Opps Daily - 1 month after launching on indie hackers
Hi Indie Hackers!
My name is Cory. I launched http://oppsdaily.com here a little over a month ago. I was going to post this Sunday night, but we got picked up on Hacker News and things got a little crazy!
I just wanted to share some stats with you from the first month (pre hacker news). You can see the full writeup here: http://oppsdaily.com/blog.
Visitors: 1921
Subscribers: 641
Revenue: $85.00
Connections made: 11/29
I also want to say thank you to this community for being so inspiring and so supportive as everyone tries to get their projects off the ground.
Cory, saw you sent out an email recently with a survey about monetizing Opps Daily. Wanted to share my thoughts here:
You've found something that people want, which is hard to do, so I think you should double down on that instead of going in search of another thing. Keep providing good ideas to people for free, work on improving the quality and/or quantity of the ideas you send out, and maybe even include supplementary analysis or links that people find helpful. Make it so good that people can't help but tell their friends about it. This also has the side effect of building a moat around your business, so you stand out from competition.
In terms of monetization, it's not too difficult to find sponsors for a regular newsletter, especially if you have high open and click rates. Just as an example, I send out 4 emails a month for Indie Hackers, with 2 sponsor slots each, for $200 each. That's $1600 from 4 emails. You, on the other hand, are sending 30 emails/month, so your potential is quite high.
Higher content quality/quantity + good marketing of it ➡ more subscribers ➡ more advertising revenue. Definitely hone this process!
Also, I think building a community (forum/chat) and charging for it is an interesting business model, but a tough one. I'm exploring that path with Indie Hackers, and we'll see how it turns out!
Wow, Courtland, thanks so much for this well thought out response! This is certainly a viable, if not the best path.
I'd love to ask you a few more questions about sponsorships, I'll drop you a line later on today.
Cory, how do choose whom to ask about their daily problems?
Hi Tuzzeg,
It's a mix between:
outsourcing - anyone can contribute, then I filter
AND
targeted - I'll ask someone directly about their problem
At this point I don't really have a favorite industry, or kind of person I'm targeting, but in future I'll probably know more and can be more selective.
P.S. If you read this and have a problem you'd like to share, email me - cory@oppsdaily.com
Grat idea, I love it! Just signed up. How have you made $85 so far if you do not do sponsorships already?
Also could you expand on "Connections made" I am not sure I know what that means
Hi Adim! Great question.
So I've made money just by connecting devs with the person who submitted the problem for the email. I send out a "pay what you want" link when I do this, and some people pay.
Connections made is the number of developers who I've been able to successfully provide contact information to.
Cory, I tried several times to signup for oppsdaily with different emails.
How often do you send out an email?
I have not seen one yet.
Hey tvmaly, thanks so much for letting me know!
I'm sending them every day. Is it possible it ended up in spam? I know mine ends up under the promotions tab in gmail, and that has caused a few folks to miss it.
Regardless, drop me a line - cory@oppsdaily.com and I'll check for you on the list.
thanks Cory, I just sent you an email to confirm if I signed up. It seems strange that Mail Chimp would require a human challenge verification to signup for a newsletter.
You should be good to go! Sorry for all the hassle :)
Cory, thanks again. I have been getting the emails now