The Business of Content with Simon Owens
The show about how publishers create, distribute, and monetize their digital content.
- Update frequency
- every 8 days
- Average duration
- 41 minutes
- Episodes
- 246
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
Mill Media proved that audiences would pay for local news
My newsleter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/
When the Manchester Mill launched in 2020, it operated on a simple theory: that local audiences would pay for news as long as it was original and diff…
This Colorado food writer came up with a novel way to monetize his content
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
When Matthew Schniper launched his Colorado Springs food newsletter in 2023, he ran into a problem many local news entrepreneurs face: he didn’t have…
How 1440 scaled its newsletter to 4 million subscribers
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
What’s the true monetary value of a newsletter subscriber? Tim Huelskamp knows the answer to that question. As the co-founder of the 1440 newsletter, h…
How Scott Porch helps podcasters grow and monetize their audiences
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
2024 was a big year for the podcast industry. Not only were there several huge deals signed, but podcasts wielded significant influence in the US pre…
How the Money for the Rest of Us podcast built a six figure membership platform
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
David Stein had an innovative marketing hack for growing his investing podcast called Money for the Rest of Us. He put the names of other popular fin…
How Ben Cohen successfully pivoted from advertising to a subscription-based business model
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
In 2017, Ben Cohen was living the dream. His politics news site The Daily Banter was generating over 6 million visits a month and enough advertising …
How Eric Newcomer used his newsletter to launch a $1.5 million events business
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Like a lot of journalists=turned-media–entrepreneurs, Eric Newcomer decided to launch a paid newsletter after leaving his job at Bloomberg in 2020. T…
How the KC Sports Network is building a regional media empire
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
The last few years have been pretty good to the Kansas City Chiefs, what with its multiple Super Bowl championships and a close association with the …
How Lon Seidman used his tech YouTube channel to build a huge affiliate business
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Lon Seidman doesn’t operate the largest gadget YouTube channel in the world, but he doesn’t need to in order to run a successful media business. That…
How to market a book in the age of Tiktok
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Book publicity is a mixed bag these days. On the one hand, it’s never been easier for an author to form a direct relationship with their audience wit…
How Alts.co monetizes its massive newsletter with an investor membership platform
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
When people sign up for the Alts.co newsletter, they’re looking to read its deep dives into alternative investments like art, baseball cards, and rar…
How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Eric Siu has a pretty massive audience; his YouTube channel boasts 161,000 subscribers and his two podcasts – Marketing School and Leveling Up – have…
How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
When Keith Pepper bought a chain of print newspapers back in 2020, he received an email from a columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that bas…
How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Layoffs in the local news sector are, sadly, a regular occurrence, but the founders of Block Club Chicago decided they weren’t going down without a f…
How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
For much of its 130-year existence, State House News operated as a standard newswire service. Its journalists covered the Massachusetts state governm…
How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Most people are familiar with newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters, but a much newer upstart called Stacker has devised a new business mod…
How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses
My Substack: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Mignon Fogarty isn’t just one of the world’s most popular podcasters, she’s also an incredibly innovative media entrepreneur. She launched her Grammar …
How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Most companies buy advertising to drive sales of their products, but Andrew Curtin’s first sponsor mostly bought out of pity. It was May 2022 and he …
How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
Like a lot of journalists in the mid-2000s, Tim Burrowes grew frustrated with his employer’s print mentality and its tendency to treat online publish…
How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry
My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/
When Alex Halperin launched WeedWeek in 2015, he was entering an industry that had nothing but growth ahead of it. But what he didn’t expect was that…