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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Let’s jump into it…

Quick hits

The secret to Semafor's growth

This is a good breakdown of how Semafor optimizes all its various channels to drive signups for its newsletters. Basically, it's impossible to consume a piece of Semafor content without being prompted toward some kind of newsletter signup. [Newsletter Examples]

The death of mid-length video

"Studies suggest that the average YouTube user prefers watching seven to ten minute videos, and yet YouTube will tend to push longer videos, which keep you on the platform longer and earn them more revenue through pre- and mid-roll advertisements. This isn’t speculation. A 2018 Pew Research Center study ran 170,000 simulations on how YouTube recommends videos, and found that the algorithm quietly directs users toward longer and longer videos." [The Etymology Nerd]

How I Grew My Substack from Zero to 40K Annual Income in Just 12 Months

I often see the claim that the only way to find success on Substack is to start with a large, already-existing following elsewhere, but I see plenty of case studies of people starting with relatively no following on the platform and building a paid subscriber base from scratch. [WITD]

How Bluesky, Alternative to X and Facebook, Is Handling Explosive Growth

I was pretty lukewarm on Blueksy for the longest time, mostly because it felt too small and politics-focused to have much impact beyond its extremely-online, liberal community. But now that it's achieving something close to mainstream success, I'm genuinely excited to have a major social media platform that isn't governed by algorithms. A lot of creators have grown exasperated by how much every other social platform punishes hyperlinks. Bluesky could represent a resurgence of the open web. [NYT]

Barnes & Noble is making a comeback

It turns out consumers actually enjoy the act of browsing an actual physical bookstore. And plenty still prefer physical copies of books! [CNN]

How the Daily Upside grew to over 1 million subscribers

One of the best insights Patrick Trousdale had when growing his finance newsletter The Daily Upside was that he didn’t need to go it alone. With his deep background in the finance industry, he knew he could create a high quality editorial product, and he also knew he’d have a much easier time growing it if he teamed up with an outlet that had an already-existing audience.

That’s how he ended up partnering with The Motley Fool, a venerable media brand that was looking to diversify its portfolio. After the Motley Fool started promoting The Daily Upside to its email list, the latter was able to quickly scale up its operations and revenue. Today, it has over 1 million email subscribers and employs an entire editorial team.

In a recent interview, Patrick walked through all his growth strategies, including how he convinced The Motley Fool to partner with him, how he works with finance influencers to drive signups, where he invests in paid acquisition, and how he collects first party data to measure the value of his audience.

You can check out the interview over here.

More quick hits

Substack’s Great, Big, Messy Political Experiment

Substack now has 4 million paid subscribers across its entire platform. That means it's probably generating somewhere around $336 million in subscription revenue for creators, and through its 10% cut it's probably taking in somewhere around $36 million. [NYT]

AI-Powered Buzzfeed Ads Suggest You Buy Hat of Man Who Died by Suicide

Have you ever been reading an article about the victim of a violent crime and wondered, "I wonder where she bought that hat?" Well, BuzzFeed now has the answer for you. [404Media]

Local news is in crisis. This paper has a $150 million plan

Cox Communications plans to inject $150 million in fresh capital toward growing the Atlanta Journal Constitution into a regional news powerhouse that produces content across articles, podcasts, video, and events. It's banking on the idea that Georgia has become more nationally relevant due to its swing state status and its role in launching the world's biggest hip hop stars. [NPR]

Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg and her ‘studio mindset’

A Meta employee started posting short stories to a Substack newsletter during the pandemic lockdown, and it eventually morphed into a daily tech and business newsletter that has over 50,000 subscribers and sits near the top of Substack's paid leaderboard. [Semafor]

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.)

Want a daily dose of media industry news?

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