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Man of Many: how a men's lifestyle publisher built a $4M a year business
Man of Many sells men's lifestyle news and product coverage to an audience of men primarily aged 25–44, and its founder reported $4M a year in revenue in a July 2023 Starter Story interview.
How it started
In the founder interview published July 27, 2023, co-founder Scott Purcell said he and Frank conceived Man of Many in December 2012 after moving into a shared apartment. Their idea grew from personal interests in technology, hobbies and discoveries found across websites, with coverage intended to span products, culture and style. The first version was a simple WordPress page made with a customizable theme.
In Purcell’s account, the site began with one unique product each day. As the response and readership grew, the founders increased the cadence to two or three products a day. Both kept day jobs while working on the publication at night and on weekends. Purcell said the mounting workload pushed both founders to quit in June 2016 and run the site full-time.
Man of Many was self-funded. In the same July 27, 2023 account, Purcell said that choice encouraged deliberate decisions and a focus on sustainability, but it also meant slower growth than external investment could have enabled. Infinite scroll, SEO refinement and advertising monetization were among the initiatives that took a back seat.
What it sells and how it charges
As of September 30, 2026, the official website describes Man of Many as an Australian independent digital news platform focused on products, culture and style. Its editorial coverage includes technology and appliances, audio and smartphones, fashion and grooming, watches and cars, culture and advice, health and fitness, food and travel, gaming, movies and sport.
The site’s core offer is editorial news and product coverage, with a Subscribe option presented in the navigation. No subscription price is stated on the homepage as of September 30, 2026, so none can be quoted accurately. Man of Many’s business model combines advertising, sponsorships and affiliate income.
How it got its first customers and what kept growth going
Purcell said he believed the first readers returned largely because they trusted the founders’ curation and product choices. He described the broader acquisition strategy as “a multi-faceted approach”: social media, SEO, email marketing, partnerships and high-quality content production, rather than dependence on a single route.
The social component was built around original short-form video made for individual platforms, including TikTok and YouTube Shorts, and supported by a dedicated social and video team. By the July 27, 2023 interview, an Australian Fashion Week vox pop had received more than 3.5 million views. SEO work included following Google’s helpful-content and review guidance.
Pinterest was described as the site’s second-largest traffic driver, with more than 10 pins shared daily and 122,000 monthly followers as of the July 2023 interview. A June 2023 partnership with Pinterest Australia produced original content for Men’s Health Week. Purcell also said exclusive publishing deals with Microsoft and Apple broadened the site’s reach.
What kept the model moving, in his account, was audience trust, diversified distribution and operational delegation. He said the business needed a loyal audience before introducing monetization, and later identified learning to delegate as a central lesson as the team expanded. A brand rediscovery project also clarified the company’s purpose, vision and values.
The numbers
The clearest dated snapshot comes from the July 27, 2023 founder interview. These are founder-reported figures from that date, not current revenue or current audience counts.
| Measure | What the founder reported |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $4M a year, reported in July 2023; this is a historical annual figure, not a present-day claim. |
| Revenue growth | 16.4% over the same period in the previous year, reported July 27, 2023. |
| Monthly audience | Over 2 million readers each month, primarily aged 25–44, reported July 27, 2023. |
| Social following | Nearly 700,000 followers, up 75% in the previous 12 months, reported July 27, 2023. |
| Email list | 150,000 subscribers at the last count reported in the July 27, 2023 interview. |
| Store and affiliate sales | More than $1.7 million in sales in the previous year, reported July 27, 2023. |
| People | 2 founders and 13 employees at the July 27, 2023 interview. |
| Base | Sydney NSW, Australia, stated in the July 27, 2023 interview. |
How it compares
According to 1M.chat’s analysis of 1,997 businesses with founder-reported revenue in Starter Story interviews from 2015–2026, 162 businesses in the Newsletters, blogs & media category had founder-reported revenue. The category median was $8.5K in monthly revenue, while 11% of those businesses were at $1M a year or more. The median was 1.0 employee, and 83% had been started by one founder.
Among the 120 category businesses with channel information, the most frequently reported channels were organic social media at 68%, SEO and organic search at 62%, email and newsletters at 43%, and content marketing at 37%. Man of Many’s reported channel mix overlaps with that list through social, SEO, email and content, while partnerships provided an additional route in Purcell’s account. In the same analysis, 1M.chat’s case-level comparison places Man of Many at about 47 times the category median.
Man of Many’s July 2023 snapshot—2 founders and 13 employees—also differed from a category median of 1.0 employees and an 83% one-founder share. That describes scale and structure; it does not establish that employee count caused the revenue result. The category sample is also self-selected: it includes founders who chose to be interviewed, not a random sample of all businesses.
What a founder can take from it
- Set a precise editorial promise before widening distribution. If you begin with a defined reader need, each article and product choice can reinforce the same proposition. Man of Many began with men’s gear and product discovery before expanding across broader lifestyle subjects.
- Plan for several audience routes. If you rely on one channel, you inherit its volatility. Man of Many’s reported mix used search, social, email, partnerships and content to distribute the brand across different settings.
- Test monetization against an existing audience. If readers do not yet return for the editorial product, adding sales channels may create pressure without strengthening the foundation. Purcell specifically placed trust and audience loyalty before monetization.
- Delegate as the workload changes. If you retain every task because you started the business, owner decisions can become the constraint. Purcell said learning to delegate lightened the founders’ load and helped the team take ownership.
- Make the self-funding trade-off explicit. If you bootstrap, decide which experiments can wait and which delays become damaging. Purcell said deliberate pacing supported sustainability but also postponed features, SEO work and advertising monetization.
Sources
Revenue, team and start-cost figures are what the founder reported at the interview date, not current figures and not a prediction of what you will earn. Product and pricing facts come from the business's own website as checked on 30 September 2026. Method & sources · Disclosure