Niche Hardware Blog+Newsletter - How Should We Monetize?
A friend and I started a blog about mechanical engineering recruiting for college students last March. It started off as just a passion project to provide some knowledge to the world.
The blog: hardwareishard.net
Then there was a lot of traffic (not by most website standards), but for us it was crazy!
Here are some stats since we launched in February:
Total Website Visits: 12.4k
Total Website Page Views: 23K
We realized this was really resonating in our niche (we can’t stop talking about hardware 24/7)!
So we did two things.
Started a weekly newsletter. We have written 10 thus far.
The newsletter: https://hardwareishard.substack.com/
Here are some stats since we started in late August:
Subscribers: 1100
Average Open Rate: 58%
Average Click Rate (we post internship opportunities): 17%
Created a book with technical interview questions and answers that we sell for $19.99
Here are some stats since we released the book in August:
Number Of Books Sold: 40 (about 12 a month)
Revenue: $740
We have been studying abroad, so the large investment of time these past couple of months has been doable (turns out Italian is easier than dynamics and heat transfer). However, we are going back to MechE classes in the spring and need to either monetize it enough to make it worth all the time (maybe even pay someone to ease the load). Or, turn off the active components and let the website just sit there and hope our book continues to sell here and there.
We have two ideas to monetize and are not sure which direction to go.
Option 1: The SAS Model
We dumb down the newsletter and offer the “full” one + the book + a new cheat sheet we just made for $3-10 a month.
Pros:
- Recurring revenue is more predictable. (helps us mentally justify all the time on the newsletter)
- The lower price tag may be more accessible for students
Cons: - Recruiting is seasonal
- Students are frugal. May see one-month subscriptions and then churn
Option 2: Ads + Job Postings
We add a sponsored section to promote hardware companies. Also, we introduce sponsored internship postings.
Pros:
- Maintain the free model with quality content (good for the brand “made by students for students”)
- 3 independent streams of revenue - ads, the question book, the cheat sheet
Cons: - Unpredictable
- Don’t know if companies will pay
- Requires time targeting them with emails/LinkedIn etc (we don’t have any experience with that)
We have a one-month window to test before Christmas break. This is a hotbed time for internship recruiting. Which route should we choose?
Any other feedback is also welcome!
My gut sense is the recruiting space is the area where you can make meaningful revenue.
You can validate that by reaching out to companies that regularly need recent ME grads. Ask them how much they spend to acquire a new recruit, and what are the key things they look for / decide on when hiring.
$20 seems too low -- Keep in mind most good engineer will have paid 100K+ in school fees. Paying $100s or $1000s for knowledge that will help them close (and succeed at) their first job, shouldn't be that big a deal. So if you can make it a mini-course or something that feels more substantial, you can definitely up the price point.
I wouldn't charge for regular content (unless you have some really special pieces), your traffic is too low and you need to keep stoking organic. The value here is in owning an audience, and your content is what is going to attract .
Do you think offering the book + cheat sheet as a monthly subscription makes the most sense or a one-time purchase? We have a couple of other premium resources we would throw in there as well.
Seems worth testing -- if it takes, you'd probably end up with higher LTV going the subscription route.
My personal view is it's an odd thing to push as subscription, but you never know what takes. 🤷♂️
I wouldn't worry about the predictability of recurring revenue -- you can probably tweak your funnel to be predictable, with some cyclical variations.
Thanks! Will keep you posted on how it works out!