The Iferia Techcast
00:20:17 · Gary Pageau
[00:20:17] S1: Well, I focused on it because I knew it. I mean, that was literally what I already... I mean, I knew the market was there because I had spent twenty five years in the industry. So it started as a joke. So the name comes from around 2009, there was a conference that we, as our industry organization, had, or it's sort of like a TED Talks kind of thing. Was like an executive conference. And one of the speakers who was one of our drinking buddies got up there and he was from one of the software companies, and he was talking about how there's images that are on a screen that are live pixels, and then there's pixels that are printed that are dead pixels. And he was trying to talk about how there's a different relationship to the viewer between what's on a screen versus what's printed. But 80% of the people in the audience made their living printing pictures. And so they took it as not as an offense, but they kind of gave them a hard time about it. So as a joke at the next conference, we came up with Dead Pixels Society pins, which were basically, you know, a pixelated skull and all that other stuff. And it was basically... And so it sort of became like a club sort of idea. It's sort of the idea that you only got this lapel pin if you were at this conference, and so we had this sort of little clubby sort of thing. Then when I left the organization in 2012, I kind of took that idea with me and started this Facebook group for my friends in the industry, basically. And then, like I said, one of my buddies after a few years said, You know what? You should turn this into a newsletter. I'll sponsor it. And I said, okay. It's now I like money. I know how to make newsletters. I can... I'll do that. And I really chose the niche because what happened was after the industry association went out of business, the Photo Marketing Association, the the universe kind of broke up. The photo imaging universe kind of broke up in the sense that, there were a lot of different segments in the industry. There was, like, the the the online photo people, and the camera stores, and the retail printers, and the retailers, the matched merchandisers, and all these people were all separate, but our organization was the glue that held them together because we were all kind of in the same business of providing imaging services to consumers.
00:22:39 · Gary Pageau
And when PMA went away, that all went away. So everyone kind of went back to their corners. So I came up with the idea, if to I have a newsletter that addressed that marketplace, I would look at it from the standpoint of how do I cover all of those areas and connect them back together. And that's what I've been doing. So really the idea is that, yes, I'll cover your segment, but if you read my newsletter and you're a camera store, there may be one or two items that apply to you, but that's okay. It's really designed to be skimmed and really designed to be kind of a top line read of what's going on so you're fully informed. Again, it was designed as a very niche product. When I first started it, I figured there's about maybe 500 subscribers, maybe, because it's a free one. And I'm three times that on one platform and almost double that on Substack. So I've obviously exceeded my expectations there. And remember, these are companies, not people. So the idea there is, you know, it doesn't sound like a lot of numbers, but then you realize, you know, some of those readers are responsible for companies that are making tens of millions of dollars, right, in terms of revenue. So it's really about the quality of the audience as opposed to just going after numbers. I just want to reach X number of people, and I've got to have 10,000, I've got to have 15,000. It's not a numbers game, it's a quality of audience game. So when I talk to people about sponsoring my newsletter, I always say, you know, they go, Yeah, they always say things like, Yeah, I know everyone reads it because all the leaders of the industry read it. And I know from my email provider that I give a 40% open rate. So as a result of that, I know I have a highly engaged audience that likes what I do, and I could just double down on it. I just try and over service them. That's really the key to any of... Anything like this is, you know, not just putting out stuff because it's trendy or topical. Right? There's a lot of things that I don't cover. I get pissed a lot. Right? I'm on all the services, all the directories, so I get a lot of press releases that are just like, you know, you know, they just... If it's AI, I probably get the press release versus camera. So part of my job is to filter that stuff out and just know what my audience wants and deliver that because I'm saving them time. They don't have...
00:25:05 · Gary Pageau
You know, I don't expect people to do my job and read everything. That's my that's my job. My job is to distill it, condense it, edit it, and give it down to, you know, what what I think they need. And that just comes from years of experience. I mean, that's literally. And then what happened for the podcast was during COVID, I was really concerned about, you know, me losing sponsors because everyone was concerned about that. Right? There was a pandemic. Who knows who's gonna be in business anymore? And so I said, I need to do twice as much content. So I started the podcast, and that's been great. I don't monetize that specifically. It's more of a... But it it get... It create... It's an... Another engine for content. I... I'll get CEOs of rather sizable companies who will wanna be interviewed for a podcast. It's it's it's it's kind of an ego thing, and it's it's great for me, content wise, when I can get the CEO of one of the leaders of one of the companies to want to sit down and talk for twenty minutes, and people will listen to it. We're coming up on our fifty thousandth download. So, I mean, again, not huge numbers, but it's the right numbers. And then we then branched out two or three years ago into in person events. So we do, again, do a very, very small conference of about 50, 60 people who just trade ideas and things like that, and it's never gonna be big. It's... I've told the people, I've said I'm gonna cap it at a certain number, and the whole point is that it's not a big event. But it's it's again an event that people wanna go to because it's not it's not like a trade show where there's booze you gotta visit and you're pressed for time. This is you've got time to talk to people and interact. And if anyone's looking at approaching a community like that, you know, number one, make sure it's big... The business is big enough that, you know, there's enough sponsors there who wanna sponsor it. Right? And two, make sure that you can provide content that's gonna engage the readers, that they're gonna become extremely loyal to you. And, you know, once you have that, you can you can build a revenue stream from it.
00:27:18 · Ezekiel Iferia
[00:27:18] S0: So, Gary, you know, you you you you build the Dead Pixels Society, but, you know, still on that, I I like to... You know you know, what lessons from that, you know, rather Sure. You know, what what what does it actually take, you know, to build a community from scratch? You know, what's one thing that makes it or breaks?
00:27:45 · Gary Pageau
[00:27:45] S1: Well, again, going back to what I was saying earlier, I I wish I would've committed to doing it far earlier, full bore, like going from day one and sprinting as opposed to kinda jogging into it. You know? When I launched, probably... Newsletter was maybe once a week. The website wasn't much of anything. And then, you know, it took a while just to build up. I didn't even have a media kit for years because I wasn't serious about sponsorships. And I've learned if you're gonna do it, do it. There's no halfway. I much would farther along on the business side of the journey if I would have launched not only with the newsletter, but with a podcast and all the other stuff, and planned to have events, because I was always like, I don't want to do events. Events are a pain in the butt. But the reality is the audience wanted events. And the podcast was the same thing. I didn't wanna do the podcast when I started because back in the PMA days, we had a podcast and I knew how much work it was and I didn't wanna work that hard. And the reality was is the audience was ready for it. And I found a way to make it, you know, so it wasn't so time consuming. I found some workflow tools to do that. So, you know, the number one advice is if you're going to do it, do it. There's no really halfway to do it. I was kind of started with the idea that it was more of a promotional tool for the consulting business, right? That if I could get in people's mailboxes once a week, somebody out there was going to want to hire me to run their marketing communications or something like that. And that wrong. That didn't work. So it actually turned out that the business was actually the newsletter itself, which really kick started the community. So, you know, I really thought it was going be more of a, if somebody sees... You know, if enough of these companies see me in their inbox, they're going want to hire me to do their whatever. And, you know, it really turned out that, no, if you build enough of an audience, there's enough people out there who want to, from a sponsorship standpoint, want to get in front of these people. Then also the other lesson was I learned really early is don't undercharge. When I came up with my rates for my sponsorships, they're not cheap. I don't want to dork around with 25 sponsors who are sponsoring at $100 or something. That's just...
00:30:27 · Gary Pageau, Ezekiel Iferia
It's too much work. I'd rather have fewer sponsors who understand the audience, are paying more, and are getting more because it's relatively exclusive. So the lesson I learned early on was don't undervalue what you do. There's always this belief, Oh, I gotta be cheap to get onto the marketplace and get attention, and then I can raise prices later. You almost never can do that. I haven't raised my rates in years for sponsorships, but I've set them at a rate where they're pretty comfortable, right? Where people are like, yeah, I see what he's doing. I appreciate the audience. I wanna be in that thing, but it's not cheap. You know? It is a commitment. So that would be the two things, as I would say, is one, you know, don't take a half step, do it. And two, value what you do and charge you as much as you can. Even if it means you're going to say no to some people, right? That some people are going say, Well, that's too much. You just say, Okay, that's fine. I still like you. And the other thing I do that I think helps a lot is I have a very, very open policy about who's [00:31:41] S0: a