🔴 One more post

No guest today. Instead, I wrote about the purpose of this series, noted our most popular issues and podcast episodes of the year, and brought back a few of the best pieces of advice from the 45 creators I interviewed this year.

If you read no further than this note today, I have one ask for you: Let me know what you’d like to see me cover in 2025! This could be a creator you’d like to see me interview, a topic you’d like me to essay about, or a new content series. Just reply to this email.

Thank you for reading today and always. It’s been a privilege to work on this series this year; I don’t take your attention for granted.

— Francis Zierer, Editor

A brief look back at 2024

I took the reins of this series in January. My first issue — an interview with Henry Winslow, creator of Tricycle Day — was opened by 67,147 people.

That issue also had the highest unsubscribe rate this year — 2.13% or 1,431 people. This was expected. Creator Spotlight is owned by beehiiv and was previously a weekly series strictly about beehiiv creators; that issue introduced a new look and a new approach, expanding coverage to creators across all manner of platforms and media.

Much has changed since that first issue with Henry and my most recent interview issue — last week’s featuring Michael Kauffman of Catskill Crew. Sections of the newsletter have come and gone and the number of people subscribed to the newsletter has nearly doubled.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you — you, the over-311,000 readers of this newsletter — in aggregate from which issues of the newsletter have received the most engagement, it’s that you’re interested in the business of it all. You want to know how people make money around the production and distribution of digital content.

The most popular issue of the year measured by open rate

🔴 What goes into a newsletter acquisition? — Akhil Chauhan runs The Writer’s Job Newsletter but did not create it. We got into the economics of a newsletter acquisition, handling ownership handoff, and being accountable to the audience, who rely on TWJN for gigs.

• This issue was delivered to 201,779 people. 79,978 of you opened it — a 39.64% open rate.

The most popular issue of the year measured by unique opens

🔴 Millions and millions in newsletter ads — Adam Ryan, former President at The Hustle, one of the major success stories of the newsletter industry, now runs Workweek, a company built around a roster of business-expert newsletter writers. We got into his Disney and Red Bull-inspired approach to building a content business, learning when to say no, and how to deploy paid advertising to grow a newsletter audience.

• The newsletter with the most unique opens was also one of the most recent. This issue was delivered to 285,775 people. 101,919 of you opened it — a 35.66% open rate.

What to expect from this newsletter in 2025

At the core, this is a series about people. In one survey, 57% of Gen Z respondents wanted to be influencers. And there are allegedly 162 million people in the US — nearly half the population! — who identify as content creators, 45 million of whom are “professionals.”

What I do here is research what it means to be a creator. All the different ways people have successfully built businesses around internet content, how people produce high-quality content for distribution on various platforms, and how people attract audiences of other people for that content.

I’m constantly reminding myself how new the concept of a “creator” is, let alone the concept of user-generated content and social media platforms. I’m motivated to put so much of my energy into this work because these things are still so new, so slippery, and so in need of definition and mapping.

Over the course of this year, two definitions have become clear to me. The first is true but so broad it’s not particularly useful: somebody who creates content for distribution on the internet to an audience beyond their friends and family.

The second is less succinct but more important: it’s a group of labor categories. Some creators make content for platforms that offer a share of ad revenue — YouTube and Twitter/X, for example — and rely on accruing a massive, fleeting volume of attention by which to generate enough ad revenue to make it worth their while. Some have small but highly specific audiences that allow them to command high-ticket advertising deals with specific companies who want to market to those audiences. Some have mid-sized, highly-engaged audiences that pay directly for their work.

The map is not the territory, and few territories shift as quickly and abruptly as those composing the internet, but my work is to map it.

Next year, you can expect many more interviews. You can also expect more original writing, like my essays on content capital from November and on what, exactly, a “creator” is from October. I also plan to experiment with new formats, possibly including mailbag question-and-answer issues and guest posts from creators I admire.

I would love to hear what you’d like from this series next year.

Is there someone you’d like to see me interview? Is there a topic you’d like me to explore in an original essay? Reply to this email and let me know! I can’t promise coverage, but I’m always looking for good leads.

Credits

Credit is due, first and foremost, to the 45 people who agreed to sit for an interview this year — thank you for agreeing to chat with me and for your transparency. This series could not exist without you.

Just the same, this series would not exist without you, reader. There’s far too much content out there; none of it is owed anybody’s attention. It is an honor to have earned yours.

The Creator Spotlight Podcast is produced by Tom McCloud. Our visuals are created by Laura Calle Puerta. Our social media accounts are managed by Pin Han Lim. Creator Spotlight is written, edited, and curated by myself, Francis Zierer.

This series has come free to you each week this year thanks to beehiiv, the newsletter publishing tool by creators, for creators. Thank you, Tyler and team, for your trust.

Whether this is the first issue of the newsletter you’ve read or the 50th — once again, thank you.

No new episode this week. We’ve published 39 episodes this year, though, and it’s a great time to check out the archive. Here are the three most listened-to episodes of the year:

1. Ep. 39: How to make $100k+ as a local news creator ft. Michael Kauffman (watch or listen)

2. Ep. 33: Discovering an Untapped Market Worth $30k a Month ft. Rameel Sheikh (watch or listen)

3. Ep. 38: He's helped creators earn $200M — here's how ft. John Hu (watch or listen)

Full archive on YouTube and all pod platforms.

There is only piece of advice that matters

When booking interviews for this series, I always try to make sure there’ll be something new for us to learn from the guest, something I can pull out and distill for this section of the newsletter. Something you can use.

I’ve published 45 interviews this year, and from all that, only one piece of advice truly matters: post.

Yes, come up with a plan, determine exactly what you’re trying to do so you have some direction, then post, see how people react, make adjustments to your next post based on what you’ve learned from the reaction, post, repeat. There is nothing without action.

That said … my favorite editions of “Steal this tactic” from this year

• The framework that got Andrew Huang to 1 million YouTube subscribers (and beyond)

• Ali Abassi says, “Creating a lead magnet is one of the most important things for an early-stage newsletter”

• Ernie Smith says, “Email is a visual medium” — he’s right

• Tommy Clark’s rules for posting are sharp, simple, and high-impact

And one more basic but evergreen piece from a recent interview:

In the holiday spirit, I’d like to share a few newsletters that influence my work in Creator Spotlight, which I open about as soon as they land in my inbox. These aren’t the only ones, but I’ve mentioned some of the others here before (and interviewed some of their creators!), so we’ll keep it fresh:

• Ryan K. Rigney’s Push to Talk — essays and analysis on the production, distribution, and consumption of cultural products online, usually through the lens of video games.

• Brad Wolverton’s Newsletter Examples — practical, boiled-down tactics and strategies from popular newsletters. Great inspiration.

• Julie Alexander’s Posting Nexus — essays and analysis “the nexus of incentive structures that sit between three vital attributes of our online ecosystem: platform, attention, and identity.”

• Dan Oshinsky’s Inbox Collective — for my money, the best newsletter out there for newsletterists. Great mix of tactical advice, interviews, and everything in between.

Listen to the latest episode of Tasteland, the weekly podcast about media, tech, and business hosted by Spotlight editor Francis Zierer and Dirt Media CEO Daisy Alioto.

This week’s episode is part one of a two-part mailbag series. We spent the entire episode trading notes on what we thought was most overhyped and underhyped this year.