https://www.site/2018-03-05/glava_mash_o_svyazyah_s_silovikami_stoimosti_eksklyuziva_i_otnosheniyah_s_gabrelyanovym

“Even now we have no inviolable people, no prohibitions”

The head of Mash is about connections with the security forces, the cost of an exclusive and relations with Gabrelyanov

The Telegram channel Mash, which is 25% owned by the former deputy editor-in-chief of the Life publication Nikita Mogutin and 75% owned by the head of the NewsMedia media holding Aram Gabrelyanov, has loudly declared itself in the Russian media space. Today the Mash channel is one of the largest in terms of the number of subscribers on Telegram. Nikita Mogutin, who became one of the speakers at the Yekaterinburg media forum “Planerka,” told the site in an interview about how much money Mash spends on purchasing exclusive information, which federal media outlets use the services of their “news service” and why the Mash project could not pay for itself.

— Tell us about your feelings when it became clear that Gabrelyanov’s media holding NewsMedia was disintegrating? How morally did the team, including you, survive this event?

“There was no feeling that something was falling apart.” There was rather a feeling that it was time to do something new. There was an understanding that there (in Life - approx..

— After almost eight years of work, in the summer of 2017, you ceased to be deputy editor-in-chief of the Life portal. Was this due to the fact that at that time you had already created a new project, Mash, which was formally independent from NewsMedia? Or did Aram Gabrelyanov set a condition: either you create and develop your projects, or goodbye?

“It’s simply impossible to sit on two chairs.” There are spades on one chair, and Mash on the other chair. I preferred to sit on the chair with Mash, so I left.

— Tell us, when and how did you get the idea to create Mash? Were you sure that Gabrelyanov would like your idea, he would tell you: “Here’s the money for you, do it”?

— Never in his life can Aram Ashotovich [Gabrelyanov] say that (laughs). This idea has been spinning in my head for quite a long time, not only for me, but also for the guys with whom we eventually created Mash. There was a feeling that [in Life] we began to do something that gradually became unnecessary [for the reader]. We worked for the present, but we wanted to make the future.

And so we thought: oh, how can we do this, or maybe this? Then we thought: let’s create a cool Telegram channel for Life? But no, because Life is still a website, Life is still a brand, and we won’t move it anywhere. Therefore, we realized that if we want to move and develop, we need to get out of our place.

You know, creating Mash now, I think again that our team is creating the real thing. Soon we will want “the future.”

— Why Mash at all? Translated from English as “puree.”

— Let’s be honest now (laughs): I had a large focus group, we sat in a room, and I took turns showing signs with letters to those gathered, looking at their reaction, so we put together the word Mash!

Of course, this was not the case. I just sat there and turned the words over in my head. Soooo, maybe “Contrend”? Like content is trending? Then I started looking through available domains, words, names, but everything was taken. Then I just started typing in the words “mash”, “porridge”, “mixed up”, and I got Mash. There is a series called “Service at the M.A.S.H. Hospital.” I looked at the heroes, I liked their photo, our guys really look like them. Here, in fact, is Mash!

— Gabrelyanov invested 30 million rubles in the stream project Black Elepfant by Ilya Melekhin. How much did your project cost?

— I will not disclose the amount of investment. It's confidential after all. But Ilya is great if he received such funds. I can express to him “my respect.”

- Did you get less?

— I don’t name my amount.

— As far as I know, each of Aram Gabrelyanov’s new projects (Black Elepfant, Mash, “Raisin”, Space, Gigarama, WarGonzo, “Black Mirror”, Shot - website) should have reached self-sufficiency before December 2017. Otherwise they close. In one of your interviews, you said that just in December last year Mash began to pay for itself. In that case, how much does Mash bring in monthly?

— I won’t tell you the total profit from all sites right now. I can only tell you about Telegram. Since May 2017, we have attracted an audience that is very active, they watch us very well, we are not “murdered”, like many channels on Telegram. So, in February 2018, through integrations in Telegram, we earned 3.8 million rubles. At the same time, we spent zero rubles on our channel.

The whole point of Mash on Telegram is waste-free production. It so happened that video content was initially at the forefront of the entire Mash design; we created a product for VKontakte users. But at the same time, we still had a lot of material that we could not turn into a video, and we began writing texts on Telegram. That is, our Telegram channel is a waste product from VKontakte. But these texts became so high-quality and interesting that Telegram became the flagship.

— It all depends on what the advertiser came to us with. We filter it very much because we don't feed people anything they might not like. Watch it happen. If an old friend comes to us, with whom we have been working for a hundred years and ate a ton of salt together, then for him the price of a post on our channel varies from 20 to 35 thousand rubles. It all depends on the complexity of advertising. For those who are not our friends and came to us from the street, the post will cost 45 thousand and above.

By the way, we have a clear price list for advertising channels about cryptocurrency and business: from 50 thousand rubles. Why? Because if a guy wants to tell people how to make a million, but he doesn’t have money for advertising with us, then maybe he needs to learn how to earn money himself?

But we never undertake to advertise something that we have not tried ourselves. We were once offered to advertise a custom online game, after which my colleagues and I downloaded it, played it and made sure that this was not a stupid siphoning of money from the user.

— Well, that’s right, their representatives, always different, write to me consistently 1-2 times a month, but as soon as they hear “300 thousand rubles,” they always end our dialogue with the fact that they will call back. And they don't call! (laughs)

— What if they agree to 300 thousand? Integrity will go away, but a post on Telegram will appear?

“I’ll say right away that I either won’t agree at all, or I’ll advertise for them on my own terms completely.” We will describe in this post absolutely all the risks for users. In this case, Mash is like a pack of cigarettes - we will show subscribers a picture of lung cancer, but there will also be a Marlboro brand.

- Um, I don't even know. Each time is unique. But, by the way, sometimes we are asked to advertise cognac. And, it would seem, everything is fine, but we understand that subscribers will have mixed reactions and then may unsubscribe altogether.

— Judging by your prices, it’s unlikely that Mash makes money only from advertising. You have 27 people on your staff who need to be paid “Moscow” salaries. What non-Mash-branded projects does your team work on?

— The essence of Mash is the opportunity for self-realization for any member of our team. We earn most of our money from special projects (usually entertainment, scientific and educational content - videos, PR campaigns), which are in no way connected with Mash.

But this is how all “new media” work, who are more or less successful.

— Give an example of who you cooperate with and under what conditions?

— There is one very large Russian corporation, whose director once saw Mash, and then looked at his company’s social networks. After that, he held a meeting where there were wild fights due to the low level of virality. Therefore, the PR director of the corporation came to us and asked us to do an examination of all social networks, and then shake them up.

It can also be simpler, for example, when customers come to us and say that they have produced a carrot-flavored chocolate bar that needs to be promoted. The “new media” business is like this because guys in expensive suits understand that their subordinates don’t know how social networks work, but we do!

— How much money do such private projects bring in for Mash?

- This is our main income.

- Why don’t you give numbers? It just turns out that Mash didn’t pay for itself... It was the people from your team working on side projects that paid for your project.

- Naturally! It's a logical process! All these side projects appeared only because we created the once successful Mash. Thanks to third-party projects, we on Telegram can avoid advertising at all for months.

— In December 2017, in an interview with Planerka, you said that the limit of Mash subscribers is 170 thousand people. 2.5 months have passed. You have more than 207 thousand subscribers. The plan has been exceeded, what is the new goal?

— If everything goes well, we will increase the number of subscribers two to three times. I hope to double it by the end of the year.

— You have already said that you would like to buy Mash from Aram Gabrelyanov, who owns about 75% of the project. When do you plan to implement your plans?

- We are in the process. Believe me, this won't happen quickly.

— Do you still want to get rid of the Life trail?

— The train has been gone for a long time. I'm glad that most of our readers do not equate Life and Mash. We are an independent product. You know, we are riding on different horses towards our sunset.

— Still, you worked at Life for many years, how is that experience reflected in your work now? As your former employee once told me: “Life screws everyone indiscriminately.” Are the tactics different now?

- Even now we have no inviolable people, no prohibitions. We honestly make our product, that's all. There has never been a time when someone very important told me: “Don’t do it! Do not write! Don't bet! The main thing is that everything is provable.

— I must say that Life has always had one of the best news services. She currently works for Mash. You continue to use leaks from security forces and officials, which is obvious. But at the same time you ridicule them for the slightest offenses. How do you manage to maintain relationships?

- Wait, “leak” is a purposeful order, and we have Madonna Dunyaeva and Gleb Trifonov - our main backbone, who have been working with news for a long time and can get anything. We simply do not enter into close, loving relationships with any of the departments. Therefore, Mash has no financial or personal obligations; we do and write whatever we want, within the framework of Russian legislation.

— You obviously continue to buy exclusives from the same departments. How much money does this take from your budget? In the heyday of Life, colossal amounts of money were spent on purchasing valuable information, then, according to my information, the budget was sharply reduced.

— (Laughs) I can’t say that this is a huge amount. Nowadays, the participation of readers and journalists is very actively developed. If earlier we had to run for information, now 40-60% of all topics are brought by users.

— And yet, how much do you spend on purchasing exclusive content?

— I won’t name the exact amount. But I can tell you that it will definitely not surprise or amaze you. Not hundreds of billions.

— Life was highly praised in the market for its cool news service, but was disliked for being politically biased and unethical. How is Mash's political position? Are there any political contacts with the Kremlin or with the same security forces who, for example, are asking to kill Navalny or something like that?

— I believe that Mash should be out of politics, that’s for sure. We work only on socially significant events and phenomena, and this is how it should be in the future. It so happens that now there will be elections in Russia and we cannot help but reflect at least minimally this moment, simply because it is very important for people.

If you look at the number of materials that can be conventionally called “political,” we have a ratio of approximately 1 per 100 materials. There are moments of our personal position in relation to this or that candidate, and we reflect them.

— You are also involved in selling exclusive content to other media outlets. What's the price here?

— It all depends on the media itself. Contracts can be long-term or short-term. Selling one video will cost from 20 thousand to several hundred thousand rubles, depending on its significance.

We currently have contracts with several federal media outlets. I tell many editors of publications that we have such a colossal amount of information that we don’t even use a fraction, so we are able to replace the “news service” of some media outlets.

— Who from the federal media buys your content?

- I can not call. There is an iron rule - do not talk about what affects the interests of third parties. It's vile.

You need to be friends with the audience and speak the same language, then they will begin to trust you and even order work. The founder of the exclusive news public Mash, Nikita Mogutin, gave a lecture for the online school of startups RuSSOL at the Deworkacy Corporate Innovations Hub and said that last month alone the channel earned almost 4 million rubles on Telegram. Here are all the most interesting things from his speech: how to get promoted in the messenger, why the news audience is considered “dirty” and why advertise a Rolls-Royce in the “cart”.

How to be cool on Telegram and make money

The Mash Telegram channel is a random creation that no one bet on, that no one really wanted, and that was done for fun. At the first stage, we did not invest in advertising at all; the first 500-700 people came to us on their own. After that, we advertised a little on a small channel of our friends, reached 1 thousand. And suddenly the media noticed us.

The Mash Telegram channel began to flash before people’s eyes more and more often, more often, more often. The explosion came on the wave of super-news about the blocking of Telegram, which still didn’t work, and we began to grow.

In Telegram we never write about things that we are not personally interested in, things that do not evoke emotions in us personally. We decided not to engage in copy-paste, not to process other people’s information (except for a socially important event or extremely important information from Western media about Russia).

Most people don't give a fuck about 99% of the news. There are people who are only interested in “jaundice”, there are people who are only interested in politics, crime, and some narrow audiences, but there is a majority who are interested in what is somehow applicable to them personally.

To work with your audience, you need to clearly understand how you will not piss them off. It's very easy to start pissing someone off if you constantly send private messages. We chose the quantity for ourselves – 4 posts a day, no more. Later we started making 8 posts a day. Now the audience is large, it demands more and more meat, we give up to 20 news items, that’s a lot. Not everyone has time to read them in real time, so we started doing a small digest in the evening - these are 3-4 posts, these are the most important, most interesting news

As for the money on Telegram. Like any platform, large advertisers first took a closer look at it. And now they are starting to take it seriously. Nowadays there are two types of advertising in the cart: a pyramid (I advertise you, so that you advertise someone else, so that he advertises someone else) and brands. They have already arrived in the cart. If you are big, serious, have good numbers and important people read you, then premium brands will start coming to you.

At first I was surprised when they started knocking on our door and asking us to advertise Rolls-Royce. Why advertise Rolls-Royce in a telegram channel? But a huge number of Russian officials have signed up for us. Who else should show Rolls-Royce advertising if not them?

There are no statistics in the cart. There is a teststat that can be used to measure some indicators, but you cannot measure the characteristics of the audience with it. Therefore, we did it simply: from time to time we uploaded a Google spreadsheet with a questionnaire for subscribers: age, interests. We did this with 102 thousand subscribers, I think 30 or 40 thousand responded to it, that is, half the audience. This is already enough to make a cut.

We found out the interests, gender, and stimuli of the audience. We unexpectedly found ourselves with almost equal numbers of men and women, with a slight bias towards men. Age - 18-35, residence - Moscow/regions.

Where to start your channel on Telegram, Nikita Mogutin's recipe

Fill the channel with 5-6 scrolls worth of content so that the user has something to read before subscribing.

If Telegram is blocked, part of our audience will fall off, part of the audience will be able to read us from under various services, but even if everything is critical, we will be able to find a way to hearts on other platforms by simply moving the main vector to the other side. Thanks to our third-party advertising projects and content sales, we exist confidently, close our budget to profit and without Telegram.

About Mash

New media now means real freedom, a real lack of censorship, the ability to do what you want.

We at Mash have never encountered a situation where we were not allowed to write about something. The most important thing now is, given this freedom, to be responsible to your readers, respect them, love them and not be rude to anyone.

Now Mash employs 26 people on staff and 300-500 outside the staff, remotely, stringers - we rely on them. These are editors, cameramen, journalists who help us edit videos in their free time, tell us the news and make money from it.

We have three people working on Telegram and another 16 people extracting information for all other platforms. We reached self-sufficiency at the end of November, after which we became profitable. Over the past month, we made a record profit from Telegram alone - 3 million 800-something thousand rubles.

Selling our content brings us good money. We receive a huge amount of information and videos because we know how to search and know how to do it. We sell this to TV channels and other media, to anyone who works with us.

Everybody's making news today

Before the advent of social networks, days, weeks, months, a long period of time passed between the event and publication, until journalists found out about it and wrote to the newspapers. Let's look at the example of the sinking of the Titanic. He drowned on the night of April 14-15. The first news about it in the media only appeared on the afternoon of the 15th: the Evening Sun wrote that the Titanic sank. All people are saved. The liner was towed to Halifax. And only on the morning of April 16, the first lists of survivors were published in The New York Times. As it happens now: a plane crashed. Usually this becomes known within 10-15 minutes. The first lists of dead, casualties, or news that people survived appear literally within the first hour. This is because the information field is now very saturated, eyewitnesses post their photos on social networks. Journalists have been replaced by ordinary users.

The classic user learns everything in his news feed, from friends’ messages. There are not many people who do real fact-checking, who climb websites, compare information and put together the perfect picture.

Imagine a very large circle, a wide circle: this is the print media. Inside it there is a smaller circle – these are information sites. Within this circle, another one is social networks. Inside it is already quite small - these are messengers. And in the very center is the user, the reader. The further the circle is from him, the longer it takes for information to reach him, the longer it is processed, processed, changed, and often turns into something completely different.

In messengers, you, as the author of “new media,” find yourself in the most intimate sphere of a person. You have a mobile phone screen, you receive a message there from your wife, from your child - and messages from Mash also fall there. This is an area in which you need to earn maximum trust from the reader.

If, as a journalist, you communicated with him from the position of a mentor, then now imagine yourself as a politician in a crowd of people - everyone is shouting at you, yelling at you, and you are trying, waving a saber, to tell your truth. If the audience is at war with you, then you won’t succeed. You need to start communicating information in a way that makes sense to your reader and is simple.

Secrets of reposts, trust and impressions

The news audience is considered “dirty”, it is very heavy. Because people most often come to specific news, rather than read them all all the time. They came to you, say, for a plane crash, murder or something else, read it and leave. At best, they signed up for you, but after some time they may still leave.

If you are loved by your audience, you must pay attention to the most important indicator. This is engagement - how the audience reacts to your material, how they interact with it, communicate with your content - likes, reposts, comments or “send to friends”.

Involvement is the reason why all this exists. If views can be increased and no one except the pros will notice that something is wrong, then the involvement is immediately visible: if the comments lag behind, but there are a lot of views, if there are few likes or, on the contrary, there are too many, but there are few reposts.

When we first launched Mash, we came across an interesting thing. Our views immediately began to grow, but the reposts were a complete mess. If you are not reposted, then you remain within your already assembled audience. Your reach is not growing, more people will not know about you.

We began to look into it and realized that a person reposts what he says about himself. Why are people so good at reposting Navalny’s investigations? Because everyone wants to seem or be fighters for justice, to say: “yes, I also believe that something needs to be changed.” Why does porn have millions of views and only a few reposts? Because everyone watches porn, but no one wants everyone to know about it. A person reposts what creates his portrait, his face. Having realized this, we began to approach our content differently: we began to speak to the audience in human language, to convey what we would like to be conveyed to us.

Look for emotions. Pull out something that will touch something in a person’s soul. It can be a negative emotion or a positive emotion, it can be good or bad, irritation, anger, rage, love, melancholy, sadness, fun, laughter and anything else, but what will affect a person is what will make empathize with him.

Impression is also important. Now, when we missed some news, didn’t notice something, didn’t tell us about something, users come to us and write: “Why doesn’t Mash write about this, why are you hiding it?!” People read it somewhere else, and after that they came to you and asked - why didn’t you tell about it? They expected you to say so. This is the most important thing - this impression.

Mash is an Internet project launched in the spring of 2017. Mash is one of the first to find exclusive news and spread viral stories across the Internet. Now the project news is actively used by most media, including federal ones.

Who runs it?

The first editor-in-chief of Mash was Nikita Mogutin, the former deputy editor-in-chief of Life. The project started with money from Aram Gabrelyanov, the CEO of the News Media holding, which owns Life.

In November 2017, Mash became self-sufficient (in March 2018, the profit from the telegram channel amounted to 3.8 million rubles), and in the spring Mogutin bought out his share of shares (51%). In September 2018, Mogutin left the project. “Mash is perhaps the best thing that could happen to me,” Mogutin commented on his decision on Facebook. After his departure, Daria Nasonova became the editor-in-chief of the project.

According to Mogutin, as of April 2018, Mash’s staff includes 26 full-time journalists (the majority are former Life employees) and 300-500 freelancers (editors, cameramen and others).

Why is it important?

Mash was the first to give news about the drunken adventures of Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev and told this story in detail. Mash showed everything: from the beating of the driver of the Channel One presenter and an official of the Ministry of Industry and Trade by football players to the interrogation of players by the police.

Over the year and a half of its existence, Mash has gathered a huge audience:
. Telegram (about 400 thousand readers)
. VKontakte (1.1 million readers)
. Facebook (110 thousand readers)

According to Medialogia, based on the results of the first half of 2017, Mash became the most cited Telegram channel among Russian media. Now, according to this indicator, the channel ranks second (first is the political channel “NEZYGAR”).

What other exclusive stories did they find?

Mash rarely writes about politics. The main specialization is road accidents, personal stories and current events.

Here are specific examples where Mash found and developed important topics:

. Details of the death of Eduard Uspensky were reported
. They took a resonant comment from a judge who came to the store with a naked woman
. An employee of Center “E” has been identified, against whom a case of torture was opened