How to build an effective content production schedule
It starts with being incredibly honest with yourself about your own limitations.
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button:
Hey folks! Today I’m answering questions from readers. If you have a question you want me to answer in a future newsletter, leave it in this thread.
How to build an effective content production schedule
Let’s start with two related questions:
From George Aliferis
I'm working on aligning / streamlining / optimizing my content across various platforms (tiktok, Yt, podcast, newsletter). How can publishers optimize their workflow across platforms?
From Modupe Oloruntoba
Hello :) I guess my question is operational: Do you have a [standard operating procedure] for all your newsletter related tasks (including the actual writing) and if so, how did you build it? How did you go from experimenting at the start to standardising your process (but still leaving room to update/improve it without it being a time suck chore each time)? … I am already finding the time management and organising aspect really challenging alongside freelance writing and consulting work. I think I need to cut the weekly guesswork down to a minimum and apart from the content calendar I already have, I think an SOP is a way to do that. Thoughts?
I think one of the greatest hurdles for aspiring creators is achieving content consistency. They go all gung-ho into a new project — whether it’s a newsletter, podcast, or YouTube channel — and then fall off the bandwagon a few weeks later as their content production peters out.
One of the major reasons creators fail to maintain consistency is a lack of production schedule. You have to think logistically about all the various components that go into creating, editing, and promoting a single piece of content and then set aside ample amounts of time to complete all those tasks. Instead, so many creators approach their content production in an ad hoc manner, and it doesn’t take long for them to start missing deadlines. Suddenly, your weekly YouTube series is only coming out twice a month, then once a month, and then not at all.
If you talk to a professional creator, you’ll often find that their work weeks are incredibly consistent in terms of how they schedule tasks. Let’s start with mine. For simplicity’s sake, I won’t include phone calls and podcast interviews, since those are somewhat of a moving target based on the other person’s availability.
Sunday night
Catch up on email
Form my to-do list for the week
Monday
8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.:
Answer emails
Check in with sponsors to update them on past ad performance and/or solicit their ad copy.
Update a spreadsheet that includes all my audience stats
Schedule out tweets to my evergreen content
Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels
1 p.m. to 10 p.m.:
Research and write that week’s main newsletter
Tuesday
8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.:
Answer emails
Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels
1 p.m. to 10 p.m.:
Edit the audio and video versions of my podcast
Publish podcast
Wednesday
8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.:
Answer emails
Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels
1 p.m. to 10 p.m.:
Edit and publish my main newsletter
Catch up on miscellaneous tasks that have piled up.
(I purposefully keep my Wednesday afternoon pretty open for reasons I’ll explain below)
Thursday
8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.:
Answer emails
Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels
1 p.m. to 10 p.m.:
This one varies somewhat. For weeks I’m hosting an Office Hours Zoom call with subscribers, I’ll host the call and then spend the remainder of the day editing the video recording of the call.
On alternating weeks when I publish my Q&A newsletters, this is that day I spend responding to reader questions. So I wrote this newsletter you’re reading right now on a Thursday.
Friday
8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.:
Answer emails
Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels
1 p.m. to 6 p.m.:
Edit/publish my Q&A newsletter OR send out the Office Hours video recording to subscribers
Schedule weekend tweets to my evergreen content
I then devote the rest of the afternoon to a longterm project. Right now I’m pulling together my first online video course that I plan to start selling in January.
(I should issue a quick caveat that I don’t literally work from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. I have lots of built-in breaks for things like lunch, exercise, and dinner.)
I stay pretty regimented with this schedule. If I finish my newsletter on Monday, I don’t immediately jump into editing my podcast. I take the rest of the day easy and am therefore rewarded for my productivity. I also try to put in some extra padding time to allow for interruptions like travel and doctor appointments. By keeping my Wednesday afternoons relatively task free, for instance, it allows me to shift my newsletter writing and podcast editing over by a day with relatively little consequence.
This sort of approach can be applied to just about any kind of content. Let’s say your medium of choice is video. You need to segment out tasks that include scripting, shooting, editing, producing, and promoting your content, and you’ll probably want some built-in rest periods between these tasks.
A production schedule’s success is largely dependent on how realistic you are about your free time and productivity. I know I’m a slow writer. I also know that my chronic Crohn’s disease is going to mean I have bad days where I’m not going to be very motivated. So if you really want to maintain content consistency over a long period of time, it starts with being incredibly honest with yourself about your own limitations.
Two quick updates about sponsorships
So I have two updates regarding sponsorships to this newsletter:
I’ve sold out all of my advertising inventory for 2022
I’m probably going to double my sponsorship rates starting in January 2023. When I originally set those rates, I had 4,000 subscribers, and by January I’ll likely be up to 8,000.
Why does this matter to you? Well, if you were even contemplating the idea of buying an ad, now is the best time to do so, because my ad rates are significantly underpriced. You’ll probably never get this type of opportunity again. Go here for details on how to book an ad.
Quick hits
Anonymous Gimlet staffers dish on what happened after Spotify acquired the company. [The Squeeze]
This experiment ran the same video ad across YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Pinterest. The YouTube Shorts ad significantly outperformed all the other platforms. [Creatopy]
"The Times overall pays well by journalism standards, but that breaks down if you’re one of the very tippy-top of your field. The pay scale is very compressed, with virtually every writer making in the $100,000, but very few over $200,000.” [Puck]
Max Read's Twitter account had 50,000 followers when he deleted it. He then tried to build a successful newsletter business. Here are his reflections on growing an audience without the help of Twitter. [Read Max]
Comics are experiencing a surprising renaissance right now. And no, it doesn't seem to be driven by Marvel. [Publishers Weekly]
When is it too early to launch a subscription paywall?
The next question comes from Ben Sprague
Is it worth converting a newsletter with a relatively low number of subscribers (i.e. <1,500) to a paid version, or is it better to stay patient and keep building the free list. On a related point, is it worth offering paid subscriptions but still keeping all content free? Otherwise the downside of converting a newsletter to a paid version with few subscribers is that you would go from writing for, say, 1,000 free readers to writing for maybe 50-70 paid readers, and that doesn't feel great.
I think there are three questions here. Let’s go through each of them:
Is it too early to launch a paid subscription product?
For solo creators, the problem with launching paywalls is that you immediately need to start creating content that will go behind that paywall. And every moment spent creating paywalled content is a moment not spent growing your audience. You’re essentially tying your arm behind your back.
As you correctly surmise, only a small number of your 1,500 free subscribers will convert to paid, and do you really want to bust your ass creating content that will only be seen by 70 people? I can tell you from personal experience that it gets old really quickly.
Can you launch a paid subscription without a paywall?
Ah, yes. At some point, every creator asks this “can I have my cake and eat it” question. If we could just make our audience understand the value we create, then they would want to financially support our work regardless of whether it’s locked behind a paywall.
Some creators can make this work, but they tend to operate in mission-oriented niches. Judd Legum, for instance, is generating well into the six figures, but his pitch to readers is that their money is helping keep Republicans accountable.
If you’re just looking for some incremental side income, then sure, go this route, but I doubt that the vast majority of creators would ever be able to generate a full-time income through patronage alone. There are just too many creators out there begging for support, and most of your audience will happily consume your content without feeling guilty for not paying.
Is a paid subscription the best way for you to monetize your small audience?
I know you didn’t ask this question, but you really should. Too many writers just default to subscription models, when there are often better ways to generate income. Prior to 2020, this newsletter had fewer than 1,200 subscribers, yet I was able to generate nearly six figures in annual revenue through my freelance marketing consulting. The newsletter served as a lead generation tool for clients.
There are also things like sponsorships, online courses, and paid speaking. For most of these, you can generate more money by converting a very small percentage of your readership into paying customers. With the paid consulting, for instance, I only had to convert a handful of readers a year in order to make a living.
Paid subscriptions are a hamster wheel. Growth starts slow and gets slower once churn kicks in. Make sure you’ve explored all other options before you start that uphill climb.
The operational framing is the useful part. Creators often treat consistency like a motivation problem, but it is usually a production design problem. If the capture, edit, review, and publish steps are fuzzy, the whole week becomes negotiation.