The job of a newsletter operator is three jobs, right? Grow, sell. I've spent a lot of time in this industry. Open rates and click-through rates and everything else, they lie. List size is not money.
Open rates are not money. Money is money. I care about this business a great deal. If you come in here, you ChatGPT your way to a below average newsletter, I think that sucks. We want somebody who's opinionated.
We want somebody who wears their heart on their keyboard. It's not that difficult. I'm not a rocket scientist. Just write something good. People wanna hear from a person. That's what this medium is.
I think that the secret to a better Internet, better informed consumers, better products, is... Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast.
Today, we are speaking with Matt Brown, the creator of Extra Points, a newsletter covering, as he puts it, the off-the-field forces that shape college sports.
He also happens to be a prolific and incisive newsletter business commentator.
This is not the first podcast he's been on talking about these things by any means, and he is an active member of several newsletter business-related subreddits, uh, much to his chagrin, as we were talking about shortly before [laughs] starting to record.
So I learned a lot preparing for this. Listener, I think you will learn a lot listening to it.
Um, to set the tone for this though, I do want to pull on a couple Reddit comments and, [laughs] and, uh, be very clear about what you do here. So you've built a successful niche media business.
You are a dedicated journalist covering an undercover niche with passion and rigor. You have a high-quality, hard-to-find product without many competitors, and people pay you for that.
Which is just to say, your story is not one of, like, growth marketing, ad sales, arbitrage. Um, this isn't, like, growth hack tips. You are somebody who's making a quality product that people think is worth paying for.
Th-that, that's, that's the, that's the goal. That's, that's what, that's what I'm, uh- Seems to be working... It's what's on the business cards. That's what I, I've built my business on. That, that's my hope.
Um, y-you're right. This is, this is very much not a business where I am hoping to buy a subscriber for thirty cents through a Facebook ad and- Yeah... monetize it for forty-five. Well, let me...
Okay, so to pull these, a couple of these comments I mentioned. So somebody asked about five months ago on Reddit, "What would you do if you were tasked with making a free newsletter generate a lot of revenue?"
Basically, I'm paraphr- paraphrasing. And you said, "I would write quality content for an audience that had the capacity and interest in paying for it.
There's no secret sauce here, no magic A/B testing, no third-party tool that provides monetary magic for a newsletter. You make money by writing above average stuff for the right audience week after week."
Um, so you kind of already added a little bit to that, but I just thought there was, we kinda had to start with that to situate. Is there anything you'd wanna add? Yeah.
I, I, I, I think you're right w-with saying, like, yeah, you're, you're an opinionated publisher about some of these things.
And, and I, I say this not to, like, put Beehiiv or Substack or anybody else on blast, but I think you can go on Reddit, and you could go on Twitter, and you can go on social media or elsewhere and, and, and
let yourself fall into this, this line of thinking, that you can let somebody else be your growth engine for you. Yeah.
That if you, if you type in these magic words and buy this product, that somebody else will be able to establish this flywheel.
And that might work for a little while, but, you know, to, to, to me, what makes the newsletter business attractive is this idea, even though we actually can't achieve it, but we can get closer this way, of owning your audience.
Yeah.
And I, I understand, like, hey, you, you should, you should build a newsletter, y-a Listserv, instead of depending on your Twitter account or just depending on, on, on social media algorithms, because then you could directly reach everybody.
So why would we then do that and immediately outsource all of our marketing and all of our advertising and all of our user acquisition- Why would you give up the agency?... to the same algorithms? Yeah.
No, do it yourself, right? Like, the, other people are not gonna care about your stuff the same way that you do, and they can't. Um, which isn't, I mean, like, that isn't to say that you shouldn't use these other tools.
I have a Beehiiv account. I run Beehiiv ads occasionally. And you, and you've, I mean, I should say- Yeah... you've done, basically, you've done all the platforms. You started on Substack, then you were on Ghost- Yeah...
and now you're on Beehiiv. Y-you said, I think, don't worry about the platforms, like worry about- Just-... making content. You know? Yeah.
Make the thing, and then each, each con- each platform, you say, again, I don't really wanna fall into, like, a platform conversation trap here, but- Yeah...
your point is that each platform has like, serves different strategies, different monetization techniques, different, you know, s- personal skillsets, right? Like- Yeah... make your, make your thing. Yeah. Make it good.
That's about it. But th-that, that's it.
When I look at Reddit, when I see my LinkedIn feed, when I have gone to these newsletter events and, and everything, I, I feel like the biggest differentiator is people who know how to write stuff and people who don't.
Mm-hmm. There's just so many dang newsletters of I, you know, uh, p- distilled this, this, this founder story into these six bullet points, or I- Yeah...
you know, here's nine AI tips that I found on the internet this week. I'm like, for God's sake, there's like nine of these things already, right? The thing that differentiates you is not that you wrote a better prompt.
Just write something good. Yeah. Which, you know, it's, uh, simple. I mean, I w- I was gonna say, like, uh, easy to say, harder to do, but it's also easy to do if you just kinda sit down and do it.
Um, anyways, so we should say briefly what Extra Points actually is. So it's a newsletter- Sure... where you write about the business of college sports. You do this at least four times a week.
Two of those are free, the rest are paid. Paid membership also includes a video game and a Freedom of Information Act, uh, document directory. Is that, does that about cover it? Uh, close.
The, we actually, the, the document directory we, we charge separately for. Oh, okay. That, that is subs- like it's not expensive, but it's- Mm-hmm... it's not, it's priced to be not so much a consumer-oriented product.
The newsletter is nine bucks a month. The- Yeah... open records directory is $200 a month. Uh, but it's, uh, you're right. If you, if you pay, you get four newsletters a week. That's roughly 7,000, 8,000 words.
Um, that's a mix of completely original reporting-I, it's, I, well, and I do, I do when I, when I was a freelancer, right? Yeah.
[laughs] Uh, so you, you have that, and some of that's completely original reporting, some of that is, is analysis that, that's a little bit deeper. Um, and it does have access to a computer game- Mm-hmm...
that we've built about being an athletic director, and it includes an e-book version of the book that I wrote in, in 2017, uh, about college football history. So there's, uh...
We, we, we like to, we like to think there's quite a bit there that you're not gonna be able to easily find somewhere else. I would say so. Um, a, some of that history we'll get back into in a second. But one...
Okay, so you started this, technically you started this, I think, 2019, and- Yeah... then you were laid off from, one of many people to be laid off from a Vox Media [laughs] company.
You could say that in any month, in any year. Um- You could... anyways, that, that happened in, I think, April or May '20. April, April of 2020. '20. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Right as the pandemic was, was, was becoming a capital T thing. Yeah. And so you did that. You start it. A year and a half, you, uh, sell it. You are acquired by this company, D1 Ticker. Mm-hmm.
You're there for about two and a half more years or so, and then last May, you announced that you had acquired it back with, uh, with a partner, and now that's kind of changed it again.
So I'm curious about the acquisition and deacquisition story. Why were you seeking to get acquired, and then why was it right to leave?
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So one of the things that I learned that first year of running Extra Points full time as my job, so the, through 2020- Mm-hmm... was that I'm good at some things.
I think I'm an, I'm a, I'm a competent reporter, I'm a competent writer, um, and, and have an interest, probably a more, a, a greater interest maybe than, than maybe some of my reporter colleagues- Mm-hmm...
in the business side of running a publication. Part of that was 'cause I had to do both at Vox. But, uh, during 2020, and I'm living in Chicago- Mm-hmm...
uh, we're in a part of the country that was substantially more shut down during the pandemic than other places.
I have small children, so I was running this publication while doing Zoom s- first grade or second grade, and then my youngest was too young to be in, in pre-K.
Um, so I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm basically having three different jobs. And a lot of the other, you know, kind of institutions that, that make regular life run, uh, weren't running. Not running, yeah.
And, and, and what I learned after that year was like, I think I can do this, th- this, this, this, this publication's growing, I think there's a real market here. But if I have to do everything, I will die.
[laughs] Um, 'cause, 'cause I, I feel, I feel like being, reporting at that level in and of itself is a full-time job. Mm-hmm.
And then you have the marketing, and you have the tech stack, and you have the outbound sales, and you have conversations like this one, and, and everything else. That's another job, too. Yeah.
And, and I talked about it with my wife and, and our family. We, we, we, we kinda decided
it would be better if I could partner with somebody who's good at the things that I'm not as good at to help me focus on what I am good at. Um, I met with several publications,
uh, a- about a potential acquisition or an equity stake and everything, and, and D1 Ticker was really attractive to me because I already had a relationship with the, the, the founder and CEO of the company.
D1 Ticker is an extremely college sports industry B2B-focused brand. Mm-hmm.
I thought partnering here would improve my journalism 'cause it would improve my access to, to many of the important people in this space, and I liked them.
Um, and it was a great, oh, I think it was ab- a great two years, like leg- legitimately. I thought we, we, we, we did, we did some great work. I learned a lot. I'm still very friendly with the people in that company.
But I was the only person, or one of the only people they had there, that made original content. Ah.
The D1 Ticker email newsletter is a curated newsletter that makes its money through selling, uh, job ads and- And it's been around for, for some time, right? Oh, sure. Yeah, year- years and years.
And, and, and in many ways I think it's kind of a throwback to, like, a 1990s media company- Mm-hmm...
'cause we don't really have clipping services anymore, but except for D1 Ticker, which is read by literally everybody in the ind- in the industry. And, and they came to me and they said, "Listen, we love you.
We love this publication. We think it is important to this industry. We want it to continue to exist. But we can't support it, because you need things as a reporter-" Yeah... "that we don't really know how to do."
You're the only reporter in the organization. The only reporter in the organization, yeah. Yeah.
"And we're trying to, and, and we're trying to make money in some of these other new ways, and, and we, we, we can't support this investment the way we want it to. So we'll, w- we'll...
If you can find another buyer, another equity stake, we'll, we'll let you have it for pennies on the dollar-" Mm-hmm. "... so you can keep this thing going." I'm like, "Well, that's great.
I don't really wanna go get a real job at this point. Um, and so y- I'll, I'll buy it back."
And we, we did the, we did the round again and talked to most major publishers, and bunch of private equity houses, and some small investors- Mm-hmm...
and, and, and found a relationship now that I think gives me a larger chunk of control to try and build something a little bit different.
And now we have four full-time employees, and, uh, are, are looking to potentially grow again later this year, and, and charting our own course. Yeah.
So the full-time employees, you brought in the first one in November, Steven Torreni, a salesperson. Again, something, you know, bringing in somebody who can do something that you're not as good at.
Another one last month, January, Sam Weber as VP of marketing. Um, and then I think you also have a couple freelancers. You've referenced Hector Diaz, who does, uh, social media. Mm-hmm. Who el- who else is the team?
So the, uh, well, uh, Dennis Nationalar is, is my, is my business partner. Yes. Uh, he's the one that, that owns the equity stake. He's based in California.
He has a, a marketing and finance and product background that I don't really have. So, uh, I, I count him in that group.
But I, I have, we have some, uh, some, some consultant software developers that have helped- Mm-hmm... us with our FOIA library.
Uh, I have, I have an executive assistant here in Chicago who helps, um, do document management and- Mm-hmm... manage my schedule. And we, yeah- Oh, that booked this meeting, of course.
Yeah, boo- booked this meeting, right. Yeah. [laughs] Which is... And oh, she's, she's awesome. Um, I, I have-I have terrible ADHD, and, and there's always so much, like, organization that Adderall can help me do.
It's like having somebody else to be my executive function- [laughs]... for a couple times a day has made, made my life so much better. Yeah.
So, and, and I think we're, we're kind of looking at maybe Q3, Q4 having another writer. Oh.
Um, just because I do almost all the writing right now, and it, we're thinking, well, if we have somebody else to help with content, that frees me up to do maybe bu- writing, reporting, and also maybe some of the bigger picture marketing or events kind of, kind of things.
Um- Creative strategy campaigns or whatever. Creative. Sure, sure. Right? You know, there's, there's...
I am, I, I've just, I spent a lot of time in this industry, and some of the sales and some of the editorial packages that we wanna do require some of those relationships. Yeah.
So even though I'm very, very fortunate as an independent publisher to have a team, um, I can't, we're not at the point where I can delegate everything- [laughs]... and just put my head down and report, you know?
Nor does it sound like that's something you really wanna do.
I think, I mean, it's evident to me by how active you are in, like, contributing to the conversation around the business of independent newsletter publishing, that, like, you know, as much as you are s- you do come from the r- from, come from the reporting side and are so good at that, like, you're kind of addicted to the stress of the business side.
I, I get the impression. So there, there definitely is a little bit of that. I, I, I didn't jump into this thinking I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I do. Yeah.
But, but, you know, the, the other thing, to be honest with you, is like, I, I care about this business a great deal. Yes. And, and, and I, and I, and I care about that because I want a better internet.
And, and I, I, I think the structures that kind of force me to be independent, you know, from, from being laid off from Vox, and that there's so many other people that have similar stories- Mm-hmm...
in institutional media or in larger digital media, um, and who have been really hurt by the focus for scale and dependence on programmatic advertising and dependence on, on social media-owned, um, you know, algorithms.
Yeah. I think that the secret to a better internet, better-informed consumers, better products, is pe- people who make stuff taking ownership of, of those things and having- This is, wait, so this is- Yeah...
one of my, one of my many definitions for, like, what is a creator. Uh, kind of my favorite one. And I, I hate that term. Yeah. Yeah. Ex- well, exactly. Yeah.
And so, I mean, and that's kinda my, my, my mission here is to define it in a way that is useful and, like, I don't know, isn't something to be hated. I don't know.
Maybe that, maybe that's what's been thrust upon me here. But- Yeah... the way I like to s- the, the word I like to use or the phrase I like to use is somebody who's contributing to the corpus of the internet, right?
Where like- I like that. Yeah. The, i- the internet is this pool made of all this data that people in companies move around day to day. Um, at...
The, the first p- person I interviewed for this series, I asked them, like, "Do you think you have a responsibility to your audience, and what do you think that is?"
And this is somebody who writes about, like, the psychedelic news and research space. So I'm like- That's-...
very clear reason I asked that question, and I would ask everybody else I interviewed for a little while, but people kind of stopped having answers.
Now, people were sometimes were like, "I don't really think about that at all," which to me is a shame, because you kind of, whether or not you choose to accept it, you do have a responsibility in that sense of, like, creating a better internet, um, g- giving consumers, like, vetted, rigorous information, right?
Um, so I guess question for you here, because you do care about this so much, are there any, you don't have to name names of, like, specific businesses, but I wonder if there are, like, business models in this kind of indie publishing space that you resent or that you think are, you know, harming the internet in that sense.
Yeah. I, I... This has probably come through in some of my Reddit commentary. It's probably came through in this conversation a little bit. It certainly is, I think, if you follow me on other platforms. I,
I've, I, I, I resent people that get into newsletters and independent publishing and look at the co- the, the, the creation of the text, the words, the product itself as the inefficiency that needs to be solved. Yeah.
If you come in here and you ChatGPT your way to a below average newsletter, and you put all of your energy into information arbitrage, I think that sucks.
[laughs] And, and, and it, and it may be profitable, but you're selling dreck. Mm.
And ultimately I think that that hurts me if people associate newsletter or associate independent publishing with slop or, or, or, or dreck, right?
If I'm in the steak business and the market gets flooded with Taco Bell Hamburger Helper oatmeal gruel- [laughs]... ultimately people are gonna look at meat and think that it's bad, even though I'm making good meat.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, and, and so I, I, I think that there is an element that's fundamentally hostile to people with deep subject matter expertise and pour that into the text and writing that they do.
And I, I look at anybody that, that, that is trying to build a business to smooth those edges around or, or as, as hostile to the, to what I want to build and what I want the internet to be. Yeah.
Um, I, I'm, I'm also more than happy to talk about business models that I think are great. I, I think there are a lot. But please do. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Right?
Like, I, I don't wanna just be a hater of like, "I think your AI newsletter sucks." Yeah. [laughs] Right? Like, I look at what Defector has done in the sports space- Mm-hmm... with, with a lot of admiration.
And I, I look at that, one, not just because it's, it's, it's worker-owned, and it's, it's full of a bunch of reporters and, and that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
But I, I think that that model has also, um, I think been really creative about launching new and high-quality IP. Mm.
I think they've been creative in, in other products they can deliver besides just text, whether that's crosswords, whether that's games, whether that's events, which are the kind of things that we as a collective industry are, are, are, are const- constantly talking about.
I think that there's been, uh, exciting developments in, in independent journalism, uh, centered around, uh, uh, hyper niches.
Like, I, I think there's, there's exciting stuff that's happening in, in climate reporting wi- within independent publishing.
I think there's exciting things that's happening in local with people that are doing actual journalism. Mm.
Like, I, I don't, I don't wanna sit here and crap too much on the, the, the no- the local newsletter that's just an aggregation of restaurant openings and, uh, things to do this Friday, 'cause-Alt we- alt weeklies are, are dead in most places, and that still- Yeah...
provides some service That's, it's serving a, that's serving a real need. It, it, it's, it's, it's serving something if it's not a complete arbitrage play.
But, like, I live in Chicago, and, and one of kind of like my North Stars and, and, like, the, the places I really look up, look up to is a publication called Block Club, which is a, a bunch of reporters that were laid off from DNA Info and, and, uh, some of it's been foundation funding, but they get out there and they're like, "I'm gonna cover this ZIP code."
Mm-hmm. "I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to people on the street. I'm gonna tell you exactly what's happening in, in this hyper local area with reporting, with getting out there and making phone calls."
And that has improved my life as a Chicagoan significantly. That's a- Yeah... that's a, that's a, a thing that I think can be replicated elsewhere. It's, there- Yeah... there are good things happening out there.
Well, okay, so you mentioned Defector, and I, on another podcast, have interviewed Jasper Wang from Defector, who is kind of their, their business guy, and has- Yeah...
been kind of the token business guy for a number of these worker-owned independent media outlets, 404 Media, Hellgate in New York. Um, y- Okay...
there are all these kind of, like, ex-journalist, um, c- worker-owned companies that didn't really have somebody who really understood the business side, and he has kind of been that source.
Um, and I'm thinking of something, when I interviewed Matt McGarry a few weeks ago, he, I think he wa- said he got this from Austin Rief, but, like, that the job of a newsletter operator is three jobs, right?
Grow, sell, right? And with- Yeah... somebody like you, like, you clearly come from the writing side, and you have, you, you know, you're fluent in these other sides, but you are outsourcing them.
Um, I think with some of these more, like, arbitrage-type people, like, they are really good at the grow and the sell, and maybe not the writing, and there's this, like, kind of conflict where, uh, the, a, a way I've framed it before is that, like, the people who come from the more business side aren't really obligated to adopt the, the principles and the quality of the people who come from the writer side because that's just one business model, whereas the people who come from the write- the writer side, like, that is their core thing, and so they are obligated to adopt the grow and the sell principles, right?
And there's this kind of power imbalance where, not that, like... I mean, I think attention is a limited resource, but it's not just in a purely black-and-white way. You know, people,
uh, can give their attention to multiple things. Good point. Long-winded way [laughs] of saying that write, grow, sell
kind of triad, do you think you can really come into this and be successful long term with just one of these, or do you have to have at least two passed to s- to, like, get past a certain point of, like, actual sustainable, livable success?
Uh, yeah, that, it's a good question, and I'm open to being talked out of this, 'cause I don't, I can't read every publication out there. [laughs] I'm not gonna sit there and pretend I know everything.
I do think you have to be good at at least two of those. Yeah. It doesn't have to be you personally.
You know, I, I think another thing to consider, and, and you, I think you did raise a good point, is if you come from a more traditional journalism background...
I'm using traditional more expansively here, 'cause, like, I don't, right? I don't have a journalism degree. Mm-hmm.
Um, I, I actually b- got into this business, like, making jokes about Ohio State football and Pokémon for SB Nation, and then kind of like- Yeah.
Well, you were, like, didn't you do, like, a magazine internship back in, like, 2007 or something like that? Oh, I, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I did. I did. You've been interested for a long time.
I've been interested a long time, but, but I, you know, my, my... When I was 23, I was teaching elementary school. I wasn't, I wasn't working at a, at a, in a newspaper. Yeah.
But whether you're working at SB Nation or Vanity Fair or the, you know, the Dallas Morning News or any of those places as a reporter, you are taught there is supposed to be a firewall- Yeah...
between you and the commercial interests. You are, as a reporter, and you're interviewing somebody, you're not also trying to sell an ad package or a sponsored post.
Like, that, in fact, that would get you excommunicated from the high priest of, of the Nieman labs, right? Yeah.
[laughs] And then when, when you are [laughs] when you become a, a, an indie publisher, you don't have that luxury, and it's something, like, I worry about a lot ab- uh, about whether I'm accidentally breaking- The firewall is actually then a forest fire coming towards you very quickly.
[laughs] Yeah. Uh, you, you, you, you kinda have to do a, a lot of these things, and I, I don't wanna break ethical guidelines.
And, and, and I've probably erred on the side of trying to be maybe more on the other side and alienated some, some potential commercial partners. Mm-hmm.
But it, it's not that the, that writers don't have that skill or can't learn that skill. I think they were almost taught that they shouldn't- Yeah... have that skill. Exactly.
So there, there, there is a, an unlearning or kind of having to reorient, uh, uh, make sense of some of these, these guidelines when you come from the writing world and, and now have to be an independent business.
And I'm not saying it's like a sellout- Okay, wait. So, so coming, coming from the writing world- Yeah...
and, and, and entering and, like, having to, you know, breach this firewall a little bit, I'm curious what your values and, like, what, what integrity means to you in this way, what your values are in a way of, like- Oh, yeah...
trying to come up with, like, some new creator journalist, uh, uh, you, you know, may, you may hate the term, but creator journalist kind of ethics and values.
Like, for one, I know that you don't work with sports gambling, um, advertising partners, and you've stopped working with crypto advertising partners.
You experimented with that, but people, re- your readers didn't like it. So- No, they, no, they did not... in this sense of, like, collapsing that firewall and having to
be fluent in all three of those write, grow, sell jobs, what are some of your values that, like, guide your decisions? Yeah. This is a, this is a really good question.
I was thinking about that all, all morning after you, after you reached out to me ahead of time. I, I think a, a very overarching principle for me is to be
fundamentally and radically honest with your readers and to, and to care about them. And so I, I look at that even independent of advertising relationships. If I really care about my audience, everything that I do,
I want to be additive and, and to help expand their understanding, to entertain them, to give them something that, that really makes their inbox better, 'cause there's a lot of crappy stuff out there.
Uh, and so that, that principle has to guide what I decide to write about in, in the first place. Yeah.
And then as I think about potential advertising partners, it's, it's can I d- can I look my audience in the eye and disclose that I'm taking money from these people?
And, and does taking money from these people and, and bringing in an ad or a sponsorship detract from-The, the, the, the higher goal of the publication to, to make you more informed, to make you more entertained, more educated, more, more connected.
And, and a lot of the times I think the answer is, like, actually th- those partnerships can be additive. Mm-hmm. Um, so long as you can, as you can be, as you can be honest and upfront.
And there's other times where I think it's like, well, this doesn't hurt anything, and, and, uh, so we, we can say yes to that. But in, in terms of, like, the red lines, you're right.
Like, I don't, I don't take gambling money.
And that isn't be- out of some, like, puritanical prudishness against gambling, so much as it is, like, do you realize how ridiculous it would sound for me to write like, "And here's an article about NCAA governance reform and improving the athlete experience.
Bratty-" It's because it's something you have to kind of criticize in, in your- Yeah... in your writing. That, that... The, the... I think, I think that would, that, that would feel ridiculous.
And, and for a while during the kind of the crypto- uh, the first crypto boom market, a lot of the crypto pub- like, a- ad opportunities that would come up to me felt indistinguishable from gambling.
Like, what's the difference between thri- putting, you know, making a bet on a three-team parlay versus making a, a bet on this shitcoin versus that shitcoin? [laughs] Like, it's, it's... It, it...
I- To me, it, it felt- Oh, yeah... it felt fundamentally the same. The, the other thing that I, that I turned down, other, other sin-related industries, and it, it's not like I'm...
It's not like Brazzers is calling me up all the time asking to sponsor stuff. [laughs] Like, that isn't a thing, but, like, I have turned down CBD stuff. Oh, yeah. And it's not, it's not prudishness either. Like,
you know, I, I live in a state where that stuff is legal, but it's not legal everywhere. Yeah. And I, I worry that that would detract from the message of, of, of what I'm, what I'm trying to promote. But
that, that isn't to say that I, I would, I would turn down o- oth- other, other opportunities if, depending on how they were, how they were structured. Yeah. No. The... Thank you for, for laying that out.
Um, I think that's like, again, going back to the idea of, like, it, it's about contributing to the corpus of the internet and having responsibility. That's something I want to try to propagate in this- Yeah...
series and, like, encourage people to, to a- come up with their own values, whatever those may be. Um, to the Vox Media of it all, kind of a scheduling accident. You are the, the, the third guest- Yeah...
out of the last four to have been laid off from a Vox Media brand. Uh- There's a lot of us, man. Yes, Joe. I'm sure... Now listen, I'm sure this time the layoffs are gonna get it right. This- You know?...
this time they definitely are. The monetization is, the money's gonna flow. But I think, uh, two weeks ago or so now as we record, my episode with Jenna Stieber, former, formerly of Polygon, came out. Mm-hmm.
And today as we record, um, the episode that came out this morning, usually that's coming out tomorrow, is with Kofi Yeboah, who was laid off from SB Nation- Oh. Yeah, I know Kofi... two days ago. Yeah. Yeah.
It's kind of the first time where I've been in the middle of writing one of these things, I've already recorded it, and the person's been laid off, and it's like, well, now my whole story [laughs] is gonna...
I, I have to rewrite this. Um, and... Okay, so bear with me here. Sure. When I was talking to Lyndsey Stanberry a few weeks ago, who was formerly of Refinery29. Um, I don't, I don't, I don't think that's a Vox Media.
I don't know if she ha- has ever worked for Vox Media. It used to be. It... Oh, there you go. I think, I think, I, I think for a minute, yeah. After- Mm... after I was, after I left, I think they bought it. Okay.
And then they got, got to get rid of it for some reason. Well, so now she- Yeah... runs The Purse, which is an independent women's finance newsletter. She left Fortune on her own volition to do that.
But in speaking with her, I ca- I kinda...
This is, like, a wonky idea, but I was like, is this a future where, like, these more traditional media businesses, whether they're new or old, almost be- be- because of the unreliability of employment, you know, where it almost becomes, like, a grad school or boot camp for independent journalists?
Where, like, you go there, you develop your beat, you learn from pro journalists, and then when you're inevitably laid off, um... Eh, maybe that's being a little flippant.
Um, but [laughs] when you, when, when you inevitably leave, then it's like, okay, now I'm prepared to go and start my own thing. Is that... Do you think that's, like, one future of traditional journalism?
Is being, like, the boot camp, the grad school? Yeah. It, it... And I don't think that's too flippant at all. I say this exact thing when I talk to, to, like, undergrads in graduate schools for journalism.
Like, you're gonna get laid off. Yeah. There, there's, there's, there's no permanent jo- Death to taxes. [laughs] Yeah. There's no... E- especially if you...
You know, the, the institution's never gonna love you, and you, you go, and, and you make that part of your identity when you're 26, and you feel really, really good about it, and then they're, you know, they're gonna lay you off.
[laughs] And, and it's funny, like, when I was at SB Nation,
you know, probably, like, the, the middle part of that era just as it was starting to decline, you know, around 2017, 2018, this was a, a regular conversation that I had with our, our bosses and, and with k- kind of our editorial leaders, was like, "We're losing people a lot, both from our contractor base, who then get full-time jobs that we, we can't, we can't keep, and some of our full-time writers.
And they're going to ESPN. They're going to The Ringer. They're going to leading newspapers." Mm-hmm. "And it's hurting our brand. We, we need to keep some of these people."
And the response that we got was literally, uh, "We actually view it as a positive because this will help us in recruiting, and we don't view ourself as a place where we're, you're gonna s- keep working when you're 35."
Mm. "This is the, this is, this is double A.
And eventually you're gonna get called up to triple A, or you're gonna get called up to the majors, and then we'll go find the next 23-year-old, the next Kofi, and, and do that." Yeah.
Like, that's kind of a cynical way of doing things, but there, there is, there is a, a, a math behind it. There, there is a method to that madness.
And if you look at the alumni of Polygon, of vox.com, of The Verge, of SB Nation,
many of them are l- either leading independent voices or leading voices for The New York Times, or The Washington Post, or Wired or, or everywhere else on the internet.
I, I think it would probably hurt Jim Bankoff's feelings a little bit to think of himself as just, like, the NYU of the journalism world- [laughs]...
that you go, you, you take out a bunch of debt to move to New York or DC, and then you go do something else better elsewhere, but that is what the company is now. And that's, I think, what BuzzFeed is- Mm-hmm...
and, and what the Huffington Post was, and, and what a lot of these other places are. Um- Yeah... and, and I, I'm conflicted about it 'cause I owe SB Nation my career 'cause that is where I learned how to be a reporter.
That is where I learned how to write on the internet. That's where I became- Do you think, uh, Extra Points wouldn't exist had you not spent some time at SB Nation?
Extra Points would not exist without, without SB Nation. Yeah. Well, a- and some of my best friends came from that.So I look at that with a lot of, with a lot of gratitude. And also, I'm gonna die mad at Jim Bankoff.
[laughs] Because I look at this, and, and, and not just him, but other people who- Yeah, yeah... I won't personally call out on, on a podcast. But you also look at this and think like, "You ruined a good thing."
And what I've learned from running my own thing too now is this is difficult. It's not that difficult. I'm not a rocket scientist.
I'm never gonna sit here in front of a microphone and go, "I, Matt Brown, have discovered the secret of making media profitable. I alone have discovered fire from Prometheus. I have..." No. Like, it's, it's, it's...
Y- you... It's not rocket surgery- Mm-hmm... to write things on the internet and make a profit. Well, so something there, um, a, a...
like, at the turn of the year, I interviewed my co-host on my other podcast, Tasteland, um, Daisy Ali- Alioto, who does Dirt Media, and she had this great way of thinking about it where she's like, "Media is a primordial soup where you, as an independent operator, and all the big companies are all in the same soup, like, worrying about what's, what, where does the wind blow on digital media next, and like, where do we need to evolve into, where, what are the risks we shouldn't take," et cetera, et cetera.
[clears throat] And the way she framed it, of course, as a small, independent media operator is like, "You have an advantage," 'cause you only have to come up with however many thousand dollars you need to pay yourself and your employees and hosting fees, whatever, every month, whereas, like, Condé Nast needs millions every, every month.
Um, which I think is, of course an independent operator would say that. But, uh, yeah, I don't know.
Like, I'm also thinking of a lot of what I've been reading after Kofi has been laid off, like Vox Union's statement about, like, you know, and I forget the name of the, the group publisher who kinda sent out an email that Awful Announcing published, um, where he's like, "We, you know, we, we're doing this to make this a sustainable business.
This is a profit sense." And then you see stuff about like, in that same article, they're talking about like, "Oh, the last time this happened," and they brought in all these executives and laid off talent.
And like, that didn't fix it. Sure. And, um, I don't know.
Long-winded way of saying, do you miss being part of a larger organization, um, or do you prefer kind of the, the, what, the come-what-may of independent entrepreneurship?
I miss a lot about being in a larger organization. And, and w- and maybe that's a heresy for, for people that are supposed to say like, "Ah, no, there's only three of us, and this, this rules."
I miss it because I think some of my best work came when I was in, uh, I was in an office, and I could get some of my best friends and some of the smartest other people, or we could do it in Slack, and we could get on a whiteboard, and we could bounce ideas off of each other for an hour and a half and then go make something.
One of the biggest problems with being independent or semi-independent or small is that it's difficult to find people who say, "I love you.
Your idea sucks," um, and, and, and talk you out of something, or, or Less a lot of sycophants maybe- Sure... who wanna work with you, right? Sure. Sure. Or, or, right?
Like any, any, any writer who says that they don't need an editor, I think, is somebody who is, is, is, is lying to themselves. We, we have good ideas, but we also need to be saved from ourselves. We need to...
Someone to say, "Your 3,000 words should be 1,500 words," or, "Maybe this thinking isn't, is, is... This, this error in your thinking," and I loved having that with a larger organization.
Um, there are things that I don't miss, right? And like I did not raise money from NBC or from venture funds or anybody else at a certain valuation, so I don't have the same pressures to grow at a certain scale.
And this is something that I think Defector and I, and, and, and Hellgate and many other independent places have done well is recognize we can't... We're, we're, we're not gonna be a $600 million company.
We're gonna, we're gonna grow enough so everybody can make enough money to buy Chinese food without having to check their bank balance, and so you can have health insurance, and that's gonna be it.
And, and we're gonna, we're gonna go take our, our, our little, our tidy profit and, and get to have a nice life for ourself. And you can do that if it's just eight of you.
When you borrow money or you take investor money or you, you, you chase this, this, this other kind of scale, you can't do that. And then you, you can get boxed into some, into some challenges.
And I think that, that Vox wasn't the only place that did that. But there was a rational reason why they made those decisions too. Um, I don't have the capital to do everything that I want to do.
That's part of the choice here the, the, that I made. Um,
at this point in my career, I would say there's very, very, very few large organizations where I would walk away from Extra Points and say, "I'm gonna go join that."
And if you asked me- But you're implying there's a few... four years ago... Uh, look, uh, man, if ESPN calls, of course I'm gonna take the phone call. [laughs] I, and I might, and I might say no. Yeah.
But I would take the phone call. But you'd take the phone call, of course. Yeah. I would take the phone call. And quite frankly, if like Block Club called me, um, and, and said, "Hey, we wanna get into sports.
Do you wanna go b- you know, run our Chicago bureau?" I would, I would take the phone call. Um, but I, I, I think if the Washington Post or the LA Times did, I would say no.
That's a- And two or three years ago, I probably would've said yes. You, you, you gain a comfort level of doing things yourself, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, let's talk about your audience for a bit.
So I listened to your episode of the Send & Grow podcast from a year and a half ago, and you said that your newsletter serves three audiences, which are- Yep...
pretty much split equal lines, being gigantic nerds about college sports, um, current industry practitioners, people definitely working in the industry, and then students. Would you say that i- is still an even split?
It's pro... It's, I would say, less. Now we are prob- the students are probably the smallest. 'Cause then, I should say then, then too- Yeah... you had, like, I think 16,000 subscribers. Now you have about 29,000. Yeah.
So you've almost doubled. So we're about 29 now. Yeah. I, I, I would say now of, of that stool, the student pool is the smallest, and the nerd pool is the largest. Hmm. But not disproportionately so.
All three- That's good for the business. I- i- in, in, in many ways it is. Students have less money to spend, right? Students have less money to spend, but students are a very attractive advertiser demographic. Yeah.
Right? If you are trying to work with graduate schools to promote their MBA programs- [laughs]... they want to know what kind of students you have. Or an energy drink company. Or, or, right?
Like, people wanna get in front of, like, in front of 20-year-olds. Mm-hmm.I- i-i-it's good for the business in some ways.
There's other demo- there's other demographics I think we'd like to grow and, and, and be a, be a bigger part of. But yeah, we reached three of those, which makes this both a B2B and a B2C company. Yeah.
Or a B2B company that speaks in a B2C voice, um, which has its challenge. Many such cases these days. Ma- many, many s- yeah, many people are saying. Um. [laughs] But, but that's... Yeah, like it's, it's not- But wait.
One thing, one thing I liked that you said too, um, I think you said this in that, in that same interview.
You said that you, with every story, you aim to hit two out of three of those audiences, which I related to a lot as, you know, I try to curate a good mix of people from different niches and backgrounds and industries and media, whatever, for the Creative Spotlight newsletter and podcast.
And my thinking is, like, at minimum, I should hope that every member of the audience finds one of these interesting per month. I know that they won't all be interesting to everybody. I hope they are.
I, I do my best to, to make them so. Sure. But, um, but I think that's a really healthy way to think of it.
And is that something you're thinking of actively though, or you're just kinda like, "This is, these are the editorial decisions I make, and I'm pretty sure we're gonna hit two out of three every time"? [laughs] No.
It, it, it, it's very active. 'Cause on, on some level, in this kind of, um, this kind of, my kind of beat, you're somewhat dependent on the news cycle, right?
If there's a, if there's another huge antitrust lawsuit, I gotta write about it. Um, if, if a conference falls apart, I gotta write about it. Um, there's some things that,
uh, are, are more in m- in my control in the news cycle, right? Like what stories can I break? You know, who, who, who returns my phone calls? What flavor did, did I come in?
And then there's things that, that I, I, I consider, like, should I write about this? Can I, can I add to this conversation? What phone calls can I make to add this?
So a- and as I'm kind of laying out my editorial calendar, I wish I could tell you I have a month planned out in advance. Nope. No, I don't think anybody can. I'm about a month.
It's like three or four days and- A month is the furthest- Yeah... I ever get. I'm trying to get further, but it's hard. You, 'cause you gotta write the thing too, so yeah.
You gotta, you gotta, you gotta write the thing. You don't know who's gonna call you back. I, I get a week, and then in- in- inevitably halfway through, I'm like, "Ah, shit.
We gotta, we gotta [laughs] change something else 'cause something else just..." I hope I can say that here. Um, but- Yeah...
so I, I'm, I'm looking at which groups am I hitting over the course of a week from this subject matter, and then I'm thinking about it as I write the story.
How can I translate a topic that on the surface might be way more important to operators into something that a normie, uh, or a non-industry person might, might care about?
Um, how can I make sure that I'm not using the jargon? Mm-hmm. Uh, should I be more explicit? Like, "Hey, listen, s- you know, sport administrator, conference commissioner, I know you care about that.
Let me explain why Doug in, in Muncie should care about this here too." Yeah. And I'll even say it just like that. Um, does it work every single time? Probably not.
Does it work, um, enough of the time to build a successful business and, and to, I think, build a world where the audience feels really engaged and connected? I, I, I, I, I think so. Well, wait.
So speaking of that- Yeah. Yeah... you, you send, uh, at least four times a week. Um, you're, you're very active. Does the audience talk back? So I know you have, like- Yeah... 50,000 followers on Twitter, maybe 80,000.
I forget, something like that. Yeah, it says about 50. Um, yeah. Again, and Reddit, Instagram, Blue Sky. You're, you're pretty active. Tell me about the more, like, um, two-way relationship with the audience. Yeah.
And this is something I'd like to get better about. And, and this, it's a challenge for a lot of operators on the internet, 'cause it's hard to kinda steer everybody into one place, right?
And that's why we're everywhere. I get a lot of email feedback. And I would say broadly speaking, my industry audience and my readers over 50 are far more likely to email me back or to text me back after a story.
Um, I, it, I, it is not uncommon for me to get five or six responses, and I try to write back to those, um, un- unless, unless they're very rude, which happens very, very rarely.
Um, and, and keep the conversation in my inbox. My readers who are younger or are, or who are less likely to be in the industry will engage on Discord. They'll engage on Blue Sky.
Far more on Blue Sky, uh, over the last year now that there's been an exodus from Twitter.
And I, I gotta be honest, the people that respond on Twitter, one, like there's not as many of them 'cause my reach has been nuked because the way the algorithm's changed.
And two, um, I'm maybe not getting as many Mensa members, uh, as, as maybe I u- I used to. [laughs] Uh, maybe, you know, un- under different, uh, platform audiences. You know, it's funny you say that.
I, 'cause I recently r- replied to the Creative Spotlight welcome email. I just got a reply from somebody who works at Mensa this morning, so. Oh, really? Great timing. [laughs] Well, I'm, I'm not surprised.
We have lots of Mensa members. [laughs] I got a couple. Yeah. And I got a couple that are only here for me reading about the video game, and that's very clear.
[laughs] There's maybe a little more vitriol on Twitter too or, yeah. A, a, a, a, a little bit of that. And, and you, I, I...
To the perhaps detriment of my mental health, but to the benefit of my business, I try to respond in a lot of- Mm-hmm... in a lot of those contexts. I noticed. But it's- You, you are prolific. It's... Well,
it's the only way I ever learned how to write. Yeah.
And maybe, again, it might have been different had I gone to Columbia or something, but what my whole ethos has been is I'm gonna bring my authentic self everywhere where I'm gonna be on the internet.
I really admire that. Sometimes it- I really do. Yeah. Some... Well, I, I, I appreciate that. And, and I've been really fortunate and blessed in my career, I think, where o- overwhelmingly it's helped me.
And it does mean that sometimes you kinda, you know, bleed on the keyboard a little bit and, and, uh, get vulnerable in a way that might be uncommon for a B2B writer. But I think the people that then pay me nine bucks
are my ride or dies. Well, this is, I mean, this is- Yeah... the creator journalism model where they want somebody, we want somebody who's opinionated.
We want somebody who wears their heart on their, on their keyboard or whatever, you know? Like that's- Yeah... that's what's appealing. And I mean, I've...
When I started doing Creative Spotlight like a, a little over a year ago, I tried to keep it more neutral, to not use the, the first person I in the newsletter.
And then when I did some opinion essays, I was like, "These got, like many times more responses than the other ones." People wanna hear from a person. Yeah. This is, you know, that's, that's what this, this medium is.
Um, I wanna talk about the starting up the newsletter. You were talking a little bit ago about how, you know, you didn't-You weren't, like NBC didn't invest in you, no venture capital, whatever. Yeah.
But I understand that you-- when you got laid off, you'd been saving for a layoff scenario, so I don't know how much that is. Let's say it's, like at least 7K.
You were given a severance buyout of 35K, and you also got a 28K grant from Substack, so probably at least 70K there. Uh, and again, you're a married father of two, I believe, living in Chicago- Mm-hmm...
relatively affordable city. But that's kind of your startup cost of, like, I don't necessarily have to go get another job right now because I have this money to write and do this thing. How far did that take you?
Over a year. So I'll, I'll like, I'll, I'll, I'll be, I'll be honest and, and, and transparent, right? Like I had a couple of big advantages. One, I saved more than $7,000. Yeah. Like, I- Love to hear it...
I would say that r- yeah. Like my, my last year with Vox was really, was really bad. And, and, and I knew I was either gonna get laid off or I was gonna get fired. Yeah.
And I had, had tried to find another job and, and, and that didn't work out. But I, I had a big piggy bank saved 'cause I knew what, that marriage wasn't gonna end well. Yeah. Um, yeah.
I think, I think, and thanks in part to the Vox union, I think my, my severance was about $35,000. I had a, a, uh, we'll just say more than $7,000 saved. Uh, I think the Substack grant was like, was two or three grand.
Um, and my wife worked the entire pandemic, and more importantly, she worked and had health insurance, which, 'cause she worked in, in the, in the healthcare industry. So I was worried
because I'm neurotic and worry for the sake of worrying the whole time that first year, but never at any point would I think, "I'm gonna lose my house," or, "I can't buy Lunchables for my children," or anything.
And, and, and I was cash positive after like month three.
But I didn't feel the need to replace my income or for like, until the second year of running the publication, um, which was, which was a massive- We should also say, Matt, real quickly- Yeah...
you should say, I think you grew pretty quickly. You were already an expert in this space. I think you said- Oh, yeah... you had like 15,000 Twitter followers. You'd published a book.
So like you were already some-- You weren't like a nobody. You were somebody- Yeah... who people already knew to come to for college sports information. Yeah.
I, I, I like to joke that when I launched Extra Points, I wasn't the most famous Matt Brown writing about college football on the internet.
Uh, I have a doppelganger who works at The Athletic who's like about my age, uh, and writes about similar nerd stuff.
Um, no disrespect to the other Matt Brown, who I love, but I think I passed you at this point now, now that he's, he's, he's worked, he does more behind-the-scenes stuff. Look, I, I Googled- Yeah...
I spent a lot of time Googling you last night. Oh. Uh, all the links led to your stuff, so I'll say that. Oh, suck it, MMA fighter Matt Brown, right? [laughs] Like, I have terrible SEO. Um, no, I, I, I, I...
That, that, that is the, that is part of the story, right? Like I didn't start from zero. I didn't start, you know, I'm, I'm not Mina Kimes. I'm, I'm not, I'm not Spencer Hall.
I didn't come in with this massive following, but I had, I did have a little bit.
And I think after the, you know, by the end of the first year, I wanna say the earned revenue from the newsletter was probably 35, 40 grand, which was not what I was making at Vox before.
But between that and what I had socked away, like I felt fine. Yeah.
Um, so I read the Beehiiv case study that came out like two weeks ago or so, and in this it says that you're currently bringing in around 17,000 per month, around 200,000 per year before salary expenses, and that about 90-- You said well north of 90% of your revenue comes from paid subscribers.
I'm curious like if that's still true and if that's a percentage you're trying to like lower. I'm definitely trying to lower it.
And, and part of that, like pa-- You know, our, our business goal for this year, part of this is to substantially grow the revenue from our, uh, Open Records Library data product. Mm-hmm.
Um, we view that as a place that has the potential to be higher margin, um, and, and give us the cash flow to make investments elsewhere. Yeah. I, I'd have to go back and, and, and double-check the Stripe data now.
Like it, we, we might be north of n- uh, like we might be under 90% in terms of revenue, but like that product launched in September and it's, it's generating,
at this point, you know, thousands of dollars a month in, in, in, in revenue that, that's not tied to the, the newsletter subscription business. So, so also the subscriptions, you started at $7 a month. Yep.
Then you went to $8, and now it's $9 a month. Now it's $9. When and why did you raise the prices?
So this is one of the, the kind of standard bits of advice I give to people who are launching these publications, is charge more money than you think you should. Mm-hmm. Um, you can always run sales.
But in my professional experience, may- maybe yours has been different, maybe it's different for some of the other listeners.
My professional experience, consumers of news products are generally not price sensitive between like 6 and 10 or 6 and $11. They're price sensitive from $0 to $1.
Most of them are just never, ever, ever gonna pay, um, uh, because they've been conditioned to not having to pay for this kind of thing. It's a pain in the butt to get out your credit card.
And I, despite being a pretty prolific, active writer, I can't give you more stuff than Disney+ can or Disney+, ESPN+ can. I'm one dude. So if you wanna view it from, from that vein, I can't possibly compete.
But, you know, we found... Like when I launched, I thought like, "Oh my God, I have to just like smother people with content if I'm gonna ask them for $7."
There was a time when even, I even wrote every day, and the feedback I would get from my readers was, "Matt, that's a lot of stuff, but I can't read all that, man." I can't read all this.
Yeah, I got other shit to read too. [laughs] Yeah. I got, I got other shit to read too. I got a job, right? [laughs] Like, um, you don't have to... And, and plus it was killing me, right? Mm-hmm.
And, and every time I've raised prices, I think I went to eight bucks after one year and I raised to $9 in 2024. Uh, f- I mean, we, we, it was like a 97% renewal rate.
Like th- that wasn't a thing that, that bothered people, uh, because they felt like they were getting their money's worth. I don't anticipate going above $9 anytime soon.
I, I, I think there's a psychic thing that might trigger ar- around 10 bucks. Yeah. And I, I, I wanna- Well, that, the two digit instead of one digit. The two digit.
I, I, I think the only way I would do that is if I could, a- and maybe I will do this, you know, this year or next year-Is, is, uh, have different tiers of membership. Mm.
So people that are, are more fans that want a, a, a lower level product could pay less, and my people that make $600,000 a year as the athletic director for Ohio University- Shout out Paul- And-...
or whoever [laughs] that is. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I know the name of- Shout out, shout out Julie, right? Like, Julie, I've got your contract. I know how much you make.
Um- [laughs] You, you could, you could pay more. [laughs] Yeah. This is br- you're writing this off as your professional development expense anyway, so- This, wait, by the way, so the, the, the- Yeah...
FOIA, um, as you say- Yeah... Freedom of Information Act, um, I...
This is something that, like, the longer I've been a consumer of independent journalism, like, I think of Ken Klippenstein, I think of Seamus Hughes, I think of you. Yeah. And this becomes kind of this, this...
Again, like, I'm, I'm way more steeped in this world than your average person, so I think most people aren't thinking this.
But to me, this becomes, like, a very clear, like, well, this is why you pay for this, is because I am going out and paying to access this information that you're just not gonna get otherwise.
And it becomes a very clear... And, and all three of you, these names I just mentioned too, are, like, rigorous journalists who, like, are kind of maniacal about getting information out there. Um, I don't know.
To me, like, that, that, that becomes enough almost, a way to, like, oh, like, I'm not,
like, I'm not just paying for, like, them, their salary or whatever, but it's like they have to go buy this thing, so I'm contributing to that. And, and I, and I tell my audience that.
And, and I, I, I wanna say Ken does this sometimes too. Yeah. I think, I think there's, there's a, a misunderstanding about how open records laws work in this country, and certainly at the state level.
They're not always free. You know, I pay thousands of dollars a year in fees- Yeah... across the country to acquire records, and a lot of those are for things that aren't even especially adversarial.
Coach contracts, itemized budgets, vendor contracts. Those are things that will primarily benefit our practitioner audience. Mm-hmm. And so I don't, I feel no...
I don't feel bad at all saying, like, "Hey, if I spend 1,000 bucks to get this, could you kick in $5 because this information could save you 20 grand i- if-if you have it?"
But when I do traveling and when I, when I pick up other reporting expenses, I've, I'm transparent with my audience about that. Yeah. Like, I, I wanna do this. I think you see a benefit from it. Um, there's a cost to it.
And, and I, I should... Maybe not all of my business partners or staffers love it when I'm a- as transparent about, like, the income for the business. But I should tell you guys, like, I don't make $200,000 a year.
[laughs] Right? We might make that much money from Extra Point subscriptions, and we have revenue from other places. We have other people we gotta pay. Yeah. We have, we have expenses. And you're hiring more.
[laughs] We're hiring more. That's not my salary, right? Yeah. Like, I am not rich from Extra Points. Um, I might make more than I did at Vox, but I'm not... I, I, I'm, I'm not rich.
Um- Which is an indictment of traditional media pay structures [laughs] itself. Like I said, like I said, I'm gonna die mad. Um, I'm very, very grateful, but I'm gonna die mad. Yeah. Yeah. But, and, um, and, and
not ev- th- that, that approach doesn't work for every beat- Mm... every, every consumer, every market. But I, I Wait, one thing. Yeah.
Sorry, one thing I wanna say about your audience too, and then back to the Reddit, Reddit of it all is, uh- Yeah... I th- this was, like, eight months ago or so, however deep I was in your Reddit comment history.
Um- I, I, I distinctly appreciate you doing this much homework. Like, that's- That is- It's very... That's a lot. Look, that's the rigor I can bring. That's, that's what I can do here. No. That's my job.
Um, but no, there was this thread where somebody, uh, like I, I think it was in, like, the r/CFB or it was, like, some EA thing. Yeah.
But where somebody had said, like, "Matt Brown's newsletter, if you don't wanna pay for it, here it is." And I... It was deleted now, so I don't know what it was. I assume it was, like, they had downloaded...
They were maybe a paid subscriber who had downloaded- Yeah... the PDF of this issue and published it there. And what was...
I mean, you were, uh, rightfully angry in the comments, but what I loved to see were, was so, so were, like, dozens of other people. They were like, "Dude, why would you do this?
This is really shitty," like, blah, blah, blah, um, which spoke to, like, a really loyal audience and kind of what we're talking about, these people who are willing to shell out for this thing and who, like, value your journalism.
Uh, yeah, I'm curious if you could speak more to that, that episode. Yeah. So the, what, what happened there is, kind of on accident,
I ended up being the leading reporter on the development of the EA Sports College Football 25 video game. You had your own Gamergate moment. Yeah, I, I, I, th- a, a, a little bit of that.
And that was, that was through, through a lot of open records, and then later with me cultivating and developing relationships at Electronic Arts, at major licensing companies, like, in and around the video game space.
And I, I, I think, I think for this particular story, like, I was invited to play the game early, and because I wanted to avoid conflicts of interests, I paid for my own way.
So I paid for my own flight and hotel and rental car to Orlando. And, you know, I think, I think the whole trip was, was 800 bucks, plus I, I spent a lot of money on open records fees to- Yeah...
get information about this game. So I paywalled, you know, my story about my experiences playing that game early. Other, other reporters who were on that trip did not paywall their stuff. That's fine.
That's their prerogative. And, uh, somebody repeatedly broke the paywall and shared it on Reddit and was indignant that I would charge. And, and you're right. I got... A lot of pe- a lot of people de- de- defended me.
Uh, I think part of this speaks to maybe the, the hostility of the video game consumer market, a- and which is, is different from some other places. But I've been really fortunate that my audience, by and large,
real- feels like by being a part of Extra Points that I think they're part of something more than just reading the guy that's gonna tell them who's gonna join the Big West next month or, or, you know, what's gonna happen with, with, with collegiate soccer a- administration.
And, and this is also part of why I try to over-communicate with my audience, and maybe why I spend more time than I should on, like, Reddit newsletter forums and these other things.
'Cause I want everybody to think about how the sausage is made. I want writers like us to take a responsibility and think of themselves as part of this greater cohesive internet. This is the union guy in me speaking.
We've gotta have some solidarity with each other. And I want my audience to understand because even in hyper-Like aware audiences and beats. Most people have no idea how, how journalism works.
They don't understand how, how professional writing works. Mm-hmm. They don't understand the rigor, they don't understand what, how the ethical structures work, they don't understand how the expenses work.
They just think that words appear. And I, I think if we, if we take the time to explain how all of this is connected, not to talk down to people, but just say like, "This is why I charge you.
This is what I did to create this thing. And, and here's how you benefit."
You're like a, you're like a flag bearer for various literacies, like sports b- sports business, you know, college sports business specifically, media literacy, like independent journalism l- You are a, a- I'm try- I'm trying...
a literacies guy. This, th- and this is the teacher in me, right? Yes. This, this is the being son of a teacher, this is being the teacher, and does, does it, does it take time away from other things that I'm doing? Yes.
Is, is, is it, is it tilting at windmills a little bit? Maybe. Mm-hmm. But man's gotta have a code, right? That's true. You gotta believe in something, and this, this is what- Gotta have your values... I'm trying to do.
Um, okay. A couple more things. I know we're, we're kinda pushing up on an hour here, but there's a couple more things I wanna get into. One- Yeah. I, again, [chuckles] another Reddit post.
Uh, you wrote this excellent, I counted, 779-word post a couple months ago about buying and selling newsletters. And you say, obviously we've discussed how your newsletter was purchased. You've sold a newsletter.
Um, and you also say you've purchased newsletters before, which I didn't see anything about that elsewhere, and that- Yeah... you kick the tires when buying others a few times a quarter.
Um, and before I give it back to you here, there's four main considerations, kind of the, the headings for this essay right here. And one is list size is not money. Open rates are not money. Money is money.
Um, how a newsletter makes money or plans to make money should absolutely impact the sale price.
Who your subscribers are is more important than how many subscribers you have, and don't just rely on Reddit or marketplaces. Reach out directly to potential buyers who could benefit most from your publication.
So good principles. Um, maybe [chuckles] I'm teeing you up for too much here, but if there's anything you wanna add to those. But I'm really interested in your newsletter purchasing habits and your tire kicking. Yeah.
Right, so there's, there's a couple different ways we can all grow our publications, right? We can grow organically.
We can grow through targeted advertising campaigns, whether that's on social media, whether that's on podcasts, whether that's within other newsletters.
We can rely on our newsletter hosting tool of choice and their house effects, right? And some of...
And, and the, to the extent that h- any of those are valuable, I think depends a lot on your budget and particular niche. Um, there aren't a lot of sports fans on Beehiiv.
There's not a lot of sports fans or, or higher education professionals on a lot of these other places, right? So it's not as effective for me. And then you can buy lists, [lip smack]
and, uh, this is not an uncommon way, I think, for many business and, and AI and, and startup newsletters or marketing newsletters to grow.
Jacob Donnelly at Media Operator, he just acquired another one a couple weeks ago. He, he, he did, yeah. And I, I did this earlier in, in my career.
There was a guy that, that now freelances for us regularly that I admire, was looking to get out of the game, and he had like a, a 2,000-person list on Substack, and I thought, "There's a lot of heavy overlap here.
Um, let's buy it." And when I bought it, um, and we kind of, you know, went back and forth to get it on a price, uh, then what I did is I didn't just automatically port everybody onto, onto my list.
Like, I sent them all an email and said, "Wanted to let you know, like, we've acquired this, this, this, this, this publication. This is my publication. I'm giving you all 30 days free premium access.
Um, on this date, I will move you in. You can click here to opt out. You can opt out after, uh, you know, you're, you're opted in. But I want you to have plenty of time to know this is happening.
Here's my personal email address if you wanna talk." Like, uh, and, and, you know, I think 60% of those folks ended up, uh, sticking with us.
And so, th- you know, w- we kind of priced that in, uh, and, and that ended up being about as sufficient for us to acquire subscribers as anything else that we were doing.
A- and so I, I'm constantly looking around 'cause there, again, there aren't a whole lot of sports newsletters, but if somebody's doing something in a, in like college baseball or college hockey, they have a smaller list and they're looking to get out or they're looking to, to grow quickly, sure, I'll talk to them.
Um, and, and, and we'll, we'll see, we'll see if it makes sense.
I, I think the, the vast majority of, of newsletters that I see people selling or, or talking about selling are pre-revenue, and they're just like, "All right. I got this big number. Like, cut me the check." I'm like,
"It, that's worth almost nothing." It, it, it just like, it's selling to a, a, a pre-revenue business. Like you said, money is money. Money. Th- th... Right.
Like the, to, to paraphrase the great NBA player Dion Waiters, men lie, women lie, money doesn't, right? The only, the only metric I really care about is my Stripe direct deposit.
'Cause open rates and click-through rates and everything else, they lie. Uh, not, not that we should ignore them. Um, [lip smack]
and, and this is just something that I think a lot of operators in, in that s- in this space, like, don't, like, don't care about.
Like, I see o- often on LinkedIn or Reddit or social, like, "I just grew to 5,000 subscribers. Here's what I learned." I'm like, "Well, did you make any money? No? Well then who, then who fucking cares?"
[chuckles] Like, it's... Aren't you doing this to make money? If, if not, great. You... I, I, I did something for my own personal spiritual edification. Here's what I learned. That's fine.
You know, t- talk about that at your, at your sewing circle. Like, I'm trying to make money. Th- that's, that's, that's what, that's, that's what's important to me. That makes sense.
Um, what do you think is the most important story personally or more like, you know, like we've been saying, like, for the health of the internet or the industry that you cover, most important story that you've published in Extra Points?
Hmm. You know, that's a good one. I'll, I'll tell you, this is... I don't know if it's the mo- It's not, I don't know if it's the most important, but it's, it's one that's really important to me. Exactly.
And it's, I know that it changed the thinking of a lot of people. So this happened last year. I, I went to Provo, Utah and spent a week embedded with the, the BYU athletic department. I read this one. Yeah. Oh, wait. No.
I read the, I read the, the beer drinking BYU fans one. Maybe a different one. Th- no, so, so there, there, there's two stories components in this, right?
And I've been wanting to write the beer drinking story for six or seven years. For, for those that are unaware, BYU is the flagship institution for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Uh, you might know them as the Mormons. Um, they don't drink.Uh, it's a more, more theologically cons- and conservative entity. Uh, my wife went to that school.
I was born and raised a member of the LDS Church, went on a mission, got married in the temple. Only very recently decided, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think this is for me.
And I always kind of felt on the periphery of LDS culture because I'm a Brazilian liberal Democrat. Like, there's... Like, those people don't really exist in America as, as Mormons, and that, that was me.
So I, I, I go there, and like, I wanna go find the non-Mormon people who still are ride or die BYU fans. And the school helped introduce me to some of them, and I found some of them on social media.
I tailgated with them, uh, took a Jell-O shot with them before going into the stadium, which the athletic director and the comps professionals didn't know about, but that's fine.
And it was a, it was a great experience, and then I wrote about that, and I also wrote about, like, what...
a, a more personal angle to this because, like, this was around the time, like, I don't, I don't think, I don't think I wanna be a part of everything here. But I don't wanna...
I can't ignore the first 37 years of my life. Like, even if I'm not gonna go to this church anymore, like, you guys are still my brothers and sisters. This is still a big part of me.
And what is interesting about athletics is it can, it can kinda serve as a third space for people that wanna retain some kind of cultural tie or identity to these people without necessarily doing everything.
Like, and, and, and when you explain this to other, other religious groups, they're like, "That's, of course." Do you realize how many lapsed Catholics there are watching Notre Dame football games?
Like, not everybody's watching from a Knights of Columbus hall. Of course, that, that's called Notre Dame fan hood. That's called, "I went to a Jesuit school." They're all lapsed Catholics, right?
But that doesn't really exist in Mormonism, and I, I wrote about this, and I was, I was really concerned about it. Like, I'm like, are, are my wife's family gonna scream at me for admitting I'm not Mormon anymore?
Am I gonna get phone calls from Salt Lake City or from BYU's administration for thinking that I misled them in any way or that this was, this was pejorative or derogatory to the church?
And that matters to me 'cause, like, I still care about these people.
And the feedback I got was uniformly positive, and, and there were people within the school and within the church that said, like, "This is making us kind of think a little bit about how we can make athletics a more inclusive space to lots of people because we, we, we care about maintaining those, those, those cultural bridges."
Like, that, 'cause that's families. Yeah. Right? Uh, "We thought you did this respectfully. We love you no matter what decision that, that you wanna do."
And I heard this from a lot of other fans, and people that weren't LDS were like, "Hey, I really appreciated you sharing this of yourself and looking at this whole thing holistically."
'Cause it's a sports story, but it's also very much not a sports story. And I, and I look at that, and one, that piece drove more paid subscribers than almost anything else that I've ever written- Wow...
about something that's not a video game, which, which, which, but changed my thinking about a lot of stuff. So it was successful commercially,
but it was, I think, successful in, in sh- shifting the thinking a little bit of people that I really care about and of what, uh, the kind of stories that are important to me.
And I look and think, like, that's part of why I'm really lucky that I get to do what I do. And I can- Yeah... I can say, like, "This is for work. I'm gonna go have a drink at Provo's bar. There's one.
I'm gonna go talk to the people that feel disassociated or disaffected from this community. I'm gonna go to a, a volleyball game later and have a great time and write a sports thing, and people are gonna love it."
And that's a fun job. This is- That, that, this is- To me, this is, like, what this independent journalism thing is all about.
Like, you are not the only person I've spoken to who has come from a journalism background and then started their own thing.
And, like, part of what's been so important to them is being able to insert more of them and their lived experiences and, like, their priorities as a person out in the world, not trying to affect some kind of, like, journalistic neutrality.
Like, that's, that's something I love about kind of independent journalism and I think is- Yeah... is important.
I had this, this kind of, uh, off, off-the-cuff tweet the other day where I'm like, three tenets of our current cultural moment.
One is a, um, attempt to decrease friction in various things, which would be zen, crypto, sports gambling on your phone. Um, another is entrepreneurialism, being gig economy, creator economy.
And then a third is decentralization of meaning, and my examples there were, like, uh, you know, destruction of traditional media, the idea that you are the media, Doge, uh, crypto, or not crypto, um, community notes on Facebook and Twitter re- replacing fact-checkers.
Like, these are kind of these things, and I think part... like, one pro of that is kind of independent journalism coming out in a world where, like, there's this decentralization of meaning. Um,
people like you who, like, tell these stories that are important to you specifically and people who, like, share your interests and, and background, like, that...
uh, but also bring a rigor and a journalistic integrity to it. Like, that is, I think, one of the, the best things to come out of these things that can otherwise be tumultuous and, uh, dangerous in our culture. Yeah.
I, I, I, I, I, I appreciate that thought, and I, I think that, I think there is a lot of truth to it.
As a consumer, I think it's challenging because it's also difficult to differentiate between who has rigor and who doesn't. I agree. And I want... I...
and, and I, I don't wanna say that I have perfect rigor 'cause I'm one guy. No. I, I want to live in a world where we can have independent voices, but we still have the Associated Press. Yeah.
I think we could end it there, though, unless there's anything else you wanna, you wanna say about that. N- no, I, I, I, I can't think of anything else to add.
[laughs] Like, this, it, it, it kinda comes back to this idea of if that's where we are, by God, we gotta take that role seriously- Yeah... and, and, and do the, do the very best we can.
Like, I, I am acutely aware of the, of the burden, I think, of- Yeah... that, that, that comes with that and the responsibility. And I'm like, I, I just hope I don't screw it up.
Well, you're doing a good job from where I stand. Um, thank you for coming on, readers, listeners. Oh, my pleasure. Go to extrapointsmb.com, correct? That's it. Yeah. Perfect. I, I, I, I, I hope you guys like it. Yeah.
This has been great. Check it out. This has been the Creator Spotlight Podcast. Thank you. See you next week.
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