When did you start monetizing your newsletter?
My first ever newsletter, IdeaBot is getting close to 300 subscribers (in under a week!) and although monetization is not something I'd do just now, I started wondering when did others start monetizing their newsletter.
How many subscribers do you think you need? How long did it take in weeks/months?
I don't make money with my newsletter yet. But I have a membership available for people to upgrade and remove ads from the newsletter.
So, from the start they know that:
This way I'm managing the expectation from subscribers. So monetization won't feel weird or unexpected.
How has the conversion rates been on the upgrade? What's the cost to remove ads?
0% (I only have 2 subscribers) :')
The cost is $20 per year, (that's around 0,4 per newsletter). I see it as a way for someone to support my work and support software costs without spending a ton.
My end goal is to monetize my content with a combination of affiliate sales, ads, and memberships.
Nice - thank you for sharing. What field is your newsletter in?
Of those revenue streams - I wonder how they will rank in terms of $$
My guess is
What do you think?
Context: I'm considering the same sort of revenue streams for my site. I get a ton of organic traffic and now I need to monetize. So far it's just ads via google ads but b2b partnership/sponsorship will be my next try.
I'm writing about tech for blogs and newsletters (CMS reviews, etc). The initial focus was talking about tech-related to websites but it was too broad.
I would love 1st membership, 2nd affiliate, 3rd ads.
I think membership is the best option because you can build a more reliable source, especially if you create a members community.
Ads are the easiest source of income and you should take them if it makes sense for your project
Affiliate sales that pay recurring commissions can also add up over time
The recurring commissions on affiliate sales is interesting and I'm not familiar with that model.
What platform tracks that for you?
Is this correct? Say you refer a customer X to someone, and customer X is active for 5 years, you'd get commission for 5 years?
"What platform tracks that for you?"
A. It depends. Some companies use software like getrewardful[dot]com, some use proprietary solutions and you have to trust their word about conversions.
What I do: I use a branded domain. This way I can track clicks (I use short io)
"Say you refer a customer X to someone, and customer X is active for 5 years, you'd get commission for 5 years?"
A. It depends on the conditions offered by the company.
Some popular examples:
Awesome - thank you!
This seems like a safe way to integrate monetization! Great work! Thanks for the inspiration
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Good question, monetization is I think will be hard for Ideabot. The most obvious one is to send double or triple (lol) the amount of ideas per report for those that pay. But I will think of more ways (or more features apart from this) to create something valuable and something I'd pay for myself.
Edit:
Around 45-50% people open the reports, I don't know how many % goes into spam tho (one indie hacker here told me theirs went to the spam).
And 10 people unsubscribed so far from the newsletter, that's like 3% of the current subscribers. Do you think that's bad or common?