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The most successful creators operate like executives, building diversified revenue streams and strategic growth plans. Liz Kelly Nelson developed these skills as an executive at Vox — now she teaches creators the same frameworks.
After leaving traditional media in November 2023, she founded Project C, a weekly newsletter that helps independent creator journalists build sustainable businesses around their work.
In this episode:
📊 Strategic planning frameworks that actually work for creators
💰 How to build multiple revenue baskets
🤝 The power of bundling and peer collaboration in media
— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor
00:00 Redefining influencer
04:46 Journalists want to be creators
10:17 What to expect if you become a creator
16:51 The role of community in creator journalism
21:20 Is the solo creator a myth?
27:00 Culture shock at the newsletter conference
31:52 Your responsibility as a creator
36:10 Maintaining ethical standards as a solo journalist
38:16 The creator journalist world 5 years from now
40:57 Revenue breakdown
43:10 Don't make these mistakes as a creator journalist
🎧 If you prefer a podcast platform other than YouTube, we’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in to your podcasts.
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Building the blueprint for creator journalism
Liz Kelly Nelson had a front-row seat to the disruption of traditional media.
As VP of Strategy and Operations at Vox, she spent her days in the weeds of revenue forecasting. While legacy news organizations shed more than 21,000 corporate media jobs in 2023 (a 467% increase from 2022), independent journalists were quietly turning niche beats into viable, profitable careers.
In November 2023, Liz left the institution and founded Project C, a newsletter and educational platform that supports journalists looking to transition into the creator ecosystem full-time. Her work blends traditional newsroom rigor with the creator economy’s scrappy, entrepreneurial mindset.
“Don't think about yourself as a journalist anymore. Think of yourself as a founder."
For many creator-journos, this mindset shift is the hardest part. Liz shares that many of them severely undervalue themselves and their work, assuming they likely can’t earn what they did in a newsroom, even if that number was already low. So she helps them shed that baggage by teaching expense planning, target-setting, and precisely what it takes to build a viable business.
She leverages her expertise to guide them in forming “revenue baskets” like her own, which include consulting, philanthropic research projects, and fast-growing education programs like Going Solo — a six-week course to equip journalists with the tools, insights and strategies to build sustainable, impactful ventures. The program's waiting list grows daily — at the time of this interview, it stood at 80 people.
This past April, Liz and collaborator Lex Roman, a former Spotlight guest, launched the Creator Journalist Bundle, a $15/month offering that includes —alongside their newsletters — access to a buzzing Slack group, live sprints, and cross-promotion tools. “It’s become their office on the internet,” Liz says of the journalists in their Slack. “They show up every day.”
She’s quick to note that not everyone wants to become the next Puck or build a media empire. Some creators don’t want to hire teams. They just want to write, reach the right audience, and pay their bills doing it. That’s a viable path, but only if creators can overcome the guilt of leaving traditional journalism.
“We have to deprogram people out of thinking that monetizing means selling out. Audiences want to pay for good work. They just don’t always find it in the places they used to.”
Project C is exploring what comes next for independent creators: bundled subscriptions that span multiple newsletters, collective benefits models that offer health insurance and liability coverage, and platform-agnostic support systems that protect creators from algorithmic whims. The vision isn't to consolidate power but to distribute it more effectively.
"We've been asked multiple times if we would turn the membership into a collective where everybody would have an ownership stake," Liz says. The model would leverage the community's growing influence while providing individual creators with the back-office support they can't afford alone — everything from insurance pools to shared legal resources.
That question misses the point; Liz isn’t out to build the next big media company. She wants to create infrastructure that lets creators stay independent while accessing resources that typically require institutional backing. The goal isn't scale for scale’s sake, it's sustainability without compromise — independent journalists producing high-quality work while earning a dignified living.
"We want our own association. We want our own home that feels new and fresh and doesn't come with all the baggage."
Nat’s notes ✍️
A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week’s conversation:
Cross-platform bundling is the future of sustainable creator media. For middle-class creators, especially, it’s beneficial to collaborate rather than compete individually for subscriber attention. Creators could package complementary content into unified offerings, for instance, climate journalists from different platforms — such as newsletters, YouTube channels, and podcasts — could create a single subscription for comprehensive coverage. This reduces customer acquisition costs for creators while offering more value to readers. It's mini-media companies without the overhead (read more on this under Steal this Tactic).
Rebundling is the inevitable result of unbundling. Plenty of journalists already are finding success as true independents; others will be more successful forming new, small, sustainable media companies with their peers.
In the same vein, creators need to rebuild the infrastructure that traditional newsrooms once provided. Health insurance, legal support, retirement plans, editorial oversight — individual creators now shoulder all of these costs and responsibilities alone. What'll make independent media a viable long-term career isn't just creative collaboration, but practical collaboration: shared liability insurance pools, collective legal resources, and the kind of professional support systems that let creators focus on creating instead of constantly worrying about business logistics.
The Project C guide for sustainable creator income
Liz's approach to helping journalists become successful creators focuses on treating journalism as a business from the outset. Her methods, refined through coaching dozens of former newsroom employees, provide a systematic framework for any creator transitioning from institutional work to independence.
Build revenue projections like an executive
Start with your financial foundation: Calculate your exact monthly expenses, then multiply by six to create your launch buffer. Need to spend $2,500 monthly to live? You need $15,000 saved before going independent, plus clear revenue targets for your first year.
Break your goals into manageable chunks: Take your annual revenue target and work backwards: $60,000 yearly becomes $15,000 quarterly, then $5,000 monthly. This gives you specific, approachable benchmarks to work against.
Diversify across multiple “income baskets:” Build 3-4 revenue streams simultaneously — subscriptions, sponsorships, consulting, digital products. When one basket underperforms, the others keep you afloat.
For newsletter creators, typically only 7-10% of total subscribers will become paid subscribers. Reaching 50,000 total subscribers in year one might generate 3,500-5,000 paying subscribers — a solid foundation for sustainable revenue when combined with sponsorships or other revenue streams.
Think beyond traditional monetization
While Liz encourages subscription and sponsorship models, she also pushes creators to explore revenue streams that traditional journalism hasn't embraced. Two opportunities show particular promise: philanthropic grants and cross-platform bundling.
"We're seeing a lot more interest coming from the foundation world in funding creator model journalism," Liz explains. These aren't just theoretical opportunities —they're funding real creators right now.
We’ve seen it work before. Former Spotlight guest Ambreen Ali, creator of Central Desi, secured $80,000 in her first year and another $100,000 in year two through grants.
Some grant and funding opportunities include:
Pulitzer Center: Offers up to $10,000 for investigative and accountability journalism, rolling applications
Fund for Investigative Journalism: Offers up to $10,000 for investigations exposing wrongdoing by powerful institutions
Knight-Wallace Fellowships: Offers a $75,000 stipend for eight-month immersive journalism program at University of Michigan
The Howard G. Buffet Fund for Women Journalists: Awards grants on a rolling basis to women and nonbinary journalists for professional development opportunities, investigative reporting and media development initiatives
USC Annenberg Health Journalism: Offers $2,000-$10,000 grants plus mentorship for health reporting projects
Liz also sees massive potential in creators working together rather than competing for the same subscription dollars. Her Creator Journalist Bundle, created in partnership with Lex Roman, embodies this philosophy and pays it forward to the 68 members of their Slack community, who actively support one another through peer editing, collaboration opportunities, and accountability partnerships.
This model benefits everyone:
Consumers: Curated coverage without subscription fatigue
Smaller creators: Access to larger audiences through established names
Established creators: Reduced customer acquisition costs through shared marketing
The key insight: You don’t always need another platform to promote you — you can team up with other creators, and treat your peers as partners in building a stronger creator ecosystem.
TIME, you, and 100 creators (Creator Spotlight)
How she 10x’d her salary in under 5 years (Instagram Reel)
Could you have landed a Vogue job in the ‘90s? Take this quiz (NYT)
