Tell me about yourself and Outsider?

I was born and raised in Tennessee. After high school, I attended Florida Gulf Coast University on a basketball scholarship. Spent two years there, and then transferred to Stetson University, where I finished out my college basketball career and graduated with a business degree. After undergrad, I attended Lipscomb University to earn my MBA. My first job out of college was with Comicbook.com, which later became a branch of Popculture.com. I worked as a staff writer for a year and a half. For two years, I stepped away from the online publishing world and worked in the music industry. In 2020, when Jameson, Shannon, and D17 started Outsider, I was the first person hired. I’m now the Senior Managing Editor of Outsider.com.

What did you do before using Spiny?

Before using Spiny, I used Google Analytics for real-time data. While it’s fairly straightforward and offers decent insights into historical data, it proved to be a limited tool. For example, I had no real-time information on category eCPMs. I had no information on our projected revenue pacing. And, not to mention, before Spiny, there were no tools that offered the extensive publisher intelligence the app provides.

How did you find setting up and using Spiny?

From the first time I logged into Spiny, I found the UX to be highly intuitive. Between the dashboards, live view, and publisher intelligence analytics, the data is displayed in a way that has made it easy to digest while also offering extensive insights that are unavailable with platforms like Google Analytics. Currently, I use the app at all times during the day. The live view is up on my screens at all times so I can constantly track everything from concurrent users to revenue pacing with just a quick glance.

What Spiny features do you find most useful?

For me, I use the live dashboard at all hours. With Spiny, we have the ability to track everything from daily revenue projections to eCPMs broken down by category. Being able to pinpoint the highest earning opportunities, and make strategic decisions based on real-time data has proved to be an essential tool for our team’s success. Also, as a manager, the intelligence Spiny provides on all of our content creators is invaluable when evaluating an employee’s performance. Being able to give every content creator a highly-detailed, comprehensive report is highly essential and has proved to be one of the most useful features on the app.

Would you say Spiny has helped to grow the business?

Without question, much of our success can be attributed to the publisher intelligence we get with Spiny. The app is able to identify opportunities for revenue growth that no other tool on the market has the capability of providing. Spiny has not only helped us grow in terms of page views, sessions, and audience development, but it has also been invaluable in building the human side of our organization. Through the app’s recommendations, we’ve managed to expand our staff with a precise understanding of the financial opportunities before us.

Would you say Spiny has made your life easier?

Spiny has made my life easier in a variety of ways. It not only eliminates tasks that normally would have taken hours upon hours to complete, but it also collects data in real-time that typically would’ve taken a tremendous amount of work to pull together. For example, with just a quick glance, I know exactly where our traffic is coming from, how that traffic is being monetized, and what content is performing well on any given traffic source. With other tools, you are unable to get the full picture of how content is performing on your site. But with Spiny, all of that guesswork has been eliminated.