Content Marketing for Content Startups

Investing.io is a newsletter and online community founded by Travis Jamison, an SEO agency owner and e-commerce entrepreneur, to share insights on investing in online businesses, stocks, and crypto. The platform serves as a hub for discussing investment opportunities and strategies in the current economic landscape.

Zen Founder is a podcast hosted by clinical psychologist Sherry Walling that focuses on entrepreneur mental health and wellness. Walling also wrote a book titled "Touching Two Worlds: A Guide To Finding Hope In The Aftermath of Loss" in which she shares her personal journey coping with the loss of her father to cancer and her brother to suicide, offering practical suggestions for others navigating similar grief.

Zero to DeFi is an educational course created by Cathryn Lavery, CEO of Best Self, to teach practical cryptocurrency and DeFi investing. Born from her personal interest in crypto and a desire to share knowledge despite initial hesitation about the stigma, the course represents Lavery's expansion into crypto education alongside her existing planning journal business.

Niche Site Project, founded by Doug Cunnington, operates in the affiliate marketing space, helping entrepreneurs build profitable niche websites. The business model focuses on teaching keyword research, website setup, and content strategies that can generate sustainable income through affiliate commissions. Cunnington emphasizes that niche site building serves as an excellent entry point for learning entrepreneurial skills, even if it eventually pivots into other ventures.

BitLift is a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform founded by Gerbz. The company hosts a podcast focused on guiding people through decentralized finance (DeFi) and explaining how smart contracts and blockchain technology are replacing traditional financial institutions.

CJ built Mostly Metrics, a newsletter for CFOs launched in December 2020, starting from zero subscribers by obsessively engaging on Twitter around relevant keywords and partnering with B2B companies like Ramp and Brex. The newsletter grew to 35,000 subscribers (7,000 of whom are actual CFOs) in 1.5 years with a 46% open rate and 5-7% click-through rate, attracting sponsorships of $5-10k per post and up to $100k for bundled deals. He also launched a podcast called Run the Numbers with Turpentine Network while maintaining his full-time role as CFO at Parts Tech, planning to transition fully to media within three years.

Blockworks Group, founded in 2017 by Jason Yanowitz, is a media and education company focused on blockchain, cryptocurrency, and their intersection with macroeconomic markets. The company produces events, educational content, and podcasts analyzing how monetary stimulus, inflation, and currency debasement are driving institutional and retail adoption of alternative assets like Bitcoin. Yanowitz's thesis centers on Bitcoin as an inflation hedge and alternative to government-controlled fiat currency, particularly as central banks increase monetary stimulus.

Nathan Chan launched Founder Magazine in 2015 as a digital publication featuring interviews with successful entrepreneurs. Through aggressive Instagram growth strategies (posting 5-10 times daily with a virtual assistant), he built the account from zero to 700K followers in 16 months, generating 150,000+ email subscribers. Revenue comes from multiple streams including magazine subscriptions, digital courses (Instagram course and Founders Club membership with 400 paying members), and a weekly podcast with 70,000 monthly downloads.

Alex Skatell bootstrapped Independent Journal Review from a Charleston apartment in 2012 to become a top 50 U.S. website reaching 20-25 million monthly unique visitors. The company operates as a media holding company (MGA) with three branches: a newsroom (50+ reporters), a technology division building internal tools, and an agency providing audience building and analytics services. Funded by $2.5M in friends and family capital, the company remains profitable and focuses on owned distribution channels (email list of 700k, social media) rather than relying on viral traffic.

Ilias Segalexis is a former software developer who left a €40,000/year corporate job in Greece to build a media company targeting the software development industry. His network of properties (primarily Java Code Geeks) reaches over 1.5 million people per month and generated mid-six figures in 2015 with an 85% net margin through advertising, sponsorships, and lead generation partnerships.

Jason Hartman is a serial entrepreneur and real estate investor who has built a media empire around podcasting, most notably The Creating Wealth Show, which has over 640 episodes and reaches listeners in 164 countries with approximately 5,000 downloads per episode. His primary revenue comes from his real estate investment company that helps clients invest in properties, generating approximately $2.4 million in referral fees from managing around 500 properties annually. He leverages his popular podcast as a marketing tool to drive attendance at Jason Hartman University events and promote his real estate investment services.

Gerard Adams co-founded Elite Daily, a content-focused online publication targeting millennials, initially bootstrapped with $60,000 of his own capital. The site grew to 80 million unique visitors at the time of acquisition by Daily Mail, generating approximately $20 million in annual revenue through display and native advertising. Elite Daily's growth was driven by high-volume content creation (80 articles per day), trend-based writing, and strategic use of social platforms to distribute content.

NowThis is a digital-first news and media company focused on creating short-form video content for social platforms. As of January 2016, they achieve approximately 1 billion monthly views across all channels and had just closed a $16 million funding round with a team of about 50 full-time employees. Their success comes from data-driven content optimization, particularly on Facebook video, where they've pioneered techniques like volume-agnostic videos with on-screen text and close-up interview formats designed for mobile consumption.

Chris Guillebeau is a bestselling author and entrepreneur who has built a diversified business around content creation, books, and online communities. His book 'The $100 Startup' sold over 300,000 copies, generating multiple six figures in annual royalty income, with his total business split 50/50 between traditional book royalties and online products (membership sites, courses, guides). His primary growth driver has been relationship-building with influencers and his community of 100,000-130,000 email subscribers.

Shelf Media is a digital-only publishing company founded by Margaret Brown in 2010 that creates niche magazines including Shelf Unbound (indie book reviews with 125,000 readers across 75+ countries), Middle Shelf, and newly launched Podster (about podcasts). The company generates revenue through advertising and competitions, with Shelf Unbound alone generating approximately $120,000 annually from ad sales at $20,000 per bi-monthly issue, plus $40,000 annually from a book competition with 1,000 entries per year.

Whitson Gordon is editor-in-chief of How To Geek, having built his career from a 2009 internship at Lifehacker where he grew the publication from 4 million monthly uniques to 15 million. He attributes growth to a balance of quality content (50%) and effective marketing tactics (50%), emphasizing strong headlines, strategic linking, and multi-channel promotion. Now running How To Geek, he applies the same content-first philosophy while maintaining editorial independence from revenue operations.

Lila Zimmerman is a 19-year-old University of Maryland sophomore who built Fresh Fit and Fearless, a content-driven lifestyle brand centered on plant-based vegan eating. She grew her Instagram account from zero to nearly 15,000 followers in approximately one year (with serious effort starting at 6 months) through consistent quality content, strategic hashtags, and share-for-share partnerships. Her monetization strategy includes a $14.99 recipe e-book that has generated approximately $900 in sales, plus sponsored posts ($100 per two posts) and free product partnerships from 20-30 companies monthly.

John Lee Dumas built Entrepreneur on Fire, a daily podcast interviewing successful entrepreneurs, which grew to over 1 million unique monthly listeners. Leveraging this audience, he launched Podcasters Paradise in October 2013, a membership community teaching podcast creation, growth, and monetization. The community has generated over $3 million in revenue with 2,500 members through strategic pricing increases (starting at $197, now $1,297) and scarcity-driven cart opens, with June 2014 bringing in over $360,000 in monthly revenue.

Chat with Traders is a weekly podcast launched by 25-year-old Aaron Feifield in January 2015 that interviews successful traders to help others learn trading. Starting from zero monetization but focused on audience growth, the podcast reached over 620,000 cumulative downloads in its first year with nearly 5,800 email subscribers, primarily driven by consistent weekly episodes and active Twitter engagement.

Gimlet Media is a premium podcast network founded by Alex Bloomberg, a veteran of This American Life and Planet Money. The company produces high-quality narrative audio shows including Startup, Reply All, Mystery Show, Science Versus, and Surprisingly Awesome, generating over $1 million in annual ad revenue per show through CPM-based sponsorships well above industry standards ($50+ CPM vs. industry average of $20-30).