Billy Penn Grows Up
How staff drinks and a major news event connected a small news startup with its city
Early on the evening of May 12, the staff of Billy Penn gathered over beers at Dilworth Park, around the corner from our downtown Philadelphia office. We discussed a number of topics that night, but mostly just enjoyed the brief respite from the pressure of running a startup with a tiny staff. We chatted for 90 minutes, brainstormed some good ideas and then went our separate ways for the night.
Or so we thought.
One of those attending the traffic meeting was Beth Davidz, our product director. She’d come down from New York — where she’s based — for a day of meetings. So, after a quick dinner, Beth headed to 30th Street Station and hopped on a train back to New York.
Thirteen minutes later, that train — Amtrak 188 — derailed after speeding way too fast around a sharp turn. We still don’t know the why, but we do know the human cost: eight dead and more than 200 injured. Beth was among those injured. But before she thankfully headed to the hospital, her journalistic instincts kicked in and she alerted us to the accident, described the scene and sent some photos. (Here are Beth’s accounts of the crash and the media aftermath).
I’m not sure we knew it that night, but that tragic event began a new era in Billy Penn’s short history. The crash gave us an opportunity to show what we could deliver in a pinch: Strong original reporting focused on finding stories away from the pack, excellent curation from both local and national sources and an easy-to-read daily summary of what we knew and what we didn’t. All told, we became a primary source for news consumers along Amtrak’s entire Northeast Corridor.
Our coverage received strong reviews from inside and outside Philadelphia. In fact, in the days after the crash, no news org in Philadelphia sent out more Twitter updates. And since we curate directly, many of those linked directly to other sources.
In addition to our Amtrak 188 coverage, we also received strong reviews for our coverage of the Philadelphia mayoral primary. We put together a comprehensive guide for procrastinating voters, explained how one runs for office, tried to convince voters not to fall for “this is a boring election” rhetoric and even had some fun by creating emojis for each mayoral candidate.
We also continued to tell stories in different ways. We looked at Philadelphia’s political families, “Game of Thrones”-style. We decided that video was the best way show how Pennsylvania’s fireworks laws guarantee disappointment.
We also added weekend staffing, expanding our coverage of food and drink in the process, including breaking stories on the sudden closure of a local beer garden and the discovery of a local diner serving a special called “Scalia is a Douche,” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision. We’ve profiled issues in Philadelphia’s transgender community. As we speak, we’re partnering with Fox29 to give readers the chance pick the Philadelphia region’s best neighborhood/town. Yesterday, we looked into whether Philadelphia is more parochial than most large U.S. cities. And we’re keeping everyone up to speed on the Pope’s visit to Philly in September.
The result of all this: Since May 1, Billy Penn’s traffic and audience has more than doubled. In April, we had 92,684 page views. In May, that number increased to 132,788. In June, we reached 201,061. Even better, those June numbers will be dwarfed by July, if the first 13 days of the month are any indication.
And, as I’ve stated before, we’ve made sure to build this traffic the right way, thinking of user experience first and foremost. So, what does that mean? This:
We don’t use any of the above tactics to generate page views. All our traffic comes from our home stream or articles we’ve written. We’re not serving up ads to readers who are blowing through a slideshow. We’re not reloading ads for readers who aren’t there. We want to make sure that, when someone is on Billy Penn, the content and the ad are there to be seen, not just tallied. (Added 7/15: Veasey Conway makes a good point about my contention that all slideshows are bad. Not what I meant, but I was not at all clear. Here’s my response).
We have also not bought any traffic, and the only marketing money we’ve spent is a few hundred dollars on Facebook and Twitter to promote posts or find followers.
We are also reaching who we want to:
More than 53 percent of our readers are 35 and younger. If you just look at Philadelphia, that number increases to 62 percent. And 74 percent of our readers are 44 and younger. And we’ve passed some nice milestones in social: 5,900 followers on Twitter, 2,000 likes on Facebook and 1,000 followers on Instagram.
We’ve also worked hard to continue to produce journalism that lasts. With the small staff we have, we decided early on that we would not focus much on stories that were ephemeral. We wanted to provide information that would be relevant to readers for days, weeks, months or forever. To that end, we track every day what percentage of our page views come from stories we did before that day. Since launch, that number stands at 59 percent.
Just as importantly, we’ve seen wonderful progress on the business side. We recently hired Angela Smith to be our VP of Sales and Events, and she’s done a wonderful job building relationships between Billy Penn and major local advertisers. A great example was a recent deal with PECO, where, in addition to display ads and a newsletter sponsorship, we also helped throw a summer kickoff event. It’s that kind of blended revenue model we’re trying to bring to all our advertisers. It’s not just virtual eyeballs we can deliver to advertisers; we can actually physically deliver our readers to a space where the contact is more direct and personal. That’s why we think events are such a terrific opportunity for us. And we have two new key revenue partnerships we’ll be unveiling in the coming weeks.
Billy Penn turns nine months old on July 22. It feels like we’ve been around a lot longer, a sentiment we also hear frequently from people around Philly. We love that, and we’re thankful to those readers, partners and advertisers who have helped drive this surge in traffic, audience, revenue and influence. We still have many miles to go before we sleep. But, to use a musical reference that will surely fly over the heads of our young-ish audience, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
