in the U.S. is sold in the secondary market in Latin America. They are using 20-—to 30-year-old equipment to pave roads.”
“It’s a transitory industry,” he said. ” If you are roofing houses and want to move to a paving company, you have no idea who does what.” So, paving contractors use the course for both onboarding and ongoing training.
“Some days, it’s a cold or rainy day, and the superintendent can bring them in for video updates.”
Results
“Once you put the course into practice, it just sits there and generates movement. There are very few sales in the summer because people are out paving for 60 hours a week, but course sales pick up in the fall.”
After five years, revenues range from $50,000 to $60,000 annually, with sales equating to more than 1% of magazines printed.
They plan to launch four more courses in 2025. To identify topics, they used Google Analytics and their general industry know-how.
“We wanted to draw a circle around what might be of most interest,” Harrison said.
Editors trimmed the list down to 20 that they felt both had the content and for which they could obtain video elements.
“It is just a matter of reproducing the content and retooling it to fit a class.”
Since 38 states have paving associations, they plan to contact them to learn about other paths to obtain video.
Lessons learned
The biggest takeaway is that manual work does, in fact, require skills and training, which can provide a high-margin revenue stream for niche publishers.
The case in point is that people working on paving jobs will watch training videos on a computer.
“That’s one reason other magazines overlook it,” Harrison said.
He said that even the magazine continues to cover information on a how-to level.
“At the industry meetings, we see the same people using the same presentation on the same topics 20 years later, and the classroom is packed.”
There may be other untapped markets for magazines with a built-in audience.
Restaurants, for example, may need courses in safety and food prep. Cleaning companies may need courses in methods and products to get new workers up to speed. Other types of construction could recreate the “Asphalt Paving 101” model. Specific verticals, such as pharmaceuticals or medical equipment, may need to provide their unique methodologies for sales to sellers entering their vertical.
No two niches are alike. However, to consider whether or not the model is worth exploring, Asphalt Pro Magazine may yield a $250,000 plus passive revenue stream with no additional costs, employees, or cannibalization when four more courses are in place.
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