An independent creative outlet became a revenue-generating automotive publication and community spanning social media, a website, a book, and a podcast.

The problem

I needed a creative outlet: a place to bring together my interests in automotive history, research, and storytelling, and develop work on my own terms. I created This Day in Automotive History to give that work a home.

The solution

I launched the platform in 2013, initially using it to collect research for a book proposal. Its editorial idea was simple: every date offers a reason to discover an automotive story.

The calendar gave the publication a repeatable format. The writing made it worth returning to. I used the people, vehicles, and decisions behind each event to make automotive history approachable, with stories that could spark curiosity in a social post or support a deeper read on the website.

The creative work

I founded the brand, developed its editorial identity, and continue to write and and edit its content. My work brings together research, headline writing, narrative development, and adapting stories for different formats and audiences.

The platform expanded beyond daily history posts into longer features, social publishing, and, finally, as originally hoped, a book, published by Veloce in 2017. Then 25-episode Drive History Podcast series was launched in 2024, providing an opportunity to learn the audio medium. Each format provided a different way into the same subject, from a quick discovery in a social feed to a story readers could spend more time with.

The outcome

This Day in Automotive History reaches more than one million per month on social, with website traffic reaching up to 100,000 per month, generating revenue across multiple platforms.

What began as a personal creative outlet became a publishing brand with an audience, a book, and a business model. I took the work from an original idea through ongoing writing, publishing, audience development, and monetization.