The Creator Spotlight Podcast

This week we speak with Rachel Karten, the woman behind every social media manager's favorite newsletter, Link in Bio, and an excellent social media consultant herself.

00:00 Getting started with food Instagram

04:39 Advice for working with brands

09:02 Winning and judging Webby awards

14:05 Building a newsletter for content creators, Link in Bio

25:03 Growing an email audience of 65k+

35:50 Being a good social media manager

Intro music produced by J. and Doug Organ.

This week we are joined by Michelle Curb, co-founder and editor of Gloria (hellogloria.com) Michelle is an expert in leading monetization for online media brands — she's been doing it for most of two decades.

00:00 The Gloria newsletter

05:50 Getting started in online media

08:52 IS it hard to sell a media company?

14:15 Monetization and stats

15:58 Building an audience online

24:52 “I don’t want to be online”

27:38 Day in a life of a media founder

39:21 How to monetize as a creator

45:35 Looking forward and back

On today's pod we talk building a career in soccer journalism, the women's game, producing one of The Athletic's flagship podcasts ("Full Time with Meg Linehan"), and plenty more.

00:00 Why Theo pursued soccer journalism

08:23 How much does soccer journalism pay?

17:24 How to tell the real story

23:36 Newsletters are the future of journalism

39:11 The stats

41:17 Building a newsletter into a sustainable business

47:01 How to get better at podcasting

Intro music produced by J. and Doug Organ

Today's guest is Cole Derochie, creator of theToday in Design newsletter and a multitalented design professional (he's done everything from web design to leatherwork, not necessarily in that order).

00:00 How Cole accidentally became a designer

08:04 The espresso of newsletters

13:43 Evolving and growing the newsletter

20:24 Finding sources for design news

26:16 Writing a newsletter in 1 hour

29:08 Monetizing a 5,000 subscriber newsletter

37:53 Using Twitter to grow your brand

Intro music produced by J. and Doug Organ

Today’s guest is Sean Devlin, a media entrepreneur whose Nice News newsletter has, in less than three years, gone from 0 to 820k subscribers. The company currently has a team of seven full-time employees, plus at least four freelancers — and it’s been profitable for just under one year.

00:00 Building a 800k subscriber newsletter

08:53 The biggest mistakes when designing a newsletter

12:26 Why it’s important to have nice news

19:20 How to find positive content online

22:32 Who subscribes to nice news?

30:51 Building a following of 800,000

39:00...

Ambreen Ali is a tenured and accomplished journalist as well as Founding Editor of Central Desi, a local newsletter focussing on the South Asian community in New Jersey. She joins us for episode 22 of the Creator Spotlight podcast.

Central Desi: centraldesi.beehiiv.com

00:00:00 Ambreen Ali - putting journalism first

00:05:02 Growing a local newsletter

00:14:07 Why being a journalist is difficult 00:22:02 Is society losing its media literacy?

00:28:53 The best and worst of tradition journalism

00:35:26 Why prisoners should be taught journalism

00:39:39 Making a local impact

00:43:26 Not...

Today’s guest is Glennda Baker, a real estate agent from Atlanta who has become a social media star over the last four years. After a couple of false starts, her content marketing play has turned into a full-fledged media business.

00:00 Glennda Baker, TikTok's favorite realtor

05:58 How Glennda Baker makes 30-50 videos per month

26:18 Sharing your life online — what about the family?

35:16 Glennda’s newsletter — working with a writing partner

40:57 The business of being Glennda Baker (business is good)

43:57 Creating social media videos is better than cre...

Today's guest, Ernie Smith, has been writing for the internet for 15 years. He's been writing his current newsletter, Tedium, for almost 10. We spoke about his approach to newslettering, turning down money from Substack, and making cool stuff for the internet purely for the sake of it.

00:00 Who is Ernie Smith?

01:30 Why (and how) Ernie coded his newsletter himself

05:35 Has personality been stripped from the internet?

12:44 How Ernie grew his audience

15:20 UDM14 — Google without all the fluff

18:56 Ernie’s approach to side projects

31:39 Is the...

Today’s guest, Justin Gordon, seems to have more energy to expend in a day than we do in a week. Literally: we put out one ~50min podcast episode per week; he once put out one ~50min podcast episode per day for 112 days straight.

Justin has been a podcaster, vlogger, producer, and newsletterist, sometimes all at once, for the last 12 years. In this episode:

00:00 Who is Justin Gordon?

01:24 Lessons from 500+ interviews

04:30 Podcasting every day for 112 days

12:55 6 Lessons from podcasting every day

15:23 Why start a newsletter?

18:17 Ho...

Kate Lindsay is a freelance writer and newsletter editor whose own newsletter, Embedded, is pushing 35k subscribers. She's one of the best people out there writing about the internet for the internet. This is an episode about why more newsletters should be run by two people, an indie newsletter born from a shuttered publication, and paying NYC rent with premium newsletter subscriptions.

00:00 Who is Kate and what is Embedded?

05:33 How Embedded evolved from a killed publication

09:56 Kate's other projects (as a newsletter editor and writer)

13:35 Blowing up with the...