The key to growing and monetizing podcasts

Hello storytellers! It seems like every day there are new opinions on the creator economy and tons of content around what creators should or should not do. We don’t know about you, but we’re not impressed with most of it. So, we’re curious: where do you go for credible takes on media and the creator economy? 

Our personal favorites:

• Media Trends by Sara Fischer

• Perpetual by Adam Ryan

• Creator Economy by Kaya Yurieff

• Digital Native by Rex Woodbury

Things you should know about

Is long-form content the cure for burnout?: A small number of YouTubers seem to think so. They have pivoted to producing high-quality long-form content instead of posting shorts every week. It took a big mindset shift to do so, but the upside has been huge. The results: improved mental health, better monetization opportunities and high audience retention.

Content tips from Mr. Tips: Unless you’ve been unplugging or living under a rock for the past week, you’d know that creators gathered for the first IRL VidCon since 2019. As a part of the event, Mr. Beast sat down with YouTube’s Director of Distribution and shared some pro tips for success. Our favorites? Focus on quality storytelling and use Shorts as Ads for your long-form content.

ConvertKit launches a game-changer: Finding the right newsletter sponsors can be brutal, especially if you’re just starting to monetize. If you decide to DIY it, it takes up way too much time. If you try some of the existing ad marketplaces, you usually end up paying a hefty fee. ConvertKit just launched a product to solve just that. They will sell ads on your behalf and allow you to keep 75% (!!) of the profits. Huge for solo creators.

Spotify, Substack and the future of audio: If you’ve ever started a podcast, you either have a killer distribution channel or…you’re a masochist. We’re not making this up, podcasts are the hardest medium to grow and a pain in the neck to monetize. Adam Ryan wrote a killer analysis on how Spotify can make podcasts easier to grow and monetize, expanding its market cap to $250B. In a nutshell, copy Substack because newsletters drive growth. Certainly worth a read.

News from the Community

Brett Dashevsky hit an important milestone, right before celebrating another lap around the sun. We can honestly say that his creator economy takes are some of the best in the space. Congrats, Brett!

Toby Howell hit 10,000 subscribers for Homescreen, the newsletter he created for Launch House. To mark the occasion, the folks at LH got him cake. Now, that’s a celebration we can get behind.

Nicole Casperson is hosting a Fintech Happy Hour on July 20. Drinks are free, but even if they weren’t, we’d recommend going because she’s a pleasure to hang with.

Do you have news you’d like to share with the community? Send it our way and we’ll add it to the next newsletter.

Just for fun

With all this talk about the bear market, it seems like everyone is anxious about how things would shake out. Everyone but this bear who appears pretty zen. Digging yourself a pit just so you can watch the ducks swim is a new level of chill. We can only hope to have this level of serenity over the holiday weekend (and beyond). Happy 4th!

With love,

Team Salley