The Business of Content with Simon Owens

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.

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ So the format to this podcast is pretty straightforward and consistent. I bring on a media entrepreneur or executive and interview them about their craft. But I’m also sort of a media entrepreneur myself, in that six months ago I launched a paid Substack newsletter that I hope to grow into a full-time job. Growth has been slow but steady, and over the six-month period I’ve experimented with a number of strategies to boost signups. Some worked, others didn’t. I’ve still got a ways to go before it’s completely replaced my consulting income, but I think I’ve made enough progress that it’s worth pausing and looking back at some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. So strap yourself in, because we’re about to dive deep on my paid newsletter strategy.

With the journalism industry in freefall, there’s a good chance that your local newspaper is experimenting with some kind of digital subscription offering. In many cases, this involves some kind of metered paywall where you’re expected to start paying after consuming a pre-determined number of articles. Hundreds of newspapers have installed paywalls like this, but they’ve seen mixed results, with many reporting disappointing revenue numbers. But is content the only thing an audience will pay for? That’s a question Doug Lesmerises, a Cleveland.com sports columnist, sought to answer. A few years ago he co-founded a popular sports podcast but had a difficult time attracting advertisers. Then some executives from his newspaper’s parent company approached him with a new product called Subtext. It provides a simple way to allow paying subscribers to exchange text messages with Doug and other hosts. The service was a surprise hit, and Doug now uses the app to crowdsource questions for the podcast and send his paying subscribers quick-hit analysis when Ohio sports news breaks. I interviewed Doug about how he incorporated texting into his show and what other local journalism outfits can learn from his success.

When Naoise McNally and her business partner launched One Fab Day, neither of them had any experience working for a media company. Naoise didn’t even have much knowledge of the wedding industry outside of planning her own wedding. But the lack of wedding-focused internet resources in Ireland presented a clear market opportunity, so they went for it. Flash forward several years, and the site now has a full time staff and an interesting business model. Instead of relying on traditional advertising, it charges wedding vendors to be listed in an index it curates for readers.  I recently interviewed Naoise about One Fab Day’s founding, how she settled on a business model, and what she hopes the site can accomplish now that it’s owned by a major media company. 

Quick question: how big do you think the global freight industry is? If your guess is in the billions, then you’re aiming too low. According to some estimates, global logistics generate somewhere in the range of $8 and $12 trillion annually. For Craig Fuller, that number represents a massive opportunity. His company Freight Waves covers this industry across text, video, and podcasts. But Freight Waves is a lot more than just a trade publication; it also delivers data and intelligence. In fact, it’s much more analogous to a Bloomberg LP, which in addition to its massive media business also generates billions of dollars a year from its expensive Bloomberg terminals.  I interviewed Craig about how he built his expertise in freight, where the company sources its data, and why it recently took on venture capital investment.

When Terrell Johnson launched on Substack, he had no intention of rolling out a paid newsletter. He was just trying to escape Mailchimp’s expensive fees and liked that Substack would send his newsletter for free. About a decade earlier, Terrell had created HalfMarathons.net, a running focused website that grew so popular that at one point it was generating six figures in revenue just from Google Adsense. His free newsletter served mostly as a form of marketing for the website, but he eventually began to wonder if his most engaged readers would be willing to pay for it. So he flipped on Substack’s payment features, and while it wasn’t an overnight success, he’s gradually grown it into an impressive community of paid subscribers. I interviewed Terrell about where he got the idea for HalfMarathons.net, how he built up an audience, and why he eventually grew to distrust Google as his primary traffic driver.  

Josh Spector was blogging before most people even knew what a blog was. Over the span of a decade, he started and abandoned several of them, often before they had a chance to amass much of an audience. But in 2011 he got more serious about audience growth for a blog he ran that focused on teaching standup comedians how to market themselves, and to help drive traffic to it he launched a newsletter. Pretty quickly, he grew addicted to the newsletter medium, and a few years later he merged a couple of newsletters he was running into a single list and renamed it For the Interested. Since 2016, he’s been sending out new issues each week featuring ideas to help creators to produce, promote, and profit from their creations. For the Interested now has over 25,000 subscribers, and Josh recently launched a paid spinoff newsletter. I recently interviewed Josh about how he grew his audience, the role his newsletter plays in his consulting business, and why he thinks so many writers are approaching paid newsletters the wrong way.