Feedback on idea - turning blog archives into newsletters?
Based on a recent tweet from Patrick Collison (CEO of Stripe), I've become interested in the idea of turning blog archives into email newsletters. His point is that a lot of blogs have great historical content, but it's hard to consume it.
To test this idea out, I built weeklypaulgrahahm.com, a service that emails you one of Paul Graham's essays each week. I've been meaning to catch up on these essays for years, but it's hard to find the time and motivation to go to his website and just start reading. Instead, it seems more manageable to read a single article of his each week, just like I would for any other newsletter I read.
What do you think of this idea? Is it something you'd be interested in? Are there other ways I should test the idea? Where could this go?
Interesting idea.
Not sure how I'd feel if I were Paul Graham, since you're using his likeness. You may want to send him a 1-2 line email and see if he's cool with it (:
In a use-case like Paul Graham, I can see how it would work well, since the order in which you receive the info is irrelevant.
But not all blog archives are like that (i.e. timeless, evergreen).
Also, the fact that you're using other people's content seems like it could be some form of copyright infringement case, unless you have prior authorization from the creator.
Even if the service is free forever, the question is how do you benefit from using other people's content.
As a tool to use for yourself, I think it's pretty cool. But not sure what the impact would be if you were try to productize it.
Good feedback, thanks.
And good idea to send him an email. I had tagged him in a tweet about it, but email may be a better way to contact him. I just sent him a short email with a link.
This site will be free forever, and I was viewing it as a way to test how much people like this kind of thing. If they do, then perhaps there'd be a sustainable business partnering with content creators.
I'd love to hear if he replies back, and what he says.
As for the fundamental idea of going to a central hub where you can get regular random content from creators that you like, it may be too much of a niche for me to get excited about.
I already have a couple of tools that I use to get content or content updates, like:
I realize that the weeklypaulgram initiative is slightly different than 1&3 above.
My big question is if the creators liked the concept of your app, why wouldn't they just set-up a series automation in their email app (i.e. mailchimp) and just have people subscribe to them directly?
I have an automation on one of my sites where I've curated some of our best article content, and when people subscribe, they get weeks and weeks of emails summarizing the content, and then pointing them to the source article.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, it may be too niche. And so far I'm not getting a lot of signal that people are even that excited about the Weekly Paul Graham Idea, so perhaps this won't go anywhere.
Maybe the pitch to content creators is distribution? Like maybe the product is that you go to a central hub to get the best archival content that exists about a specific topic (instead of a creator), and then individual creators are incentivized to partner so they can get more exposure to their work (and sign-ups to their mailing lists, etc.).
I don't think the distribution angle would work. These creators already have a following, so your start-up platform won't get them more distribution than they already have.
The more attractive "sell" to the creator is likely no work on their part to provide a valuable tool to their followers/fans.
If you do it well, and make it really compelling for the creator, you may be able to get them to promote your service.
Kinda like how creators on YT promote Patreon and other donation/payment platforms.
Those platforms provide something of great value & convenience to the creator, so the creator promotes it for free.
If you can offer that level of value to the creator, possibly even tying in a subscription element, where the creator gets the lion-share of the revenue (80/20 or 75/25), it might be something that would get the attention of the creators.
Why would people (followers/fan) pay for the service? Convenience of getting highly curated "best of" (or exclusive) content of the creator they follow.
Thoughts?
I agree that Paul Graham doesn't need more distribution, but it seems like many high-quality creators with a smaller audience would benefit from it, no?
Like what if the product was a really high-quality curated collection of annotated links to articles on topic like design, marketing, or management. Each weekly newsletter would contain 3-5 links, along with a description of why they are good. Content creators win because you send them to their site, and users win because they get great hard-to-discover evergreen content surfaced to them.
I like your angle as well -- great analogy to Patreon. Although it seems like it might be hard to create one product that would work for a bunch of different creators, all of whom are using a different stack.
I've learned several important lessons about trying to grow a product and/or brand over the last 12+ years.
One of which is simply -- It doesn't matter how good the product is.
You have to find a notable pain-point for people to give a shit about your product. What you're describing doesn't seem like it addresses something painful that creators need a solution for.
Right now (IMO) you're a solution in search of a problem.
That's why I suggested the Patreon-type model, where creators become your marketing channel.
Here's a link to a text file I've been keeping where I've tried to synthesize my thoughts about all the challenges I've experienced growing some of my own products:
https://www.dropbox.com/t/OGKKaQArVaYQKDpR
LMK your thoughts after reading it.
UPDATE: I've taken this site down because it didn't get much interest and a few people were concerned about it being based on someone else's content.
Thanks to those who provided feedback - it was a successful experiment in that I learned something :)
This is a bit unusual if it's unauthorized by the blog writer. It reminds me of twitter bots like NavalBot , although they usually have some benefit to the author like affiliate links to ebooks.
Unless you're benefiting him directly I don't think it feels right to send out someone else's work for your own gain.
I see where you're coming from. This site is free and I'm not planning to gain from it personally in any kind of monetary way.
I built it as a way to test whether there would be interest in this kind of thing. If I pursued the idea further, I think the most natural model would be through partnering with content creators.
I've shared it with Paul Graham on both Twitter and email, although I haven't heard back yet. Of course if he were not ok with it, I would take it down.