Fast Company and Inc. tighten up paywalls to grow consumer revenue amid traffic volatility

“The real reason for it … is that traffic is really fickle, and we have to find more ways to build a direct connection with our audiences [and] have that kind of stability that comes from having the subscription business,” said Stephanie Mehta, CEO of Mansueto Ventures, who spoke at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado, on Monday.

Inc. in particular has been “very dependent” on Google Discover traffic, which hasn’t been reliable in the last six months or so, Mehta said. She didn’t share how many subscribers both publications have.

“The stories that had traditionally been reliable sources of traffic have not been,” Mehta said. “What we’ve learned is that you cannot rely on the past history of performance to determine what’s going to succeed going forward.” While it’s hard to know exactly what will drive traffic from platforms like Google, subscription businesses have more reliable data that can show what people will pay to read, she added.

Mansueto Ventures is expecting its consumer business — which makes up a third of its overall annual revenue — to grow in the low double digits in 2025, Mehta said. But due to possible economic headwinds this year, the company is expecting its ad sales business (which makes up 55% of the company’s revenue) to grow in the single digits.

“We are going to have to … watch those numbers and particularly be mindful of what’s happening. If the consumer starts to feel squeezed, that would be an opportunity to use some predictive and machine learning tools to help us understand, is this a subscriber that’s worth keeping? And if so, is there discounting that we need to deploy?” Mehta said.

In addition to subscriptions, Mansueto Ventures’ consumer revenue also comes from its recognition programs (the company has about a dozen of them). This includes application fees for its franchises like “Most Innovative Company” and “Inc. 5000,” event attendance fees for galas related to those franchises, and membership fees paid by CEOs to join groups like the Fast Company Impact Council.

Mansueto Ventures’ remaining revenue comes from licensing and logos for these recognition programs. Companies pay to put the “Inc. 5000” logo on a business card or website, for example. While Mehta declined to share how much revenue was coming in from these memberships, she said they are “incredibly profitable.”

“There’s very little additional overhead associated with them,” Mehta said. “If you license a digital logo from us, it costs us nothing to produce that digital logo. It’s one and done. And yet we can charge … thousands of dollars a year. … So it’s almost 100% profit.”