Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button:

Sign up here

Earlier this month, I sent a newsletter to my audience with this subject line: “Ask me a question.” Basically I told everyone to jump into the comments section of the post and ask me any questions they have about the media industry or creator economy.

Several of you did pipe in with some amazing questions. I then invited on Alexis Grant, the founder of They Got Acquired, to help me answer them.

We answered questions on a range of topics like:

1. Which media companies are succeeding with native advertising

2. The best ways for media outlets to run live events

3. How to grow your audience in a world where Google and Facebook are sending less and less traffic

4. What a Substack advertising platform would look like

You can check out our answers in the video embedded below:

If video embeds don’t work in your inbox, watch it over here.

If you want to listen to an audio version, subscribe to The Business of Content wherever you get your podcasts: [Apple] [Spotify] [Amazon Music]

Do you want to submit questions for me to answer in this ongoing series?

So I plan to devote a lot of time and effort to answering reader questions each month, and only paid subscribers get to submit questions to me. Here’s what subscribing gets you:

• 30-minute introductory phone call with me: When you become a subscriber, it triggers an automated email that contains a Calendly link where you can book a phone call with me. I’ve held over a hundred of these calls so far and they’ve been fantastic. Usually, subscribers use it as an opportunity to tell me about their own media businesses and then pick my brain on strategy.

• Monthly Q&A sessions: Basically I’m going to do everything in my power to answer at least one question submitted from each subscriber every month. Some of these answers will be relayed on the podcast, while for others I’ll jump directly into the comments section. Even in the rare instances where I don’t have a good answer, I’ll jump in and invite you to submit a different question.

• Subscriber-only interviews: I regularly conduct interviews with the world’s most successful media operators. Paying subscribers get access to these interviews.

• Support of my independent journalism: The vast majority of my income comes via paid subscriptions. I do my best every month to deliver you insights that will help you with your own media operations, and your subscription will help fund this work.

If you’re interested in subscribing, then use the link below and get 20% off for your first year:

Get 20% off for 1 year

Quick hits

There's a group of anti-Trump social media influencers that specialize in watching right wing pundits and politicians and then packaging their most outrageous statements into video clips that go viral. These clips have driven entire news cycles and now those influencers are being courted by the Biden campaign team. [Semafor]

TikTok is inching toward a true revenue sharing program, though it's still being pretty vague about how the amount is being calculated — is it actually sharing a percentage of revenue generated by creators, or is it still using an arbitrary "creator fund" that's completely static? [Passionfruit]

Always exciting to see the launch of another writer-owned media cooperative. In this case, it's a weekly publication focused on science reporting. [Nieman Lab]

Posting edited podcast video clips to TikTok can generate additional audience, but it's extremely difficult to convert that audience into podcast listeners. [The Verge]

Now that Joe Rogan's show is back on YouTube and every other podcast platform, you could argue he's the world's most popular talk show host. Kind of incredible to consider that a B-list comedian and reality TV MC became so influential. [Bloomberg]

PJ Vogt is one of the most talented podcasters in the world. He announced a paid subscription version of his show and revealed it's not yet profitable, partly due to its struggles to monetize its international audience. [Search Engine]

Nebula continues to be a fascinating niche streaming service to follow. [Publish Press]

Want a daily dose of media industry news?

I only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix:

1. Substack Notes

2. Threads

3. My private Facebook group

4. LinkedIn

5. Bluesky