Australian men’s lifestyle publisher Man of Many has launched a registration wall, new podcasts and newsletters to combat a decline in Google referral traffic.
Man of Many, launched in 2012, claims to reach more than two million readers per month and has now pivoted from publishing “SEO-focused, evergreen articles” to focusing on a “one-on-one relationship with our audience”, co-founder Scott Purcell told Press Gazette.
The registration wall has resulted in around 130,000 people signing up with their email address in the first few weeks.
“We’ve seen a strong uptake since launching, having made the feature seamless and as easy as possible for users to sign in,” Purcell said. Readers are allowed to read three articles per week before they are asked to register for the site.
Purcell said the shift in strategy was specifically down to a “decline in search referral traffic to the site” attributed to Google’s AI Overviews and last year’s “helpful content” update, which penalised some publishers that the tech giant felt were creating content “for search engines instead of people”.
Man of Many 2.0 aims to build ‘tangible’ reader relationship
The new “2.0” strategy aims to focus on a more “tangible” relationship with readers, and “avoid being reliant on third parties for traffic or monetising the audience”, Purcell said.
Through eight new newsletters, covering verticals like cars, watches, tech and fashion, Man of Many aims to move away from the algorithm and “offer curated content to readers”. Man of Many’s newsletters currently contain articles already on the site, but Purcell said they are starting to roll out exclusive content.
Readers can opt in to follow particular authors or topics so their experience is more personalised. Over time, this personalisation will help Man of Many gather data to create a “lookalike audience” and fine-tune the publisher’s delivery of content, Purcell explained.
Content such as reviews is now carried across various formats including the website, podcasts and video.
Purcell said: “We already do a lot of work with reviewing products, but now we can show behind the scenes in video through Youtube.”
The publisher has seen success on Youtube against its competitors in the 28 days to 30 June 2025, with the most amount of Youtube views (551,000) among its Australian media brand rivals – including GQ Australia (around 448,000 views), Mamamia (450,000), and Vogue Australia (115,000).
Man of Many will also look to use content from its archives and turn it “multimodal”, as well as debut a podcast network with the launch of several shows.
These include a “Five Minute Finds” series, with each weekly episode delivering one headline, one cultural shift, one wildcard, and one product the team recommends.
“We’re really excited about podcasting because we don’t think anyone, particularly in Australia, has really nailed the men’s lifestyle space in audio,” said Purcell.
The podcast will help the publisher grow revenue, having landed a paid partnership with Spotify as well as through selling ads programmatically across its podcasts, “making sure monetisation is done in the right way from the get go”.
“We often lose out on a lot of campaigns, having a strong male focus. Brands want to target more of a broader sector of readership,” said Purcell, who believes the partnership with Spotify will help them target the market they want.
Plans to bring in reader revenue
Between 70-80% of Man of Many’s revenue is from branded content, which is “mixed in” with social media and video content.
“If we do want to do a sponsorship or a direct buyout [on the podcast], we can have our own journalists read those pieces of content, so it is in our native voice,” Purcell said, emphasising that it must be clear if a brand has contributed to something.
But reader revenue is set to become “a big focus moving forward”, Purcell said.
Man of Many has so far stayed away from having a paid subscription programme, opting for a free membership offer “so our members feel like part of community”.
There will soon be paid membership perks such as early access to content plus events, discounts, giveaways and merchandise.
Purcell added the title won’t shy away from asking for monetary contributions from readers.
“Obviously The Guardian has been incredibly successful with that… We want to do it in a way that isn’t too intrusive to readers, like we’d rather not have consumers have to watch a video before they can access the page.”
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