The Business of Content with Simon Owens

Visit https://memberful.com/simonowens Matt Brown didn’t set off to build his own solo newsletter business, but he fell into it after taking a buyout at Vox Media sports site SB Nation during the height of the pandemic – a period when very few media companies were hiring.   While his SB Nation beat covered all of college sports, Matt decided to niche down with his own newsletter – which was called Extra Points – to focus specifically on the business side of college athletics. This gave him the edge he needed to find a loyal audience, and he quickly scaled it up to thousands of readers.   In my interview with Matt, we talked about why he left Vox Media, how he monetized his newsletter, and what made him want to sell it to a larger media company.

Visit Memberful: http://memberful.com/simonowens   When the media outlet Roca News launched in the year 2020, it started creating just about every kind of content you can imagine. There was a newsletter, a podcast, and accounts on every single social media platform.   But this everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach didn’t seem to work, so the founders decided to focus mostly on a single platform: Instagram. Over the next two years, they leveraged Instagram’s visual storytelling features to deliver a digestible form of news to its young followers. This singular focus allowed it to grow to over 1.1 million followers.   Then, starting in 2022, it branched out into other mediums. It reinvested in its daily newsletter and also launched a TikTok account where it publishes more humorous, entertainment focused content. It also started building a dedicated mobile app, which it’s launching soon.   In this episode, I interviewed co-founder Max Towey about the Roca News origin story, its Instagram growth, and how it’s begun monetizing its content.

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   You’ve probably noticed that true crime is having a bit of a moment right now. Podcasts dedicated to the genre dominate the charts, and every week there’s a new hit series on one of the major TV streaming services.   Jim Brown approached true crime from a different direction.  Rather than launching a show, he used his tech and product skills to build a database of cold cases. Think of it as a kind of Wikipedia for unsolved crimes.    He then created ways for users to submit updates and participate in the discussion around these cases. The site, which is called Uncovered, now attracts tens of thousands of monthly visitors and recently played a key role in solving a cold case.   I spoke to Jim about building the site, how it attracted its initial visitors, and its monetization strategies.

Visit https://signup.whosponsorsstuff.com/sales-pro/?source=simonowenspodcast   Louie Woodall knows his way around a financial disclosure document. Since graduating college, he’s worked for several media outlets that report on the intricacies of financial risk. In 2020, he decided to combine this expertise with his interest in climate change and launched Climate Risk Review, a Substack newsletter that analyzed climate disclosure documents published by major corporations around the world.   The newsletter was a side hustle, but it eventually amassed an influential readership of bankers and other finance professionals, many of whom converted into paying subscribers. Eventually, Louie realized he needed to make a decision: should he continue it as a side hustle or try to make it his fulltime job?   He decided on the latter option, and to help ease that transition he found a company that would not only acquire the newsletter, but also employ him to be its full time editor. In our interview, we talked about the newsletter’s origin story, his monetization strategy, and how the publication will evolve under the umbrella of a larger company.

Visit Memberful: https://memberful.com/simonowens   The podcast industry is around 17 years old, and Libsyn was among the first companies launched to service that industry. For most of that time, it focused on paid podcast hosting, but in recent years it’s acquired companies that specialize in podcast advertising and subscriptions.   Libsyn needs that more diverse product offering if it wants to compete with rising podcast behemoths like Spotify and SiriusXM. I recently sat down with Dave Hanley, who helps run its advertising operations. He told me the story behind Libsyn’s acquisition of his podcast advertising platform and the company’s strategy for recruiting the next generation of hit podcasts.

Check out the News Guest podcast: https://bit.ly/news-guest   When Boye Fajinmi started hosting parties with a few of his friends, he had no idea that it would become a sprawling events and media company. They were just looking for a fun way to network with other creative workers like themselves. At the time, Boye worked at Paramount Pictures and was pursuing a traditional Hollywood career, but the success of those early parties led him to believe that he could build something of his own.   Flash forward a decade, and The Future Party – which is what the company came to be called – now hosts dozens of events a year and works with some of the largest luxury brands in the world. It also publishes a daily newsletter that reaches 150,000 people.    Boye and I sat down to discuss The Future Party’s origin story, its monetization strategy, and why they decided to expand beyond events into media.

Get a 10% discount on a subscription: https://simonowens.substack.com/a30836c1   It’s incredibly difficult to convert your audience from free readers/viewers/listeners into paying subscribers. In this meeting, we’re going to discuss all of the optimization strategies that increase conversion and reduce churn.

Visit Memberful: https://memberful.com/simonowens In terms of career advancement, Brandi Kruse was at the top of her game. As a TV news correspondent in the large media market of Seattle, she was paid more than most of her industry peers, and she even hosted her own longform weekly talk show.    But in late 2021, she quit her job and immediately launched her own podcast called Undivided. Within weeks of the launch, she amassed over 2,000 paying subscribers on Patreon, and she now delivers her commentary and interviews to over 200,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.   How did Brandi find this audience, and why did she ditch her well-paying job in TV? In our interview, she explained how she grew a large following on Facebook and used it as a launching pad for her independent career. She also told me about her efforts to expand beyond local news and into national politics.  

Visit Memberful: http://memberful.com/simonowens   Over the past decade, several major media companies have invested in building out their data journalism operations. ABC News has FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times has The Upshot. And Vox Media runs Vox.com.   These outlets have leveraged publicly available data to explain complicated stories, and the infographics they create are easily shareable on social media.   But most media outlets don’t have the resources to hire an expensive data team, especially if they operate at the local level.   That’s where Stacker comes in. Rather than producing journalism for its owned and operated site, it distributes its content as a newswire that can be syndicated by any news company. What’s more, it doesn’t even charge for this service. That means virtually every news outlet has access to its top-quality reporting.   How can Stacker afford to give away its content for free? To answer that question, I brought on co-founder Noah Greenberg. He walked me through Stacker’s origin story, how it found its initial publishing partners, and how it developed its monetization strategy.

Visit SparkLoop: https://sparkloop.app/partner-network?utm_campaign=simonowens   If you’re aware of Morning Brew, it’s probably because of its daily business newsletter. Since its founding in 2015 by two college students, it’s grown to over 4 million subscribers, and its news digest format has been copied by dozens of other media startups.   But since getting acquired in 2020 by Business Insider, Morning Brew has expanded into new niches in verticals. Not only has it launched several B2B industry newsletters, but it also invested heavily in podcast and video production.   That’s where Dan Toomey comes in. After graduating college in 2020, he pitched Morning Brew’s founders on the idea of him coming on board to create video, and to his surprise, they went for it.   After experimenting with several different formats, Dan started creating sketch comedy videos for TikTok, and it worked. Every morning he woke up, scanned that day’s business news, and chose a topic to parody on video.    In our interview, Dan talked about how he came up with the format, his daily routine for writing scripts, and Morning Brew’s strategy to grow beyond TikTok and launch new video series.