How would you monetize a newsletter with 6k subscribers?
I run usehooks.com, which publishes React hook code examples and sends them out to a mailing list of 6k subscribers. Open rate is around 50%. The website sees 30k visitors a month.
I'd love to start monetizing it so that I can justify posting on a regular basis. Some options in my mind are finding a long term sponsor, ramping up promotion of my main product (divjoy.com), and offering premium tutorials.
I'd love to hear any ideas you have. If you ran this mailing list what would you try?
Hi Gabe,
Pardon me if this is a bit too much. Or too wide of a variety. Happy to go deeper on any point.
2a. Yes I'd ramp up promotion of your main product. Put it in a sponsor spot. Mark it as sponsored. And then swap out a sponsor if you get one.
2b: Create a page here: https://usehooks.com/sponsor or sponsor.usehooks.com and explain to readers who you want to sponsor your newsletter. Tell them about who reads the newsletter and how much it is to sponsor. (Happy to help you with pricing). Drop a link to this page in your newsletter under your sponsor spot. It's gotten me at least a few sponsors in my newsletter.
Package your best tips into a downloadable PDF. Sell it with gumroad. Also buy me a coffee has coffeelinks. You can sell access to this downloadable pdf that way too. Try a low low price to test the market: $9. You can always raise the price later, or give it away for free if 0 ppl buy it within 4 weeks.
You can offer premium membership, Send 1 more newsletter a week to paid members. Create a searchable database of your past tips. Only accessible to paid members.
If you don't want to search for sponsors, try a classified section. I know it's tough. I sell ads (as HypeLetter) and it's still tough. Adding a community section or Classifieds is a low cost opportunity for your readers to promote to your other readers something. Or for a company to sponsor a slot. Have 5 spots. 1 to 2 sentences with a link. Sell each for $30.
Not sure your goals but this could be a fun way to test the sponsor market too.
Dense Discovery sells theirs for $69. I bought one for my newest project: Better Sheets
P.S. I run Hypeletter.com and we're making a tool right now that you could use to take sponsors easily.
Great ideas @AndrewKamphey! I’ll probably do some sponsor outreach soon. I was actually looking for a tool that helped with generating a nice sponsor landing page with stats and booking features. Would love to see what you’re working on.
I'm usually partial to this option. Asking for money will force you to provide something that's worth money to your subscribers, and there are all sorts of beneficial side effects to having that kind of narrowed focus.
You'll also end up building a list of people who are actually willing to pay for things and who find your particular things valuable. They're the most pleasant bunch of people you could ever interact with. 😆 Plus you can also sell them new things in the future.
Thanks for the input @csallen! That's definitely been my experience as well. Nothing better than talking to happy customers. Will think about some ways to test the waters with this.
One thought which may slip into your mind about the tutorials is, "Is this actually worth for someone to pay for?". I'd say, it is not for you to decide, let people decide what is value-able to them, and just make them.
Great job. The options for monetizing it are vast.
A few ideas:
Damn. Do a job board. Lol
I’ve thought about that, although seems like there are a lot of those these days. Any experience with that working well?
In my view there are a lot because there are a lot of communities, and they're an easy way to monetize community. It's why there's a coffee shop at every high-traffic intersection. I've heard of job boards making money with much fewer than 6k subscribers, and React folks are in demand. You don't need to put much into it, just identify who's posting React jobs on other job boards and approach them on linkedin or twitter with your pitch (6k subs, maybe other demographics showing high quality). Offer a special starting price, or give the first 3 postings free.
That makes sense. Thanks for the insight!
I agree with @csallen that you should think about selling them something directly, but given the fact that you your audience is probably very homogeneous another good idea would be finding sponsors. Developers are always a good audience for advertisers (high average salary) and you could start by reaching out to companies that make software for developers (ideally React developers)