It’s a sad day for independent women’s publishing as Wendy Harmer and I, along with our team, fold up the Hoopla tent.



I was asked to write a post about why the Hoopla didn’t work. But we think it did work, and very well in fact. We see it as a brilliant success and it’s a story we are proud to tell. So why are we closing?

Two reasons: we were pioneers, and too early for this market, and our pockets are not as deep as our competitors. We simply can’t continue to run at a loss.

It was interesting to read a story in this week’s media section of the Australian titled “Websites Catching on to Smart Women”. It was essentially a puff piece for the new “women’s sites” from Bauer and News Corp, and completely ignores the Hoopla – the independent site targeted at women over 40 that started the whole conversation four years ago.

Our readers often talk about feeling invisible in life, and the Hoopla has always known how they felt. We knew there were plenty of “mummy sites” in the market but were determined to talk to women as women first. If our readers were mothers, that was secondary – it did not define them. The Hoopla distinguished itself by recognising that women have a diverse set of interests. They came to the site to read about politics, the environment, health and education, and they came to have a laugh. It was always our intention to treat women as intelligent human beings rather than as the primary grocery buyer.

We created a publication that was written through the eyes of women, for both men and women to enjoy (over 20% of our readers are men). We challenged everything people thought to be true of the 40-plus age group, including the fact they have a wicked sense of humour. We knew no publisher in Australia would create it, so we bravely set out to do it ourselves.

Our research showed us that 50-year-old women wanted more than what they were being served up in magazines. The women in our demographic were making changes in social justice, business and government that were revolutionary and irreversible.

I have spent the past four years constantly looking at ways for a small publisher to make a buck – from affiliate sales, paywalls, advertising and content syndication. Three years ago we predicted that, although there are many little independent players in the market, in the future it would probably come down to a couple of big international players, and the future is now here.

The $2.6bn publishing juggernaut Bauer launches its “women’s network” in two weeks with a team 10 times the size of the Hoopla. The AOL giant Huffington Post will be here in a matter of months with a strong women’s vertical. The Guardian addresses more and more women’s social and political issues. News Corp have started RendezView on Monday and Jason Lavigne and Mia Freedman, with Debrief Daily, are aggressive local competitors with deep pockets.

Then there are those already in the market: Fairfax’s Daily Life and Private Media’s Women’s Agenda, who we have happily lived alongside for three years now. To say it’s crowded is an understatement.

Australian business and, in particular Australian media, is well-known internationally for not supporting innovative companies. Local investors have traditionally been willing to invest only once they see a model working in an international market, be it TV, print or online publications.

Once Harmer, founding editor Caroline Roessler and I had exhausted our resources two years ago, we had to go in search of capital. Raising it for our market – women over 40 – was not an easy task. It is estimated there is about $100m of capital in Australia in the seed space and $6bn in demand, so there is a huge mismatch.

Deanne Weir and Cass O’Connor, two intelligent women over 40, who also realised they had nothing to read, dug deep for us and for that we will be forever grateful. It took women to start it, two women to give it some capital and we were off for a couple more years. But then we were faced with the media agency dance.

Convincing someone who is often male and under the age of 25 that light bladder leakage could be dealt with via witty and honest native advertising took some convincing. They usually couldn’t look you in the eye once you’ve mentioned it. Menopause, and sex for women over 40, usually had them sweating and trying to get out the door.

No independent digital publication can rely on advertising alone. We learned about the difference between hard and soft paywalls the hard way. We saw success with the introduction of a soft paywall in October, that allowed three free stories a month, but it came too late.

The Hoopla was the first ever women’s site to get a press pass in Canberra. We were supported by the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance because we paid all our journalists. We have never held back from saying what readers want to hear first and foremost, not what advertisers want to hear. But ultimately, ad dollars are the greatest source of revenue.

The truth is, unlike all of our international competitors, we didn’t have a few million in startup funds. Also, unlike our competitors, we couldn’t afford to run at a loss for a few years while the ad market caught up.

So, to use Wendy Harmer’s words, it’s “alley oop” for now. The Hoopla brand is respected, brimming with integrity and it holds its head high as it closes this chapter and we work towards a future incarnation. The reaction from our readers on social media and the site today confirm that we will be missed. I know you can’t do an MBA in digital publishing just yet but today, I feel like I just finished paying to do one. It was a blast.