The Business of Content with Simon Owens

Max Rofagha didn’t have a background in media prior to launching Finimize. He also didn’t have a background in finance for that matter. It was while conducting research on how to manage his own investments that he saw an opportunity for a daily newsletter aimed at helping millennials become more literate in finance. Flash forward four years and Finimize now has over 1 million subscribers, a staff of financial analysts, and a worldwide community of young professionals who often meet up for in-person events. I recently interviewed Max about his early audience development strategy, how his subscribers organize their own in-person events, and why he decided to launch a subscription-funded mobile app.

Per Grankvist had the kind of media career most journalists only dream of. He was a high-profile columnist for a leading newspaper and a regular face on one of Sweden’s top broadcast networks. But over time he grew disillusioned with mainstream media and its tendency to dumb down coverage of complicated policy issues. So Per quit his traditional media jobs and launched his own outlet. It started with just an Instagram account that explained thorny election issues, but from there it blossomed into an entire media outlet that spanned across social media, podcasts, and newsletters. I recently interviewed Per about how he built the company, his approach to monetization, and whether he misses working for mainstream media publications.

Peruse a newsstand full of men’s magazines and you’ll probably notice a few common themes. The cover either features a bikini model or a suit-clad male celebrity. Inside, you’ll find stories meant to appeal to what many in the mid-20th century would have considered the “ideal” man -- articles about scotch, cigars, and custom suits. You won’t find many of those kinds of features in MEL Magazine, a digital-only publication that launched in 2015. Owned and operated by Dollar Shave Club, MEL aims its content at the under-40, educated, likely-urban male...a man less inclined to traditional gender roles who is much more in touch with his feelings and spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet. I recently interviewed editor-in-chief Josh Schollmeyer about how he came to define this 21st century male, where his staff sources its article ideas, and how Dollar Shave Club will profit from its investment in the magazine.

Lon Seidman didn’t launch on YouTube with the goal of becoming a top gadget reviewer. In fact, he stumbled upon that aspect of his career while struggling to run a video local news startup in Connecticut. Almost on a whim, he recorded a video review about one of the cameras he bought for his startup, and to his surprise, the video blew up. Flash forward a decade, and Lon now has tens of millions of views across YouTube and Amazon. He managed to carve out a niche among a crowded field of gadget reviewers, and he’s now making a pretty good living through a mixture of YouTube advertising, affiliate sales, and Patreon subscriptions. We walked through how he accomplished all this in our interview.

If you had to make a list of technologies that are most important to the average person’s day-to-day life, data centers would sit near the top of that list, and yet chances are you know very little about them. There are a few reasons for this. For one, they’re not sexy in the way that an iPhone or a cutting-edge drone is sexy. But also the people and companies who run data centers are fairly secretive, mostly to protect their machines from any sort of attack. This combination of secrecy and obscurity has made Rich Miller’s expertise very lucrative. He’s spent the last two decades covering data center tech for various news outlets he’s owned. His current site, Data Center Frontier, is a must-read for anyone working in the $60 billion+ industry. I interviewed Rich about how he accidentally fell into the beat, why he sold his first data center site, and what made him want to start a brand new one from scratch. 

Back in late 2019, nearly all the writers for the beloved sports site Deadspin resigned en masse after butting heads with the private equity executives who owned the website. After they left, there was lots of speculation about where those writers would turn up. Would they simply get new jobs, or would they band together to create their own site? And then in July 2020 we got our answer: they launched Defector, an employee-owned publication that would be monetized mostly through paid subscriptions. To build the site, they turned to a guy named Austin Smith. Austin is the founder of an agency called Alley Interactive, and over the past decade he’s helped build and maintain the websites of many of the most well-known news publishers in the world. I sat down and interviewed Austin about his career in media, what goes into building a good publishing platform, and why he’s recently begun working with news startups like Defector to help them get off the ground.

Abby Glassenberg runs a trade association called the Craft Industry Alliance. It has over 1,600 paying members who work in the arts and crafts industry. It hosts conferences, schedules networking events, publishes industry news, and provides ongoing education. Pretty much the kind of services that most trade associations offer.  But unlike most trade associations, this one grew out of a one-person blog. Abby started it as a hobby, but it soon amassed a large audience, which then led to a book deal, a thriving Etsy store, and a popular podcast. I recently interviewed Abby about why she went the trade association route  and how she’s growing its revenue by 20% a month. 

In just about every article about TikTok, it’s portrayed as a video repository created by and for teens. Indeed, nearly every single one of its top-earning creators are under the age of 20, and polls have found that it ranks second only to Snapchat as U.S. teens’ favorite social media app. Zarna Garg is an exception to the rule in multiple ways. For one, she’s a 45-year-old mom who barely even knew TikTok existed a year ago. And while most top users traffic in dance videos, lip syncs, and comedy sketches, Zarna’s specialty is standup comedy. Many of her jokes aim to capture the South Asian immigrant experience, and she says she’s carved out a niche explored by very few comedians, both inside the U.S. and in India. I interviewed Zarna about how she cracked the TikTok algorithm, what impact her success has had on her comedy career, and how she’s leveraging that success to try to break into Hollywood.    

If you traveled back in time 100 years and perused your average newsstand, you’d find dozens of magazines that published serialized fiction. Millions of subscribers eagerly awaited new installments from their favorite authors, and a serialized story in a high circulation magazine could launch a new writer’s career. But by the turn of the century, serialized fiction was all but gone. Or at least it was in written and audio form. TV shows, on the other hand, began to adopt complex, serialized narratives, and by 2015 these kinds of shows were dominating both online and offline discussion. That’s the same year a new app called Serial Box launched. Serial Box operates a lot like a TV studio. Its stories are delivered in weekly installments. Each series is written by a collaborative writers room. The most successful series will often continue for multiple seasons. There’s only one major difference: instead of producing TV shows, Serial Box publishes text and audio stories that could be read or listened to in the same way you consume a novel. I recently interviewed co-founder Molly Barton about Serial Box’s origin story, how the company produces new series, and why she’s pursuing adaptations outside of the Serial Box app.

Polina Marinova had the kind of media career that many journalists dream of. After a brief stint at a media startup, she landed a job at Fortune Magazine and eventually got the role of head writer for Term Sheet, its daily newsletter on deals and dealmakers. After six years there, her resume and profile probably could have gotten her any mainstream media job she wanted. But instead, she left that steady job in March -- in the beginning of a massive recession -- to focus on her Substack newsletter full-time. The newsletter is called The Profile, and though she was running it as a side hustle while working at Fortune, she didn’t debut the paid version until after she left. I recently interviewed Polina about why she decided to make the jump during such uncertain economic times, how she differentiates the free from the paid content, and her strategy for growing the newsletter’s audience these past six months.