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.

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How Joe Pulizzi built and sold The Tilt, a newsletter and conference business geared toward creators

When Joe Pulizzi launched The Tilt in 2021, he already had a pretty good idea of how to build a successful media company. Back in 2017, he had sold his previous media startup, The Content Marketing Institute, to one of the world’s largest event conglomerates.

Joe ran The Tilt with a very similar playbook — first starting with a weekly newsletter, and then expanding into an in-person conference called The Content Entrepreneur Expo, or CEX. The venture was so successful that he sold it to Lulu Press in 2023.

In our interview, Joe talked about his newsletter growth strategy, what it takes to put on a successful conference, and why he prefers the term “content entrepreneur” instead of “creator.”

Watch our discussion in the video embedded below:

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

I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcast

One of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets.

In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:

• Niche news sites

• Video channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels

• Podcasts

• Newsletters

• Affiliate/ecommerce

Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. )

Quick hits

The WSJ profiles Taylor Swift's publicist, who's become a mini celebrity by virtue of being in Swift's orbit. [WSJ]

Highsnobiety started out as a sneaker blog nearly 20 years ago, and it's since expanded into print magazines, brand collaborations, and even designing its own clothing. [NYT]

Lots of publishers have tried to replicate Wirecutter's success, but most have been unwilling to put in the amount of work and rigor required to write high-quality product recommendations. [New York]

A good profile of a newsletter that's written from a tiny island in Maine and generates $180,000 a year in subscriptions. [NYT]

An interesting look at how a daily business newsletter in Canada sells ads. [Indiehackers]

I'm extremely unsympathetic to the idea that publishers are somehow harming democracy by erecting paywalls. At some point consumers need to understand that journalism costs money and online advertising does an inadequate job of funding it. [The Atlantic]

ICYMI: How the Geekout newsletter grew to 30,000 subscribers

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