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Ask HN: How do you build a successful mailing list?

I'm curious about making a sort of curated newsletter with brief commentary on IT-themed geopolitical events. It would be completely free. I suppose we could generate revenue down the road by offering deep-dive reports to sell to anyone interested. But the main thing to do is build a mailing list, and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or interesting stacks they'd recommend. Thanks.

timbutlerau 7y ago
Value proposition. What value do I get if I sign up to be spammed? I'd also set expectations, are you going to post once a day? once a week? only when there's something of value?
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  I think twice a week would be optimal. Every day is too much work, and every other day is still too often. Twice a week (I suppose Mon or Tues and Friday) would give us time to dig through major news cycles, catch up on analysis, and compare sources. The result would be a sort of annotated list of links to stories we view as important, with some commentary strewn in. I can send over some similarly-themed writing my colleague and I did if you're interested in learning more.
philipkiely 7y ago
On the technical side, mailchimp is easy to use and free getting started up to 2,000 people, if you’re looking for even more control use AWS with Maildown. Managed solutions like tiny letter and sub stack and several similar also exist. Like most types of content, starting a new email newsletter is easier today than ever before. That said, lower barrier to entry makes it harder to get noticed.
paulorlando 7y ago
A few things to add. Consistency is one of the most important things to focus on. That is, send your posts out on a schedule (weekly, monthly etc) and don't vary from it. Keep quality of content high (short and meaningful is better than long and full of fluff). Don't worry about optimization in the beginning. So apart from using something easy to set up, like Mailchimp, don't spend too much time trying to optimize your conversions. In the beginning you are just learning who your audience is and what they value. It took me a while to figure this stuff out and I'm still figuring it out. I wrote about it here, if interested: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/50-essays-on-unintended-consequences/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/50-essays-on-unintended-cons...
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  Pasadena, nice! I've started reading and I want to check out your newsletter for myself.
  - paulorlando 7y ago
    Great, thanks!
erikbrodch 7y ago
I have heard good things about substack. In terms of starting to collect subscribers, I would create one useful guide or other pieces of content that people in this industry are (very) interested in and offer full access if they subscribe to your newsletter. It might annoy people that they must subscribe to get full access, so you can use a more gentle (but less effective) option and that is showing a popup in which you offer them to get a future relevant post (mention the title in the popup) once it's published. You can do some sort of an interactive post in which they get feedback on their entries via email (I created one for evaluating your startup idea). And never, never ever spam people. Oh, to find relevant content people are interested in try ahrefs (paid, but a great research tool).

timbutlerau 7y ago

Value proposition. What value do I get if I sign up to be spammed? I'd also set expectations, are you going to post once a day? once a week? only when there's something of value?

TurkishPoptart 7y ago
I think twice a week would be optimal. Every day is too much work, and every other day is still too often. Twice a week (I suppose Mon or Tues and Friday) would give us time to dig through major news cycles, catch up on analysis, and compare sources. The result would be a sort of annotated list of links to stories we view as important, with some commentary strewn in. I can send over some similarly-themed writing my colleague and I did if you're interested in learning more.

philipkiely 7y ago

On the technical side, mailchimp is easy to use and free getting started up to 2,000 people, if you’re looking for even more control use AWS with Maildown. Managed solutions like tiny letter and sub stack and several similar also exist. Like most types of content, starting a new email newsletter is easier today than ever before. That said, lower barrier to entry makes it harder to get noticed.

paulorlando 7y ago

A few things to add. Consistency is one of the most important things to focus on. That is, send your posts out on a schedule (weekly, monthly etc) and don't vary from it. Keep quality of content high (short and meaningful is better than long and full of fluff). Don't worry about optimization in the beginning. So apart from using something easy to set up, like Mailchimp, don't spend too much time trying to optimize your conversions. In the beginning you are just learning who your audience is and what they value. It took me a while to figure this stuff out and I'm still figuring it out. I wrote about it here, if interested: https://unintendedconsequenc.es/50-essays-on-unintended-consequences/ https://unintendedconsequenc.es/50-essays-on-unintended-cons...

TurkishPoptart 7y ago
Pasadena, nice! I've started reading and I want to check out your newsletter for myself.
- paulorlando 7y ago
  Great, thanks!

erikbrodch 7y ago

I have heard good things about substack. In terms of starting to collect subscribers, I would create one useful guide or other pieces of content that people in this industry are (very) interested in and offer full access if they subscribe to your newsletter. It might annoy people that they must subscribe to get full access, so you can use a more gentle (but less effective) option and that is showing a popup in which you offer them to get a future relevant post (mention the title in the popup) once it's published. You can do some sort of an interactive post in which they get feedback on their entries via email (I created one for evaluating your startup idea). And never, never ever spam people. Oh, to find relevant content people are interested in try ahrefs (paid, but a great research tool).