On Breaking Away: 18 Years Of Lessons On Journalist-As-An-Entrepreneur Life
Back in 2003, I wrote this rather bombastic “screed” about life as an individual journalist-entrepreneur, then a year into my journey on solo media entrepreneur life back then through paidContent.org (now defunct).
I was in my 20s then, barely two years into my career out of school and was a know-it-all, living in an East London tenement with a leaky roof, creating my own path on the backs of early blog publishing tools like Blogger, pMachine (anyone remembers that?!) and MovableType. This was 2003 and I had been blogging for four years then, had a Btech in Computer Engineering, MA in New Media journalism and loved the merging of reporting skills, DIY tech publishing tools and immediacy & freedom of blog journalism world. I was barely making subsistence money and still happy to just be doing my own thing.
Fast forward to 2020s, a year like no other for media, and the Substack generation is the new blogging-in-pajamas generation. Lots of hard knock lessons we learned back then still apply and figured I would jot them down, might be helpful to the new generation of journalists-as-entrepreneurs.
- If you want control of your own destiny, then you’re in for the long-haul. This will take much much longer than you think or the initial reception will indicate.
- If you can, give yourself two years as a good ballpark before you can become fully self-sustaining. After that time if you aren’t, you know the answer from there…
- Own the stack and everything else along with it. While tools like Substack and others are enticing to get you started, there’s nothing like having your own site, where are you can do whatever you want to without the constraints of whatever choose any of these third-party providers will create. These days creating a Wordpress site and putting an email newsletter other, charge for it and dozens of other things in it are very easy these days and don’t require any technical knowledge, and even if they do, you can find cheap freelance talent to help you put it together and maintain it.
- OWN your email newsletter list, don’t outsource that part to anyone or any entity.
- While the newsletter format is great it get started, don’t ignore a standalone site which will allow you to better showcase previous work, archives, and pull in people better through search/SEO than just a newsletter format can. Also be ready to be multi format: podcasts, online webinars etc, whatever it takes to build the paying audience.
- Subscriptions aren’t the only way, don’t let the herd guide you on this. Smart, long lasting businesses — even solo journalist entities — have multi pronged revenue streams built into them, including advertising, yes that dreaded A-word these days.
- There’s nothing called the first mover advantage, that’s a myth in media. It works in platforms but popularity doesn’t necessarily mean revenues.
- However crowded a sector you are in is, you can create your own whitespace by your own unique worldview. So better know what your unique worldview is before you get started.
- Starting out as an ad-supported site/newsletter doesn’t mean you can’t convert to paid later, it’s just harder but it can be done. In fact a hybrid free+paid makes most sense for maximum impact.
- Pace yourself, or else you will burn out quickly. Don’t “out-blog and out-news anyone to death” as I foolishly said 17 years ago when I started on my solo journey.
- Frequency of output does matter, and consistency in frequency matters. You can be daily or weekly or mix of both, anything longer people won’t know how to value your work when deciding to pay for it, or not.
- Bring original reporting and original thought into the world, that is what people will value in the short and long term. One step removed from original editorial is one step too many removed from success.
- Build franchises people return to every year or every quarter. Yep, lists matters, and there are meaningful ways to do it.
- Ignore and break the silos in whatever industry/sector you are writing about, the forward looking people in your sector will thank you for it.
- Don’t write for praise of fellow journalists & media people, they have no bearing on your success, write for the audience that will care for what you write and build.
- VERY IMPORTANT: Pay up for good financial advice, company structure and tax advice, your future self will thank you for it.
- Stay solo or hire more people? You don’t need to know the answer right away, don’t worry about it, you’ll figure it out along the way. Just make sure your financial/company structure is set up right way for either, from the start.
- Over a period of time, you’ll figure out what you are good at, and more importantly, what you aren’t good at. Ask for help from experts and you’ll be surprised how many are willing to help you pro bono.
- Will anyone miss you if you stop your newsletter/publication tomorrow? That is the ultimate mark of impact you can have, it will take time to get there.
- “Fuck it, I’m going for it” will take you a long way in building your own destiny. Fuck the naysayers.
