Sitemap - 2021 - Simon Owens's Media Newsletter

What’s the most effective paid podcast strategy?

How Meta’s Bulletin could succeed in a crowded newsletter market

The optimal time for launching a paid newsletter

Why BuzzFeed never quite lived up to the hype

How Science for Sport became a leading resource for elite athletes

Why most NFT owners are insufferable on social media

Ask me a question

MrBeast is changing the economics of YouTube

Was Randy Cassingham the first member of the Creator Economy?

Should creators accept VC investment?

There's a massive amount of media consolidation afoot

Do your subscribers actually want paywalled content?

Why The Globe and Mail trusts an AI to run its paywall

Should publishers allow their journalists to launch personal newsletters?

The podcast-to-Hollywood pipeline

How ScoopWhoop became one of India’s most viral publishers

Video podcasts are low-hanging fruit

“Subscription fatigue” isn’t really a thing

How Google collaborates with news outlets to optimize their content

Can solo writers monetize longform journalism?

The creator economy is not failing to spread the wealth

Judd Legum proved that investigative journalism can thrive on Substack

The perils of sharing revenue with creators

How the sausage gets made, volume 1

The media industry hasn't given up its addiction to vanity metrics

How The Juggernaut built a media business targeting the South Asian diaspora

The limits of a creator’s personal brand

Who will launch local newsletters in the suburbs?

Can a hit YouTube channel thrive after its founder departs?

What's a realistic conversion rate for paid newsletters?

The rise of the big budget YouTuber

Is the creator economy "tax" worth it?

The market for daily news digests is getting saturated

How Subtext enables creators to send text messages to their fans

Is serialized fiction making a comeback?

The gritty reality for Substack’s middle class

How Politico kicked off the editorial newsletter renaissance

Is Spotify exclusivity worth it?

How The Art of Manliness built its loyal audience

Does Tim Cook even know that Apple has a podcast division?

How Mental Floss became the leading publisher of obscure trivia

Axel Springer’s smart acquisition strategy

How Richard Rushfield founded one of Hollywood’s most influential newsletters

Micropayments work in this very specific situation

How daily podcast The Smart 7 hit 5 million downloads in its first year

It’s good that VCs have soured on funding digital media startups

The benefits of joining a podcast collective

Will lower web traffic actually hurt publishers?

How long it takes for a creator to build a sustainable business

How David Harper built a huge audience with his comic book criticism

Is Spotify's podcast bet finally paying off?

When viral content doesn’t generate much revenue

How WhereByUs scaled its local newsletters to multiple cities

Clubhouse's missed opportunity

Should podcasters push their listeners off Apple?

How Zikoko became Nigeria's most viral publisher

Will people listen to multiple daily news podcasts?

The Atlantic’s winding path to profitability

Can a former Myspace CTO drive the creator economy's next evolution?

Will The Information team up with indie newsletter writers?

Will Facebook ever become a podcast-listening destination?

Can news outlets diversify away from journalism?

Are liberals overestimating the Facebook reach of rightwing media?

Inside The Information's paywall strategy

Business Insider sets an arbitrary word limit on articles

BuzzFeed wants its readers to play the viral lottery

How many videos does it take to get to 1 million YouTube subscribers?

How platforms like TikTok cause creator burnout

How Blue Wire grew its network to over 150 sports podcasts

The creator economy has birthed a new breed of scam artists

Is Ghost a real competitor to Substack?

Can Quartz become a scrappy media startup?

You should constantly change your subscription messaging

Why publisher content studios were overhyped

How a midwestern newspaper chain pivoted to digital subscriptions

The celebrity podcast boom is overrated

Newspaper chains won’t save local news

The battle of the daily news digests

How Joe Pulizzi helped shape the modern content marketing industry

Will Twitter actually help creators monetize their content?

How The Discourse scaled its business model to 34 local news sites

Why I'm bullish on Axios's ambitions in local news

Does the tech industry need the mainstream media?

This company specializes in turning industry conferences into podcasts

I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature in this newsletter

How Conde Nast built a massive video operation

This progressive media company used crowdfunding to get off the ground

Why every YouTube star is launching a podcast

Daily Detroit is proving there’s a market for local podcasts

In defense of Business Insider's success metrics

How 6AM City is scaling crowdsourced local journalism

The 3 stages of media unbundling

How two YouTubers turned their hunting vlog into a thriving business

A new way for newsletter creators to collaborate

How Law Insider monetized a massive database of legal documents

Facebook deserves more credit for the success of Facebook Groups

How a VC investor grew her newsletter to over 100,000 subscribers

Micropayments can work, sort of

How Josh Spector monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribers

Are editors actually vital?

How a trade show’s newsletter saved the company during Covid

A new criteria for evaluating creator income

Rick Ellis's entertainment news site generates millions of views a month. Here's how he built it.

Should publishers give Facebook Instant Articles another look?

This Australian news site doubled its paid subscriptions over the past year

5 lessons from running a paid newsletter for the past year

YouTube represents a huge opportunity for podcasters

Why a Hell’s Kitchen print magazine pivoted to newsletters

Business Insider zigged when its competitors zagged

This TV podcast generates $4,000 a month on Patreon

Spotify's audiobooks strategy is coming into focus

How Finimize grew to over 1 million email subscribers

Facebook's grip on the news industry is smaller than you think

Inside the career of a successful ghostwriter

How Cameo created the perfect feedback loop

How Blockworks is building a crypto media empire

Can Crooked Media thrive in a post-Trump world?

How Per Grankvist built an explanatory journalism startup in Sweden

Newsletter editors are the new power brokers at newspapers

How Kent Anderson became a watchdog over the scholarly publishing industry

Why HubSpot just bought a media company

How Newsflare monetizes video from over 60,000 contributors

Is a Substack subscription too expensive?

Will Substack ever embrace advertising?

He got laid off from Yahoo Sports, so he launched his own sports newsletter

Why Twitter is buying a newsletter platform

How MEL is reinventing the modern men's magazine

Could The New York Times get into local news?

This YouTuber built a massive following with pop music guitar lessons

Why Forbes's new newsletter platform is a big deal

How a leading fintech events company pivoted to virtual events

Amazon is becoming an advertising powerhouse

How Taegan Goddard built a thriving paid membership for Political Wire

A media empire built on airline points

How gadget reviewer Lon Seidman amassed 290,000 subscribers and 89 million views on YouTube

At least one writer generates $1 million a year on Substack

How Rich Miller built a thriving media company focused on the data center industry

How much this newsletter grew in 2020