What do I stand for? What do I actually put on the front page of my website? And why is it such an enormously difficult idea to answer?
That's the question I’m sitting with this afternoon. I've tried to give the job to AI, but meh.
I simply cannot make AI make something that I really want if I don't actually know what it is that I want. It will just be frustrating. Like trying to add the finishing touches to a cake you haven’t baked yet. So I'm gonna try to study a few websites in order to make it interesting. And report here.
I’ve landed on the Every website.
Actually fascinating series of connections here. This is a big detour, but hey it’s my blog ! I saw this gif on Substack of a cool animation for a gallery. Clicked on the creator’s profile and went in snooping mode. Becky Isjwara’s website is awesome, the first one I’ve opened in my afternoon quest. She’s this badass pro as well. Worked with Ali Abdaal, and made an amazing YouTube to instagram carousel tool. Anyway, I saw she was now working for Every. Which is a company I very much admire the design of. Also a biiiiig user (top 100 lifetime, often top 30 of the month, I'm a secret yapper) of their dictation tool : Monologue.
Ok back on track. So I’m in front of Every’s website and I’m analysis their front page :
- beautiful
- clean
- dark mode baked in
- content focussed
Actually suprised they don't lead with some more... big opinions. What you find is mostly the most recent content, and... their tools. Now, I don't know if you know Every, so I'll explain. Every is an AI educational media company. You'll learn a lot about AI and models from their articles, podcasts and videos. They have a stupidly simple subscription model : $30 and you get access to everything.
Where I started to find this analysis interesting (and also where I completely lost interest in my original goal) - is that they also sell tools.
As I mentioned, I'm a user of Monologue. A pretty cool designed dictation tool. The current subscription gives you access to 4 AI-related tools. And I find it interesting for a media to sell products that are INCLUDED with the subscription.
Like it's not the only way to have those tools. You can pay for them individually (at about $10/m usually). So it makes sense to have the subscription so you have access to everything.
Sublime is another company that is going about their business this way as well. Kind of the other way : they are a tool business that also sells media. They do those webinars. If you're a premium member, you get access to those. If you don't, it costs something like $50 to join per webinar. Given that it's about $20 per month in order to be a premium Sublime thing. You just become a subscriber.
So I find that business model really interesting.
Typically, people go about doing business differently. They pick a lane (educational or tool-based). And when they do create several tools, all of them will have their own subscription model, right?
What is especially fascinating about this new business model is that you don't have to justify the price of the subscription on a single tool. All of the tools don't even need to relate to each other in some way. They kind of need to fit the brand generally, but they don't need to be all spreadsheet-related or whatever. Also, gone are the days where you'd be selling a huge tool with lots of functionalities. You're selling lots of little tools.
I like that as the consumer. It gives me a lot of control over what I bring into my world. You don't have to encumber yourself with all those functionalities that you don't need. But it's still all in one subscription.
Thinking about it, you see this business model coming up again and again.
Apple's Creator Studio. You pay one fee and then you can add into your environment whichever tool you want. Reader (affiliate link) and Readwise (affiliate link). Two tools, one subscription. They relate to each other, but they don't have to. Readwise should really become a media company actually.
And none of that tells me what to put on the front page of my website.