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Any Substack Newsletters? Traffic, Sales, and Sponsorship.

by Chris Viglietta

What's up Indiehackers,

I'm creating a newsletter directory (I know... another one!)

But hear me out...

This one is focused on Substack newsletters.

The idea is to allow:

  1. Traffic
  • I'll create 3 "do-follow" backlinks via Resource, Author, and Newsletter Page.
  • Get featured/linked in weekly recommended newsletters via email & twitter.
  1. Sales
  • We can offer bundling of newsletters to paying Substack customers.
  • Ex: Buy 3 Newsletters worth $5 each for $3.
  1. Sponsorships
  • We cold-email sponsors and pitch your newsletter.

So...

Would this be valuable?

Would you pay $10+/month for any of these services?

Either way, I'd love to get a call going:
https://calendly.com/d/gkwh-m9zn/indiehackers-newsletter-call

Thanks in advance,

Chris

P.S.
Writing this post as a follow-up to @AndrewKamphey's post here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/7-newsletter-product-ideas-for-indie-hackers-041b39e5d0

Avatar for Chris Viglietta Chris Viglietta
posted to Icon for group Newsletter Crew
Newsletter Crew
 on March 6, 2021
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  1. 1

    Just a note on "traffic". Can you please elaborate on this? Because traffic and links are not synonymous. Substack newsletters can be listed in any newsletter directory but they (from experience) don't provide traffic. I can show you my stats. In the past month I've probably gotten 2 subscribers from newsletter directories.

    From my POV, I'd say the traffic problem is how to Aggregate Demand. Substacks on their own as a "substack" don't drive "demand".

    User Avatar kamphey
    ·
    5 years ago
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    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing your experience with newsletter directories @AndrewKamphey.

      The idea was to drive traffic via curated weekly newsletters, tweetstorms, and paid media to the main site, resources page, and writer's affiliate products.

      Substack is "bring your own audience" - I agree.
      Substack doesn't allow self-hosting and takes all SEO juice - sucks.

      You need two blogs and two email marketing platforms.

      Do you have any other ideas to aggregate demand?

      P.S.
      This is what I'm building: https://www.substats.com/ I'm debating its purpose and business model. It started as a joke. My favorite tagline so far is "helping substacks monetize".

      Here are some ideas:

      Discovery

      • Discover substack writers thru categories.
      • Discover substacks thru most-upvoted issue of the day. The writer submits their issue for the day, we review, and it gets added to the daily leaderboard. Readers can subscribe to a daily email digest of top 5 upvoted issues.

      Sales

      • Find your next sponsor w/out searching. If you have 100 subs, we'll connect you to a sponsor that pays $100 to be ft. in your issue. Effectively, manage cold outreach of sponsors for substack newsletters. Would help smaller pubs earn a nice side income and reach more people.
      Avatar for Chris Viglietta chrisviglietta
      ·
      5 years ago
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      1. 2

        Aggregating demand is hard. It's literally the hardest thing about a marketplace according to a16z.

        In our experience, it’s typically easier to jumpstart supply than demand because suppliers are economically motivated. The harder part of scaling a marketplace is figuring out how to aggregate demand. (There’s a wealth of resources and advice on solving this chicken-and-egg problem.)

        from their Marketplace Glossary

        I would delve into Marketplace economics to figure out how to aggregate demand for a directory.

        As for the bundling, I'd study what AppSumo and Humble Bundle have done. Other indiehackers have discussed Humble Bundle style sales.

        User Avatar kamphey
        ·
        5 years ago
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