8 ms·

Is Anyone Going to Get Rich Off of Email Newsletters?

118 points by mathattack 7y ago

arkitaip 7y ago
So what newsletters out there are actually making money (besides Substack ones)?
- justinator 7y ago
  I send out a newsletter, but it's about the newsletter app that sending out the newsletter itself. So, yo dawg.
- Alex3917 7y ago
  It really depends on what you count. Are we counting finance industry newsletters that charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to subscribe? What about large venture backed newsletters like Thrillist? Or newsletters by a single author, but where that author is someone super famous like Lena Dunham or Kylie Jenner? There are lots of examples of newsletters that make money, but if you're only counting single authors who aren't venture backed and who don't have a following from some other medium and aren't already famous within their industry, and who are making money off of paying subscribers or ads rather than from consulting, the number is fairly low.
  - blunte 7y ago
    I'm sure it also helps if your target audience is in the wealthy subset of population. For example, a newsletter providing curated governmental data related to animal welfare can't charge much because most animal welfare groups are struggling to operate on the small donations they get. However, a newsletter tailored for the opposite group (commercial farming) will make a lot more money because its audience is willing and able to spend 10x compared to the former. Same goes for finance vs human rights (not that they are necessarily opposed), and so on.
- warpech 7y ago
  In the dev/hacker world, https://cooperpress.com/ https://cooperpress.com/
- Swizec 7y ago
  I make around $40,000/year with my newsletter as the main sales channel for infoproducts. It really is quite powerful.
  - newsbinator 7y ago
    I tried to sign up on your site, but I got: > Recaptcha not valid (0) (There was no visible recaptcha to fill)
- ghaff 7y ago
  Of course a lot of newsletters aren’t trying to make money directly. I receive a bunch of newsletters that are basically content marketing for consultants etc.
- goqu 7y ago
  Morningbrew will be the top example. Forbes: "Morning Brew’s native advertising revenue averages $200,000 a week thanks to more than 40 active clients, including Microsoft, JPMorgan and Allbirds."
  - hownottowrite 7y ago
    Here's a nice writeup on Morning Brew's formula: https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/reverse-engineered-how-morning-brews-newsletter-makes-200k-per-week-1cb91b847d58 https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/reverse-en...
godzillabrennus 7y ago
Jeff Walker has been making money off email since 1996 and showing others how. His stuff is basically the foundation of all the spammy content we see today. Search for “The Launch Book” and you’ll find how to use email to sell.
patio11 7y ago
There were a lot of people who could claim hipster cred on the TinyLetter boom, because they’re talking mostly about when a community / use case decided to use email as a platform. Email was so obviously the most effective way to sell professionally-oriented content that when I started my newsletter in 2012 I was kicking myself that I had waited so long. The seedy side of Internet Marketing, and many less-seedy users, had been doing it since before the dot com bubble. And that was decades after people sold newsletter subscriptions on paper. Everything old is new again, sometimes.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  > Email was so obviously the most effective way to sell professionally-oriented content that when I started my newsletter in 2012 I was kicking myself that I had waited so long. When's the last time you published to that newsletter?
  - patio11 7y ago
    A few years ago; two kids and one very demanding day job have been keeping me busy. Hoping to resurrect it at some point.
    - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
      Definitely looking forward to it!
undefined3840 7y ago
I read an a16z blog post on the thesis behind their investment in substack, which is the belief that there will be this big “passion” economy where millions of people will be able to make careers out of making podcasts, writing, etc. I don’t really buy it. These things are tools that lower the barrier of entry to creating but that alone doesn’t generate mass demand for creators. You will see power laws apply just like it does in many situations, and there will be a handful of people who can pull six or seven figures in something like writing a paid email newsletter.
- Alex3917 7y ago
  > You will see power laws apply just like it does in many situations, and there will be a handful of people who can pull six or seven figures in something like writing a paid email newsletter. Sure, but to create a venture scale business you only need a few hundred highly successful ones; you need around 250 power users to create a $100M business.
  - LunaSea 7y ago
    That's 200K / power user if you estimate that they represent half your revenue. That sort of amount is not a "power user" but multinational companies that have to be convinced over long periods of time and huge overhead. So that figure is way, way underestimated.
    - Alex3917 7y ago
      They'd represent more like 90% of the revenue, but you're forgetting about the multiple. So call it 36K.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Still hella hard. And the multiple is only interesting if you intend to go public, sell the company, or something.
  - coldtea 7y ago
sdan 7y ago
As others have mentioned, not many are going to get "rich". However, everyone will get rich. Rich with information that may not be available online (like what certain people did on their YC application to get in...). Overtime I think this/Twitter will be a great platform for people who want to enrich themselves knowledge-wise rather than getting "clickbait" from random posts online.
lethologica 7y ago
AT first I thought this was serendipity, but now I'm starting to think it's a little more than a coincidence that this is the second time in as many days that the topic of paid newsletters has surfaces to the front page of HN (See my post history for some details) Is there some sort of a push for this particular niche or something?
- blunte 7y ago
  Some HN readers will see a new link posted that reminds them of a relevant link they are familiar with, so they add their own submission. Or they may get interested because of the first post and then seek out more info, ultimately sharing what they found.
CPLX 7y ago
Pretty surprised this author didn’t mention Jason Calacanis at all. He’s been going on about this for awhile too.
nightnight 7y ago
The problem with newsletters from a product perspective: They are not addictive.
- Tomte 7y ago
  Hi nightnight1, meet Matt Levine.
  - palcu 7y ago
    To go a little bit off topic. Is there any other newsletter that even comes close to Money Stuff for the tech industry and news in general? Yes the Techmeme one is informative for the tech industry and NextDraft is good for getting the news cycles. But both lack humid, irony and witty.
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Presumably they meant that email relies on a user’s email client for delivery, and so individual newsletter has none of the UX advantages of a standalone product. It doesn’t have to do with the content itself.
xellisx 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263
coleifer 7y ago
Every website I visit these days seems to have this newsletter modal timebomb that unexpectedly blows once I've read a few sentences or so. Like the quarter-screen cookie dialog, I've just become blind to them searching just long enough to find an "X" or "close" button. I wonder how many others are being conditioned in the same way? At any rate, i think it's worth pointing out that you can always blog (and please support rss!). If the goal is to make money, maybe newsletters are one way to avoid grimy ads, but that said, how many newsletters are filled with ads and affiliate crap anyways? I like the idea of getting emails for stuff I am consistently interested in. I just don't get the hype.
- t34543 7y ago
  I believe the idea of email marketing is persistent because while annoying it does work. An ISP I worked at in early 00s sent a lot of spam (I’m sorry) and it was insanely profitable.
- jrockway 7y ago
  > I wonder how many others are being conditioned in the same way? I am. I am surprised they don't make the X "click here to download a virus".
- blunte 7y ago
  Honestly, if the page started with the newsletter signup box visible, I'd be more likely to consider signing up. But let me get 1-2 seconds into finding the start of the content that I'm looking for, and then pop up a newsletter (or any other) box over that, and I get annoyed. I'm VERY unlikely to sign up. Not never, but practically never will I sign up. Pop up a chat window next, 1-2 second after I closed the newsletter box, and I'm even angrier. Pop up a third thing and I'm out. Disruption is already bad enough in our modern world... but building systems specifically to disrupt is just garbage.
  - bllguo 7y ago
    as always, it boils down to you being in the minority. This kind of thing has been a/b tested to death.
zxlk21e 7y ago
I’m the guy that submitted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 which might be what this post is in response to. I have a paid newsletter, and I’ve started a community / education site dedicated to the model, as I couldn’t find one when creating my own. Let me just say this... people are going to get rich off of paid newsletters, full stop. But like anything else, it’s a many will play, few will win game. There are examples of newsletters that have done well, and many examples of newsletters that have not. In my opinion, given the choice between creating a blog and starting a paid newsletter, the choice is a pretty simple one. Blogging is heavily saturated. Google is downright hostile towards new, small publishers. CPM rates are looking downright anemic. The legal requirements behind affiliate offers are becoming complex, and sometimes confusing to understand. On the newsletter side you have enhanced discovery, instant monetization with rates chosen by you, an implied audience that is “in theory” additive by nature, not just hit and bounce. Yes, you’ll have churn, etc. but that is how I am viewing the value prop.
- pergadad 7y ago
  Isn't the main challenge to get people to sign up?
  - zxlk21e 7y ago
    No, the main challenge is to produce fantastic content, over a long period of time. That changes the sign up equation substantially.
ykevinator 7y ago
This is unreadable.
nokya 7y ago
Yes, companies that sell mass mailing services.
no_wizard 7y ago
I think Ben Thompson is doing well on his. If your newsletter provides high enough value then I believe you most certainly can https://stratechery.com/ https://stratechery.com/
- ci5er 7y ago
  It is more than "just" a newsletter, but it is certainly hinged around it, and they are doing more than OK: - https://www.theinformation.com/ https://www.theinformation.com/
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
angel_j 7y ago
I'm never going to pay for articles by the Atlantic, that's for sure.

118 points by mathattack 7y ago

arkitaip 7y ago

So what newsletters out there are actually making money (besides Substack ones)?

justinator 7y ago
I send out a newsletter, but it's about the newsletter app that sending out the newsletter itself. So, yo dawg.
Alex3917 7y ago
It really depends on what you count. Are we counting finance industry newsletters that charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to subscribe? What about large venture backed newsletters like Thrillist? Or newsletters by a single author, but where that author is someone super famous like Lena Dunham or Kylie Jenner? There are lots of examples of newsletters that make money, but if you're only counting single authors who aren't venture backed and who don't have a following from some other medium and aren't already famous within their industry, and who are making money off of paying subscribers or ads rather than from consulting, the number is fairly low.
- blunte 7y ago
  I'm sure it also helps if your target audience is in the wealthy subset of population. For example, a newsletter providing curated governmental data related to animal welfare can't charge much because most animal welfare groups are struggling to operate on the small donations they get. However, a newsletter tailored for the opposite group (commercial farming) will make a lot more money because its audience is willing and able to spend 10x compared to the former. Same goes for finance vs human rights (not that they are necessarily opposed), and so on.
warpech 7y ago
In the dev/hacker world, https://cooperpress.com/ https://cooperpress.com/
Swizec 7y ago
I make around $40,000/year with my newsletter as the main sales channel for infoproducts. It really is quite powerful.
- newsbinator 7y ago
  I tried to sign up on your site, but I got: > Recaptcha not valid (0) (There was no visible recaptcha to fill)
ghaff 7y ago
Of course a lot of newsletters aren’t trying to make money directly. I receive a bunch of newsletters that are basically content marketing for consultants etc.
goqu 7y ago
Morningbrew will be the top example. Forbes: "Morning Brew’s native advertising revenue averages $200,000 a week thanks to more than 40 active clients, including Microsoft, JPMorgan and Allbirds."
- hownottowrite 7y ago
  Here's a nice writeup on Morning Brew's formula: https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/reverse-engineered-how-morning-brews-newsletter-makes-200k-per-week-1cb91b847d58 https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/reverse-en...

godzillabrennus 7y ago

Jeff Walker has been making money off email since 1996 and showing others how. His stuff is basically the foundation of all the spammy content we see today. Search for “The Launch Book” and you’ll find how to use email to sell.

patio11 7y ago

There were a lot of people who could claim hipster cred on the TinyLetter boom, because they’re talking mostly about when a community / use case decided to use email as a platform. Email was so obviously the most effective way to sell professionally-oriented content that when I started my newsletter in 2012 I was kicking myself that I had waited so long. The seedy side of Internet Marketing, and many less-seedy users, had been doing it since before the dot com bubble. And that was decades after people sold newsletter subscriptions on paper. Everything old is new again, sometimes.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
> Email was so obviously the most effective way to sell professionally-oriented content that when I started my newsletter in 2012 I was kicking myself that I had waited so long. When's the last time you published to that newsletter?
- patio11 7y ago
  A few years ago; two kids and one very demanding day job have been keeping me busy. Hoping to resurrect it at some point.
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    Definitely looking forward to it!

undefined3840 7y ago

I read an a16z blog post on the thesis behind their investment in substack, which is the belief that there will be this big “passion” economy where millions of people will be able to make careers out of making podcasts, writing, etc. I don’t really buy it. These things are tools that lower the barrier of entry to creating but that alone doesn’t generate mass demand for creators. You will see power laws apply just like it does in many situations, and there will be a handful of people who can pull six or seven figures in something like writing a paid email newsletter.

Alex3917 7y ago
> You will see power laws apply just like it does in many situations, and there will be a handful of people who can pull six or seven figures in something like writing a paid email newsletter. Sure, but to create a venture scale business you only need a few hundred highly successful ones; you need around 250 power users to create a $100M business.
- LunaSea 7y ago
  That's 200K / power user if you estimate that they represent half your revenue. That sort of amount is not a "power user" but multinational companies that have to be convinced over long periods of time and huge overhead. So that figure is way, way underestimated.
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    They'd represent more like 90% of the revenue, but you're forgetting about the multiple. So call it 36K.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Still hella hard. And the multiple is only interesting if you intend to go public, sell the company, or something.
- coldtea 7y ago

sdan 7y ago

As others have mentioned, not many are going to get "rich". However, everyone will get rich. Rich with information that may not be available online (like what certain people did on their YC application to get in...). Overtime I think this/Twitter will be a great platform for people who want to enrich themselves knowledge-wise rather than getting "clickbait" from random posts online.

lethologica 7y ago

AT first I thought this was serendipity, but now I'm starting to think it's a little more than a coincidence that this is the second time in as many days that the topic of paid newsletters has surfaces to the front page of HN (See my post history for some details) Is there some sort of a push for this particular niche or something?

blunte 7y ago
Some HN readers will see a new link posted that reminds them of a relevant link they are familiar with, so they add their own submission. Or they may get interested because of the first post and then seek out more info, ultimately sharing what they found.

CPLX 7y ago

Pretty surprised this author didn’t mention Jason Calacanis at all. He’s been going on about this for awhile too.

nightnight 7y ago

The problem with newsletters from a product perspective: They are not addictive.

Tomte 7y ago
Hi nightnight1, meet Matt Levine.
- palcu 7y ago
  To go a little bit off topic. Is there any other newsletter that even comes close to Money Stuff for the tech industry and news in general? Yes the Techmeme one is informative for the tech industry and NextDraft is good for getting the news cycles. But both lack humid, irony and witty.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Presumably they meant that email relies on a user’s email client for delivery, and so individual newsletter has none of the UX advantages of a standalone product. It doesn’t have to do with the content itself.

xellisx 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263

coleifer 7y ago

Every website I visit these days seems to have this newsletter modal timebomb that unexpectedly blows once I've read a few sentences or so. Like the quarter-screen cookie dialog, I've just become blind to them searching just long enough to find an "X" or "close" button. I wonder how many others are being conditioned in the same way? At any rate, i think it's worth pointing out that you can always blog (and please support rss!). If the goal is to make money, maybe newsletters are one way to avoid grimy ads, but that said, how many newsletters are filled with ads and affiliate crap anyways? I like the idea of getting emails for stuff I am consistently interested in. I just don't get the hype.

t34543 7y ago
I believe the idea of email marketing is persistent because while annoying it does work. An ISP I worked at in early 00s sent a lot of spam (I’m sorry) and it was insanely profitable.
jrockway 7y ago
> I wonder how many others are being conditioned in the same way? I am. I am surprised they don't make the X "click here to download a virus".
blunte 7y ago
Honestly, if the page started with the newsletter signup box visible, I'd be more likely to consider signing up. But let me get 1-2 seconds into finding the start of the content that I'm looking for, and then pop up a newsletter (or any other) box over that, and I get annoyed. I'm VERY unlikely to sign up. Not never, but practically never will I sign up. Pop up a chat window next, 1-2 second after I closed the newsletter box, and I'm even angrier. Pop up a third thing and I'm out. Disruption is already bad enough in our modern world... but building systems specifically to disrupt is just garbage.
- bllguo 7y ago
  as always, it boils down to you being in the minority. This kind of thing has been a/b tested to death.

zxlk21e 7y ago

I’m the guy that submitted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21423263 which might be what this post is in response to. I have a paid newsletter, and I’ve started a community / education site dedicated to the model, as I couldn’t find one when creating my own. Let me just say this... people are going to get rich off of paid newsletters, full stop. But like anything else, it’s a many will play, few will win game. There are examples of newsletters that have done well, and many examples of newsletters that have not. In my opinion, given the choice between creating a blog and starting a paid newsletter, the choice is a pretty simple one. Blogging is heavily saturated. Google is downright hostile towards new, small publishers. CPM rates are looking downright anemic. The legal requirements behind affiliate offers are becoming complex, and sometimes confusing to understand. On the newsletter side you have enhanced discovery, instant monetization with rates chosen by you, an implied audience that is “in theory” additive by nature, not just hit and bounce. Yes, you’ll have churn, etc. but that is how I am viewing the value prop.

pergadad 7y ago
Isn't the main challenge to get people to sign up?
- zxlk21e 7y ago
  No, the main challenge is to produce fantastic content, over a long period of time. That changes the sign up equation substantially.

ykevinator 7y ago

This is unreadable.

nokya 7y ago

Yes, companies that sell mass mailing services.

no_wizard 7y ago

I think Ben Thompson is doing well on his. If your newsletter provides high enough value then I believe you most certainly can https://stratechery.com/ https://stratechery.com/

ci5er 7y ago
It is more than "just" a newsletter, but it is certainly hinged around it, and they are doing more than OK: - https://www.theinformation.com/ https://www.theinformation.com/

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

angel_j 7y ago

I'm never going to pay for articles by the Atlantic, that's for sure.