Welcome to The Niche Fix. Each week, we will share insights from experts and professionals in the niche publishing industry. Have questions or thoughts about the industry? Reply to this email, and let’s chat!

But first…

The Niche Media Ad Sales Training is back this summer!

Six hours of LIVE virtual ad sales training with Billion-Dollar Sales Coach Ryan Dohrn is coming this July. Whether you sell B2B or consumer, there's a track built for you.

B2B: July 20-21
Consumer: July 22-23
2pm-5pm EST, 100% virtual via Zoom

NEW topics for 2026, including how to use AI in your sales strategy, selling value when price is the only focus, time management secrets to win back 8 hours a week, the 10 critical questions to ask on every call, and using LinkedIn to grow your pipeline.

Ryan has trained over 30,000 reps in 7 countries and been part of more than a billion dollars in media sales. These are proven ideas you can use the moment you log off. Every registration includes downloadable materials and full recordings.

Now, let’s talk about audience…

Why Knowing Your Audience Became the Whole Game in 2026

By Zach O’Brien

Here's an uncomfortable truth I kept running into at the Niche Media Conference: publishers love to say they know their audience. Then you ask them what their newsletter readers actually want, and the room goes quiet.

I sat down with Paul Sammon of All-in-One Insights at NMC 2026 to talk about why audience research has become the thing that separates the publishers who thrive from the ones who keep wondering why their inbox empire isn't paying the bills. Paul has spent years doing audience research for niche publishers, and his diagnosis is blunt.

"So many publishers complain, I've got all these newsletters and I'm not making money," he told me. "And a lot of it's just, well, what do you know about them? And the answer invariably is not much."

Ouch. But fair.

The problem is that the media world quietly got a lot more complicated. Not that long ago, you had one audience. One print list. One magazine, one send. Now you've got social followers scattered across five platforms, a stack of newsletters, and your print readers, and the wild part is that these are often completely different people who want completely different things.

That's where the research gets interesting. According to Paul, the magic question for editors is simple: what do your readers love most, and what would they love to see more of?

"Those answers are gold," he said. "It's just the nutrition that helps drive them." The kicker is how differently newsletter readers answer that question compared to print readers. Editors who are sure they know their people are often startled, mostly because they've never actually heard back from those folks before.

Niche publishers have a built-in advantage here, and it's a good one. These are passion-based brands, so when you ask the audience why they love you, they actually tell you. Paul contrasted that with the big circulation magazines, where readers can barely explain why the thing keeps showing up in their mailbox. Niche readers will write you an essay.

The smartest framing Paul shared came secondhand, from Bonnie Kinzer, former CEO of Trusted Media Brands. Her philosophy was to make the channel an agnostic exercise: consume what I share, love it, and let me worry about how it all mixes together. In other words, stop forcing the conversation about print versus digital versus social. Let the audience tell you what they value, and the brand comes together organically across every channel.

This matters more in 2026 than it ever has. Advertisers do not want to buy a print ad or a newsletter slot in isolation anymore. They want to reach the right person with the right message at the right time, and you cannot sell that story if you cannot tell it. Knowing how your audiences relate to one another is not a nice-to-have. It is the whole pitch.

So here's my challenge to every publisher reading this. Pull up your biggest newsletter. Now tell me three specific things those subscribers want more of. If you can't, you've got homework, and Paul would tell you it's the most valuable homework you'll do all year.

Because in this business, loving your audience is easy. Actually knowing them is the work.

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