All Episodes
The Business of Content with Simon Owens — 294 episodes
This platform is powering over 180 local newsrooms
This print magazine is thriving by treating itself like a collector's item
The software company that's quietly building a media empire
How a coaching conference turned into a seven-figure media business
How a niche newsletter about startups evolved into a data business
How a weekly PDF became one of Africa's most innovative news products
This former TV writer now produces prestige audio dramas for Audible, iHeart, and Spotify
This independent magazine publisher doubled down on print
Publishers are sitting on valuable audience data — many just aren't using it well
This media startup is trying to reach readers exhausted by political noise
The 30-year-old PDF newsletter with a 98% market penetration rate
The $100 billion problem lurking inside digital video ads
This product review blog pivoted to video to protect itself from AI
Can media companies ever claw back advertising revenue from big tech?
How a niche YouTube channel became a multi-platform travel business
This company is rewiring the economics of TV advertising
How a yoga teacher turned bedtime stories into a media empire
How Axios Local is leveraging AI to expand into smaller cities
How a professional voice actor built a hit indie game studio
From MrBeast to microdramas: Scott Brown's bet on phone-native storytelling
Inside the YouTube strategy that turned Starter Story into a $2M+ media brand
The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsrooms
The accidental ad tech founder: Eric Hochberger's 20-Year bet on the open web
From Hedge Fund Analyst to Independent Publisher: How Asian Century Stocks Built a Six-Figure Research Business
How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia's overlooked stocks
He Shut Down Time's Moscow Bureau. Then He Built His Own Magazine
How a small journalism nonprofit is holding the largest pharma companies to account
Should the media be afraid of Google Zero?
A couple teenagers launched a media company that now drives 240 billion annual views
This company wants to fix the broken economics of standup comedy
How a few college students bootstrapped one of the largest sports media websites in the world
This social-first news outlet turned street interviews into a 600,000-subscriber YouTube channel
How a 45-year-old magazine is building a B2B media empire
How the Kyiv Independent used global sympathy to generate membership revenue
How a local newsletter company is leveraging AI to cover hundreds of counties across the US
Why BroBible's staff bought the website back from the media company that had acquired it
Why the founder of a popular cycling blog sold it and then left to launch a competitor
How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube
How Big Cabal became one of the fastest-growing media outlets in Africa
How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube
Why this business news outlet ditched advertising to focus entirely on paid subscriptions
Why a former New York Times editor launched her own women-focused magazine
How an IMDB co-founder achieved three successful media exits
How a San Francisco print zine evolved into a thriving local blog
How a government contractor built a media empire around his niche content
This local newsletter covering a Dallas suburb has the highest paid conversion rate on Substack
This former Amazon executive generates over $200,000 from a newsletter he sends just once a week
Why a marketing consultant bought the largest real estate trade magazine in Canada
How a professional sailing league built massive reach on YouTube and social media
This Stanford lecturer co-hosts one of the most popular design podcasts
How a PR consultant launched a thriving tech news outlet
How two Hollywood writers launched one of the most popular parenting podcasts
How a former 60 Minutes producer raised six figures to launch a LGBTQ-focused media outlet
How the Pantsuit Politics podcast built a huge audience outside the DC beltway
He disrupted the viral video clip economy — and is now doing the same in travel media
This YouTuber built a massive following by interviewing touring musicians
How three Morning Brew alums struck out to build their own niche media network
This company is building the world's biggest media network for baking creators
This former Disney exec's podcast company generates 100 million monthly downloads
How to sell your media business
News nonprofits need to spend more time courting rich donors
How media outlets can use games to increase their revenue
His media company reaches more New Yorkers than the New York Times
Why China will dominate the global electric vehicle market
How Zyn conquered America
What Hollywood can learn from MrBeast
How JJ Hornblass built Royal Media, the most successful B2B media company you've never heard of
How The Dispatch is diversifying beyond just subscription revenue
Mill Media proved that audiences would pay for local news
This Colorado food writer came up with a novel way to monetize his content
How 1440 scaled its newsletter to 4 million subscribers
How Scott Porch helps podcasters grow and monetize their audiences
How the Money for the Rest of Us podcast built a six figure membership platform
How Ben Cohen successfully pivoted from advertising to a subscription-based business model
How Eric Newcomer used his newsletter to launch a $1.5 million events business
How the KC Sports Network is building a regional media empire
How Lon Seidman used his tech YouTube channel to build a huge affiliate business
How to market a book in the age of Tiktok
How Alts.co monetizes its massive newsletter with an investor membership platform
How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency
How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company
How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism
How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers
How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses
How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry
How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand
How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry
How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet
How Colossus built one of the largest investing-focused podcast networks
How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads
How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers
How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators
The economics of ghostwriting books
How Ben McCarthy built a Salesforce-focused media company with 400,000 monthly readers
How Joe Pulizzi built and sold The Tilt, a newsletter and conference business geared toward creators
How Brad Hargreaves built Thesis Driven, a newsletter and data product focused on real estate
How Andreas Sator built one of the most popular podcasts in Austria
How to grow your audience in a post-Facebook world
How William Knight built Early Morning Media, a B2B newsletter company
How Tom Arbuthnot built Empowering Cloud, a media comapany focused on Microsoft cloud products
How CJ Gustafson built Mostly Metrics, a newsletter for CFOs
How Sam Koslowski helped build The Daily Aus, a social first media outlet in Australia
The state of newsletter advertising in 2024
How Riad Chikhani built GAMURS Group, one of the largest gaming media companies in the world
How to monetize newsletters on LinkedIn
How Jack Kramer and Nick Martell sold their media company to Robinhood and then bought it back
How Cityside built a sustainable model for local news
How Lucas Grindley helped Next City grow to 1,000 paying members
Will Spotify's audiobook streaming be good for authors?
How Gabe Fleisher built Wake Up To Politics, a daily newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers
The biggest difference between the Creator Economy and traditional media
Will Buzzfeed file for bankruptcy in 2024?
How Kelsey Ogletree built Pitchcraft, a membership community for PR pros
How Ash Read built Living Cozy, a product review site monetized with ecommerce
How Dylan Bowman built Freetrail, a media outlet for trail runners
How B2B publisher Skift scaled its business by diversifying its revenue streams
How Starter Story ditched recurring payments and built a $1.5 million information product
How Casey Keirnan built A.M. Hoops, a basketball YouTube channel with over 400,000 subscribers
How Philip Ideson built The Art of Procurement, a B2B outlet that covers a $6 billion industry
How Eric Newcomer built his tech newsletter up to over 65,000 subscribers
How Jay Shabat built Airline Weekly, one of the earliest newsletters covering the travel industry
How JR Raphael built Android Intelligence, a thriving newsletter
Simon answers your questions
This YouTuber used his channel to launch a teaching platform
This veteran journalist launched a thriving local news outlet
Taking your subscription business to the next level
Has City Cast invented a new model for delivering local news?
This college professor built an incredibly popular newsletter about web tools
How The Reload newsletter became a leading authority on gun policy
How to monetize with online courses
This newsletter launched its own investment fund
How Worldcrunch is bringing non-English content to a Western audience
How Matt Navarra turned his marketing newsletter into a six-figure business
How to build a career as a professional ghostwriter
How Jay Gilbert built his influential music industry newsletter
How Stacked Marketer grew to over $600k in revenue
Why The Financial Times launched an inexpensive mobile app
How to launch a successful events business
How James Cridland built the most influential newsletter within the podcast industry
Overstory is one of the fastest-growing media companies in Canada
How to build a successful B2B media company
How Matt Brown built a thriving newsletter around the business of college sports
How Roca News grew to 1.1 million Instagram subscribers
Uncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiasts
He sold his newsletter to a climate tech company
How Libsyn plans to challenge Spotify for podcast dominance
How The Future Party grew its newsletter to 150,000 subscribers
How publishers can drive more subscription revenue
Why Brandi Kruse left her lucrative TV news career to launch her own podcast
How Stacker created a newswire for data journalism
Inside Morning Brew's video strategy
Do people want longform Twitter content?
He transformed a B2B sports magazine into a thriving media company
Why two star WSJ reporters left to launch their own media company
How Payload became the leading space industry newsletter
How Pop Up Magazine survived the pandemic
Why a bestselling author moved to Substack
How an investing newsletter reached 300,000 subscribers
How Front Office Sports carved out a B2B niche
His case studies generate 1 million visitors per month
How The Information covers the Creator Economy
Building a 7-figure consulting business through Instagram
Why a TV news reporter launched her own daily podcast
Are paywalls overrated?
How Science for Sport became one of the leading sports science resources
Can the mainstream media compete with Substack?
How The Globe and Mail uses AI to drive engagement
Spotify is the newly crowned king of podcasting
How Google collaborates with news publishers
The Juggernaut is hyper focused on an underrepresented market
Content creators are charging their fans for text messages
Yes, I'm still here
How the Art of Manliness monetizes its loyal audience
How Mental Floss evolved over its 20-year history
He writes one of Hollywood's most influential newsletters
His daily podcast got 5 million downloads in its first year
How to form a podcast collective
This writer and podcaster amassed a huge audience of comic book fans
This company scaled local newsletters to five cities
This BuzzFeed-like site has become a cultural powerhouse in Nigeria
Inside The Information's paywall strategy
Lessons from my first year of running a paid newsletter
His sports podcast network manages over 100 shows
How newsletter writers are teaming up to bundle subscriptions
This newspaper chain pivoted to digital subscriptions, and it's working
He helped invent the modern content marketing industry
He used crowdfunding to launch a progressive media startup in Canada
This site built a huge audience by mining legal documents from government websites
His site covering streaming TV attracts millions of visitors a month
How much this podcast grew in 2020
He created a finance-focused newsletter that has 1 million subscribers
He's building a media empire in Sweden around explainer journalism
How MEL Magazine reimagined the men's magazine for the 21st century
This gadget reviewer amassed 89 million views on YouTube
He's building a media empire around the data center industry
He's helping former Deadspin writers build a media outlet
She turned her crafts blog into a trade association
This 45-year-old Indian comedian has 14 million views on TikTok
How Serial Box is bringing back serialized fiction
She left her job at Fortune Magazine to launch a paid newsletter
Lessons learned from running a paid newsletter
This podcast host charges his listeners money to text him
Her wedding news website grew into a thriving media company
He's building a media empire around the freight industry
His running-focused newsletter has 800 paying subscribers
His creator-focused newsletter has over 25,000 subscribers
He generates a six-figure income through Patreon and Substack
This business-focused newsletter grew to over 50,000 subscribers
He launched several local news sites around Washington, DC
He ran the newsletter strategy for BuzzFeed and The New Yorker
How to launch a hit audiobook
Can Digg return to its former glory?
His video game song adaptations generated millions of views
Inside The LA Times's podcast strategy
How a pencil artist generated millions of views on YouTube
A local media company built on email newsletters
Monetizing a political newsletter during an election year
She built three successful media ventures from the ground up
How the site Amazing Ribs amassed 15,000 paying subscribers
Why every comedian hosts a podcast
A publishing platform built for independent writers
This guy built a B2B media empire
How BuzzFeed is monetizing its travel vertical
How to convert your audience into paying subscribers
Why Twitter is launching its own podcasts
How I plan to monetize this podcast
How Axios tries to create truly differentiated content
How Hollywood is transforming magazine journalism
Going deep on the YouTube algorithm
The rise of editorial newsletters
The State of Wikipedia in 2020
Will listeners ever pay for podcasts? Some already are
Minute Media's plan to dominate sports coverage
Do podcasts sell books? Yes
The next frontier in self-publishing: audiobooks
What it takes to build a bootstrapped podcast network
Why an online polling platform hired a seasoned journalist to run it
This startup wants to solve podcasting's monetization problem
How Clive Thompson became one of the most influential tech journalists
He founded one of the earliest tech blogs. Now he edits a newsletter
Why Techmeme launched a daily podcast
This Canadian media company has launched 11 local news sites
Inside Vox Media's podcast strategy
Why LinkedIn hired the world's top business journalists
Facebook decimated this publisher's business. So it became a paid newsletter.
This indie newsletter generated over 10,000 paying subscribers
Why Business Insider launched a hard paywall
This media company has launched 81 local news sites and is expanding
The 2019 state of Instagram influencer fraud
This B2B media company covers a $7.5 trillion industry and is profitable
Inside The New York Times's video strategy
Why Advance Publications launched a tech incubator to build new products
Inside MoveOn's video strategy
How Pop-Up Magazine grew into a nationwide events series
Inside The Atlantic's in-house creative agency
This blogger generated $80,000 last year selling online courses
Should publishers be allowed to collectively bargain with Facebook and Google?
Can this betting app replace the Nate Silvers of the world?
A new study on why we pay for online news
He sold his blog network to AOL for $25 million. And that was just the beginning
This editorial newsletter platform has 25,000 paying subscribers
This nutritionist generated 35 million downloads of her podcast. Here's how she did it
Most people don't click on social media links. Here's why that's bad
How The Hustle reached 1 million email subscribers
How Slate built a live events business around its most popular podcasts
This webcomic artist has 1 million fans on Facebook. Here's how he got them
Why Quartz launched a newsletter that dives into obscure trivia
Inside the social media strategy for The Financial Times
He pioneered early online advertising. Now he's doing the same for AR
This Boston business publication charges subscribers $695 a year and is sustainable
It started as a one-man personal finance blog. Now it generates millions in revenue.
How unemployed college students launched a thriving tech news site
How Facebook's Newsfeed changes are affecting European publishers
Why Fortune 100 companies are launching their own podcasts
How an obsession with right wing media spawned a booming newsletter
How this web designer became the Nate Silver of healthcare reporting
This guy built a $1 million business on top of the Gmail API
How publishers monetize their newsletters with paid subscriptions
How artists illegally pay their way onto Spotify's playlists
Influencer marketing has a huge fraud problem
How Think Progress generated $500,000 in donations after Trump was elected
Remembering the blogosphere before the rise of Facebook and Twitter
What's behind the explosion in fiction podcasts?
Why podcast apps are developing their own original content
Should famous music and Hollywood artists have their own media outlet?
How the iTunes podcast rankings work
Meet the guy who wants to slow down the internet
Inside Macmillan's 2018 podcast strategy
While Facebook stumbles, Twitter's making a comeback
This former lawyer launched a thriving local news network in New Jersey
Want to create your own Wikipedia page? Call this guy
What it takes to run a podcast consulting company
What kind of content should you put behind your paywall?