The YouTube "middle class" does exist
PLUS: Why a personal finance writer sold her newsletter to Morning Brew and then bought it back
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“Does this channel have more juice in it?” YouTuber J.J. McCullough on a “sustainable” life as a news creator
I always love stories about journalists who get laid off from legacy media outlets and use that as the impetus to launch their own independent channels. In this case, a creator took his skills from working at a TV news station and used them to build a YouTube channel up to over 1 million subscribers. [Nieman Lab]
This social-first news outlet turned street interviews into a 600,000-subscriber YouTube channel
Roca News was founded on a simple premise: most news is now consumed on social platforms, with fewer and fewer users clicking through to read articles on media websites. After launching in 2020, it found early success on Instagram, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers by distilling major news stories into swipeable images. The company later launched a daily newsletter, which has since grown to more than 200,000 subscribers.
Most recently, the company has invested heavily in its YouTube channel, sending its on-camera hosts to far-flung locations to interview everyday people about their unique experiences. Each video racks up hundreds of thousands of views, and the channel has grown to close to 600,000 subscribers in a little over a year.
In a recent interview, co-founders Max Towey and Max Frost recounted Roca’s origin story, walked through its initial Instagram strategy, and explained how they invented a unique documentary format for their YouTube channel.
Check out the interview on YouTube.
If you want to listen to an audio version, subscribe to the Business of Content wherever you get your podcasts: [Apple] [Spotify]
I’m tracking which brands are sponsoring newsletters
What’s the easiest way to sell sponsorships in your newsletter? Most publishers would tell you to start with the brands that have already advertised in other newsletters. But here’s the problem: there are thousands upon thousands of newsletters out there and no standardized ad units. This means that the only way to have a comprehensive picture of who’s advertising in newsletters is to subscribe to them all and then open them, one by one.
Luckily for you, I’m doing all that work for you. I’ve created a database tracking hundreds of newsletters across a wide range of B2B and B2C niches. I’ve logged 1,881 newsletter sponsorships so far, and that number is quickly growing. Check it out.
Why a personal finance writer sold her newsletter to Morning Brew and then bought it back
The writer behind a personal finance newsletter explained why she sold her newsletter to Morning Brew in 2021 and decided to buy it back four years later. There are some good lessons in here for any creator who's looking to sell to a larger media entity — at the very least, you should try to retain some ownership of the business and possibly even negotiate terms for how to buy it back. [Money With Katie]
The Strategy That 2x’d The Dink’s Daily Subscriber Rate
Newsletters like Morning Brew and the Hustle had a lot of early success growing their subscribers bases by leveraging referral programs, but these tactics stopped being very effective once lots of other newsletters began to adopt them.
The pickleball newsletter the Dink basically reinvented the referral program by forging marketing partnerships with pickleball apparel companies that allowed him to offer up their products as referral rewards. [Growth in Reverse]
ICYMI: How Jonathan Skogmo disrupted the viral video clip economy — and plans to do the same in travel media
Through Jukin Media, Skogmo mastered the art of licensing YouTube videos to media companies and brands. Now he’s acquiring media outlets focused on travel.
YouTube is reaching a ‘tipping point’ in convincing advertisers it really is TV
Even though YouTube dominates television screens, its ad business has long been constrained by the fact that most media-buying agencies classify it as “online advertising,” which typically comes from a different budget than traditional TV. That’s starting to change. Agencies are increasingly reclassifying YouTube as “connected TV,” a shift that could allow the platform to capture an even larger share of marketing budgets in 2026. [Business Insider]
The New York Times Is Launching Its First Two-Player Word Game: Crossplay
From the Hollywood Reporter:
On Wednesday the Times is launching its first two-player competitive word game … and giving it its own standalone app, as it seeks to carve out a bigger slice of the mobile gaming market.
The game is called “Crossplay,” its own take on a classic format (if you know Scrabble or Words with Friends you will instantly be familiar with the concept), and the first truly multiplayer game from the company.
It’s interesting that the New York Times chose to launch this as a standalone app. That’s always a risky move, since the product has to largely succeed on its own, without the built-in support of a broader bundle. Still, the Times has enormous marketing reach across its main app, newsletters, and social channels, giving it plenty of opportunities to funnel users toward the new game.
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