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10 Comments

Growing & Monetizing A Newlsetter

Hey IH, another question here.

I have a personal newsletter (http://whatsnext.email) that I have been writing for about 6 months or so. I am now at ~ 1700 subscribers. Open rates are really high and people are really liking it.

At what point do you think about monetizing something like this? I know the audience is valuable? How do you go about monetization?

In addition, any thoughts on growing the newsletter further?

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    I would start cold emailing companies close to the topics that your newsletter is about. Give them some analytics about viewership and then a basic rate for an advertisement. I would reach out to as many potential companies as possible.

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      Ah yes. Like a proposal!

      I think I am going to try an affiliate link to Amazon.

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    What do you write about in your emails? if you discuss products, you can use Amazon affiliate links

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      I share lots of interesting things that I read. (technology, business, life things)

      Do you think an audience would feel back stabbed by affiliate links?

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        No because you're just sharing the information, you aren't forcing them to buy the product. Have you heard of Tim Ferriss? He has a newsletter and does exactly this. It's called 5 bullet Friday. You can probably find past emails online.

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          I actually don't know if that makes sense but what I'm trying to say is that don't make the links overshadow the content and make sure that the stuff you're linking to provides value to your subscribers

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    I'll defer to Pardeep Goyal of Cash Overflow on this one.

    Check out the "How have you attracted users and grown Cash Overflow?" section to get the full rundown on his transition from a free to a paid newsletter, but here's the heart of it:

    After the launch of my paid newsletters, I sent out a notification to my email subscribers. I started with a very low price — 50 cents — and I was expecting 10-15 subscribers on the first day. However, in the first two days more than 150 of them converted to the paid subscription. I kept on increasing the prices until I got to the rate of 2-3 daily signups. At present, 20-25 new people are subscribing to the newsletters every week.
    …
    Because of the initial low price, a lot of people signed up who were not aligned with my goals. I asked everyone to fill in a Google form to understand why they joined the newsletters and what they were expecting from me. I made this mandatory for everyone — a criterion for keeping their newsletter membership. I refunded the money to 41 people who refused or forgot to fill in the form. I want to stick with the purpose of the newsletters (to help action takers) rather than just make money.

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      Interesting - thanks for this.

      My audience is mainly students/young professionals - so I am curious how they would respond to something like this.

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    This comment was deleted 5 years ago

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      Not a bad idea ;)