Layoff to liftoff: How Stephen Totilo built a $100K newsletter

From staying consistent to embracing sales, the Game File creator lays out his strategy

In August 2023, gaming journalist Stephen Totilo was fired from Axios. Now, a little more than a year after launching Game File on Substack, Totilo says that he crossed the $100K mark in revenue while keeping his operation lean, focused, and deeply audience-driven. Totilo shares his success story (and some lessons) in this post.

His top takeaways? First, consistency is everything. Totilo credits his ability to publish regularly as a key factor in building trust and keeping his audience engaged. Second, niche matters. By zeroing in on a specific community — the gaming obsessed — he carved out a space where readers felt seen and valued. Finally, he keyed in on his audience’s willingness to pay for original reporting and scoops.

Totilo talks, too, about lessons learned in riding the subscription waves in year one, too – summer doldrums, the value of a good sale, bracing himself for the loss of any annual subscribers at the end of the year. His hope for year two: “That growth is strong enough to prove that I can do this full-time for the foreseeable future.”

the latest on the (less than 24 hour) TikTok ban

I mean, really, what a weekend. I started gathering these bullet points on Friday and have changed verb tenses and context on them at least three, if not four, times now. Since no one needs another tick-tock (groan) of this weekend’s bizarre Trump affirming stunt. Instead, the pieces below get more at the deep cultural significance of what is, ultimately, a smartphone app.

• The disappearance of TikTok would take away what many (mostly younger) Americans see as one of their only economic opportunities. For them, writes Tressie McMillan Cottom in a New York Times opinion column, “influencing is about as risky as obtaining a middle-class lifestyle.”

• Caitlin Dewey did a really cool thing. Using a database tool, she analyzed 10,000 articles, blog posts, academic studies, press releases and transcripts that mention TikTok looking for the phrase “TikTok is…” The result is an ever-changing mirror of the cultural zeitgeist.

• Taylor Lorenz writes that among social platforms, TikTok has been a “major hub for progressive speech and activism” and its sudden disappearance would favor conservative creators who will benefit from the consolidation of “media influence within right leaning platforms like Meta and X.” (Which makes Trump’s championing of TikTok yet another way in which he continues to surprise.)

• For Vox, Adam Clark Estes makes the case why TikTok – ban or not – is already well on its way to “enshittification” and ready to make way for the next big social platform, which could rise from the primordial murk of the fediverse.

• Was the TikTok ban a catalyst for rethinking how the internet operates, particularly around data privacy, national security, and platform accountability? The New Yorker’s Claire Malone writes about Frank McCourt, the billionaire who is staking his bid to buy TikTok on that very thesis.

the latest elsewhere

• Earlier this month, Under the Desk News’ V Spehar very publicly called out NPR for a Weekend Morning Edition segment (this is the one) in which they were interviewed as misrepresenting not only their work, but their words. Last Thursday, NPR public editor Kelly McBride responded to the criticism by tracing the development of the story from inception to air. While there was some confusion over two separate (but unknown to each other) interview requests, McBride writes that NPR dealt with Spehar fairly and adds that any misunderstanding lies on the side of Spehar and the Under the Desk News team (which would carry more weight if the illustration accompanying McBride’s piece wasn’t what appears to be a pouting child).

know things

• A day after the TikTok ban, Adam Mosseri took to Threads to announce the launch of Edits, a video-editing app one can only assume is meant to compete with CapCuts. It won’t be available until March.

• Newsletter Circle did a deep dive into publicly-available data for 74,858 Substacks and found, not surprisingly, that almost half of them are inactive. There’s also some good intel re: average monthly and yearly subscription prices – $10 and $96, respectively – and the three largest groups of newsletters on the platform and that 82 percent of the 75K newsletters have less than 10K subscribers.

do something cool

• Pew Research Center is hosting a free virtual panel discussion on Thursday, Feb. 6 at noon ET about influencers as a source of information about current events and civic issues in the U.S. Register here to grab your spot.

• Substack is hiring a Creator Partnerships Manager who will “support creators shaping the future of media” for $100-130K.

• Cleo Abram is looking for a an experienced part-time contract animator for her tech explainer YouTube channel Huge If True.