Six months later, Baum sought an instant circulation injection.
He acquired a competitor, Golf
Insider, a newsletter published in San
Francisco, and added its 400 subscribers to his database. Since then, despite
his stated desires to lighten his load, he seems to have transferred the
aggressive nature of the Wall Street banker to his small niche of the publishing
industry. He has worked intensely for the past two years to shore up his print
product (which currently has 1,800 subscribers), and to expand his company into
new media and create additional revenue streams. "I didn’t necessarily think I
was going to fly around the world and play golf," he admits. "But my vision when
I bought this has evolved so far from what I thought I was getting into."
 Baum’s first project involved redesigning the look and feel of
the newsletter to make it more attractive to the high-end clients he targets. He
currently offers two 12-month subscriptions, one at $97 and the other at $147
(which includes the previous 12 issues). He also markets the newsletter as a
corporate gift, and has priced a subscription at just below the $100 maximum
that the National Association of Securities Dealers places on such perks.
Baum’s newsletter currently has no advertising. He refuses to
accept ads from golf resorts or any entity that Golf Odyssey might
review. He and his staff (three full-time employees, two of whom are editors)
travel to golf destinations using company funds and do not identify themselves
as reviewers when they play, in order to maintain their objectivity. Baum also
refuses to hire freelance writers. "It’s hard for us to rely on them because we
travel anonymously and pay our own expenses," he says. "Most of the freelancers
won’t pay their own way."
While playing at a course in Ireland last year, Baum noted 16
golf writers who had been invited to play against each other at the club with
their expenses paid. "Each had his own uniform, each had his own caddie. They
wined them and dined them," Baum says. "Sure enough, you see a lot of positive
stories about the club. And I’m there on my own nickel watching all this." He
admitted he is open to considering advertising from the much more lucrative
sector of golf equipment manufacturers, particularly in his digital media
products.
As with many print publishers, Baum is also playing catch-up to
migrate his content onto digital platforms. For the past year, he immersed
himself in what he calls a massive project to move his company’s archive of
travel reviews dating back to 2000 to the Web. Now some of that content resides
on a new website, golfvacationinsider.com, which represents a new brand
strategy for Baum’s company. The site offers free content and an email
newsletter. His strategy, of course, is to upsell visitors to his paid
subscriptions. His new Web technology also enables him to perform business
operations, such as subscriber management and fulfillment, digitally.
Baum admits he spent much more time and money developing his
Web tools than he originally planned, describing his investment only in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It’s too embarrassing," he says. "It’s
insane." He has also launched a series of travel books, available in both hard
copy and digital formats, that feature detailed destination reviews, and he is
working on a partnership with a travel company to offer vacations. He’s engaged
debt financing to build the company—"Hey, I’m from Wall Street. I have to use
leverage," he says—but retains full ownership of the business and has no plans
to seek a partner.
"We have so much stuff going on, it makes my head spin," he
says. "This year will be the interesting year. We are in a position to turn up
the marketing, because now it’s a fixed-cost business. The question is, can we
drive the business to where we can get over the nut."
Matt Purdue is the executive editor of Worth.
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