creatorinterviews

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Announcing Cybercultural, my new supscription newsletter

Announcing Cybercultural, my new supscription newsletter

This month I launched Cybercultural, a newsletter covering the intersection of technology and the cultural industries.

I’ve decided to put all my energies into Cybercultural, so there will be no further updates to Creator Interviews. I’ll leave the existing content up, since it’s useful and illuminating.

I’d like to have continued doing interviews here, but it simply wasn’t hitting my…

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New email newsletter launching May

New email newsletter launching May

Long story short: I’ll be launching a separate email newsletter on Substack in May, on a topic that will be of great interest to online creators and their fans. It’ll feature more of my voice and opinions, similar to how I used to run ReadWriteWeb.

If you’re interested, I invite you to sign up now so that you’ll receive the first issue in May:

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Slightly longer…

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Cherie Hu, the new wave of new media

Cherie Hu, the new wave of new media

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed one of the original bloggers, Jason Kottke, who started in 1998. This week’s interview is the perfect complement, as she represents the new generation of online media. Cherie Hu is a twenty-something music journalist from Brooklyn who runs an email newsletter and podcast, and earns revenue from these activities via Patreon.

Doing an email newsletter is the…

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Tiny Teee & the rise of Twitch for creators

Tiny Teee & the rise of Twitch for creators

Tiny Teee is a keycaps maker who videos her art process on Twitch, the live streaming service that evolved out of Justin.tv and is predominantly used by gamers.

Tiny is in her twenties and lives in the Bay Area. She earns her living making keycaps – custom designed key covers for mechanical keyboards, which are high quality keyboards with switches under the keys. Mechanical keyboards are…

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Jason Kottke, OG blogger

Jason Kottke launched his blog kottke.org in 1998. Remarkably, he’s never stopped blogging. The blog as an online publishing format is deeply unfashionable now. Yet Kottke the blogger persists.

Jason Kottke launched his blog kottke.org in 1998. That’s right, back in the twentieth century. Seven years later, he went full-time as a blogger and it’s been his professional identity ever since.

What I find most remarkable about Kottke’s story is that he’s never stopped blogging. The blog as an online publishing format is deeply unfashionable now. It was usurped firstly by social media and…

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What an indie creator is

What an indie creator is: my definition of 'indie' for the creative industries in the internet era.

So far on Indie Digital Media, I’ve interviewed six different creators. Each was a different type: a blogger, a podcaster, a musician, an Instagrammer, a YouTuber, and an author.

Each one I would define as an “indie,” but you may be wondering: what does that even mean nowadays?

5 key aspects of an indie creator

Firstly, I’ll list what I believe are the five key characteristics of an…

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Breakthrough: interview with indie author Eliot Peper

Building a career as an indie author is hard (I know, I've tried!). Find out how Eliot Peper made a breakthrough with his fourth novel, and what he's learned since.

In 2016 I self-published my first novel, a Virtual Reality technothriller entitled Presence. It got some good reviews and sold fairly well in the first month or two. But after that, sales trailed off. That’s because I struggled – and ultimately failed – to get my book noticed by the right websites, reviewers, “influencers” and book trade publications.

It’s a familiar story to the vast majority…

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Tools & distribution strategies for YouTubers

We examine how YouTuber Tal Oran creates his videos – including the tools he uses, and how he directs and edits each episode. We also go into more detail about the distribution side of his video blog, in particular the pros and cons of YouTube & Facebook.

In our exclusive interview with popular YouTuber Tal Oran earlier this week, we explored how he grew his travel YouTube channel into a full-time revenue stream. In this followup post, we delve into how Oran creates his videos – including the equipment he uses, and how he directs and edits each episode.

We also go into more detail about the distribution side of his video blog. In particular, is…

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Going viral: interview with YouTuber Tal Oran

Going viral: interview with YouTuber Tal Oran. With 90k subscribers on YouTube and 160k on Facebook, Tal Oran tells IDM how he grew his travel video blog into a full-time job after his first video ‘went viral’ in 2017.

Tal Oran is a popular video blogger, who has nearly 90,000 subscribers on YouTube and 160,000 on Facebook. The Traveling Clatt is the brand he records under and, as the name suggests, his videos document his travels around the world.

In the following interview, Oran tells me more about how he runs his vlogging business. We discuss how he grew his audience over the past five years, to the point…

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Cheeky Exploits bares all on Instagram

Cheeky Exploits bares all on Instagram; an interview with Rachel Bracken, creator of the popular Cheeky Exploits Instagram account.

When Londoner Rachel Bracken started posting travel photos of her naked derrière onto Instagram in July 2016, it was only meant to be a bit of cheeky fun. But within a year, her Cheeky Exploits Instagram account had collected over 200,000 followers. The account is now bearing down on 300,000.

Instagram can and is used for many things: fashion bloggers and foodies love the platform, and many of…

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100% DIY: interview with cellist Zoë Keating

In this interview with cellist Zoë Keating, she tells me how she runs her career as an indie musician, what her revenues were last year, and her thoughts about the current state of digital media.

Zoë Keating is a cellist and composer whose music has appeared in tv shows like Breaking Bad and the Sherlock Holmes drama Elementary. She’s released several albums and EPs of her original music, and has recorded with artists such as Amanda Palmer.

All of this Keating does with a “100% DIY” approach, as she wrote in an LA Times op-edin 2013. She owns the rights to her music and controls the…

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Tools to start a podcast

There’s no shortage of free or inexpensive professional-level #podcasting tools and services to help you start a podcast.

If you’re thinking of creating a podcast, or want to know how to improve your existing podcast, you’ll need to spend a bit of money and a chunk of time setting yourself up for success. The good news: there’s no shortage of free or inexpensive professional-level tools and services to help you.

The first thing you should get is a quality microphone. The worst thing you can do in podcasting is to…

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The grand sweep of Literature and History

In this week's creator profile, I interview Doug Metzger from the indie podcast Literature and History. He's produced over 100 hours of thoughtful, fun historical content so far - it's one of my favorite podcasts!

One of my favorite podcasts is Literature and History, launched nearly three years ago by a literature PhD from California named Doug Metzger. As the name suggests, the show is a history of literature – starting from the Tower of Babel origin myth and continuing on through Ancient Greece and much more. Each episode features textual readings, analysis, historical context, and Metzger’s endearingly…

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5 CMS tools for indie bloggers

5 CMS tools for indie bloggers

This is a golden age for indie digital media creators, who have more content creation options than ever in 2019. In fact, there are arguably too many tools to chose from. That’s why I’m going to regularly examine the tools of digital media creation here on IDM – for everything from podcasting to music to ebooks to digital videos, and more.

I’m starting with blogging tools. My first creator…

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Tedium's Ernie Smith: don't rely on platforms

The first creator profile on IDM and it's especially resonant, as it's a followup to an old ReadWriteWeb interview. READ: Tedium's Ernie Smith: don't rely on platforms

My first creator profile for Indie Digital Media is especially resonant, because I’ve interviewed him before – for my previous blog ReadWriteWeb. In the more than seven years that have elapsed since that original profile, the opportunities, tools and revenue models for digital media have changed immensely.

Nowadays, Ernie Smith runs a twice-a-week email newsletter called Tedium. Each edition…