Hey folks, happy Monday. Today’s newsletter is going to be a little different in subject and format.
I spend a lot of time speaking to people within the media industry over the phone. Some of those calls result in podcast interviews. Others end up as longform articles. But for the most part, I focus my journalism on other people’s businesses.
Sometimes, though, I get questions about my own media business. After all, I’ve been running this newsletter since 2014 and as a full-time business entity since February 2020. I do occasionally pick up insights through my own work that would apply to other media outlets, especially those operating newsletters and/or podcasts.
So I’m going to do a once-a-month feature that pulls back the curtains a little bit and talks about the things I’m observing as a media entrepreneur.
Ok, let’s jump into it…
Content
This month I published four free newsletters, four paid newsletters, two longform articles, two podcast episodes, and two vlogs.
The piece of content that required the most labor was my 3,000-word article about the YouTube channel The King of Random and its efforts to scale up from a one-man operation to a multi-platform media company with over a dozen employees. Not only did I interview some of its top executives, but I went through its extensive archives of videos to map its evolution into a social media behemoth with 15+ million subscribers. That took a lot of time to research and write.
The piece of content that reached the biggest audience was my article on the gritty reality for Substack’s middle class. I think it really spoke to creators who are currently slaving away in the content salt mines, and as a result it got widely shared across Twitter. So far, it’s racked up about 4,300 views.
Audience reach
All together, my longform content generated 22,184 impressions this month. The average open rate was 40%. I also drove an additional 396,679 impressions across social media. Average it out, and my content was seen 13,926 times per day.
The average newsletter open rate this month was 41%. I grew my paid subscriptions by 10.5% and my free newsletter signups by 5%. All together, I have 83,790 followers across all the platforms I publish to regularly.
Miscellaneous notes and observations
If I had to name my biggest frustration this month, it was productivity loss due to factors outside of my control. If I’m being honest, that’s probably my biggest frustration for most months.
I’ve written about this previously within my newsletter, but when you’re a solo creator, you’re under constant pressure to produce a steady stream of both free and paid content. If you don’t put out enough free content, then you’re not attracting the newsletter signups that can be later converted into paid subscriptions. If you’re not producing enough paid content, then your current subscribers have a higher likelihood of canceling their subscriptions.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in the newsletter, but I have a chronic autoimmune disease called Crohn’s. Luckily, my doctor and I have found a drug regimen that keeps it under control, but every now and then I’m subjected to a bunch of appointments that can eat up a lot of time when you account for both the visit itself and the travel. This month was particularly bad, in that I had to visit a gastroenterologist, a colorectal surgeon, a Labcorp, and an MRI center. Add all that up together, and I lost basically two days of productivity, which was enough to ensure that I had a week when I didn’t publish a single longform piece of content.
Two days of lost productivity might not sound like much, but remember that this is a chronic disease. If you multiply two days into 12 months, then that’s more than a month of productivity lost in a year. Over the span of a decade, you’ve basically lost a year of work productivity compared to a person who’s completely healthy.
Anyway, I’m not telling you all this to elicit sympathy, but just to illustrate the factors that affect growth and are outside of a creator’s control. This is why more and more creators are teaming up — so they can relieve some of the content production burden on any single individual.
In happier news, this was one of my best months for paid conversions to my newsletter. I feel like I’m getting better about communicating the value of my podcast/newsletter and convincing people that it’s something worth paying for. I also think people are just sharing my journalism more consistently, which has been great for organic growth.
These last few months, I’ve been dabbling in vlogging, not because I think it’ll ever be a big money maker for me, but because getting some more facetime with my audience might engender a stronger connection and lead to more paid conversions. I’ve finally reached a point where I can come up with a video idea, write a rough script, shoot it, edit it, and upload it, all within just three or four hours. The end product isn’t amazing, but it’s decent. One of my videos even managed to generate 1,200 YouTube views in its first week! I’m going to try my best to publish at least one video a week moving forward.
And now for the ask…
OK, so I have two requests for you.
The first is that, if you’re not already a paid subscriber, please become one. Every day I wake up with one goal in mind: deliver you insights that will help you in your career as a content creator. If you feel that I’ve achieved this goal, then consider supporting my work. Today is the last day I’m offering a 30% discount for your first year. Next week I revert back to the standard 20% discount. Just use the link below:
Here’s my second request: recommend this newsletter on social media. Unlike some newsletters that spend quite a bit on paid media, I rely pretty much entirely on organic word-of-mouth. Recommending my work to your colleagues only takes a few moments, and yet it means the world to me.
Here, I’ll even provide you some language to copy and paste:
If you make a living with online content, @simonowens’s media newsletter is a must-read. Every week he publishes a new case study that goes deep on the business of content.
Subscribe here: simonowens.substack.com
Anyway, thanks for reading this little update on my business, and look for this newsletter to return to its regularly scheduled programming this week. Please let me know if you have any questions I can address in a future issue.
I'm curious how you handle distribution? How do you make sure you find new audiences to introduce yourself to?