4 ms·

Ask HN: Who's Running a Profitable Newsletter?

22 points by bwb 6y ago

How do you do it and how much are you making? The community hasn't had this question since 2017 from my searches and I was curious what the story was at this point.

stevesearer 6y ago
Mine is a newsletter that I send out each week highlighting a few curated articles from my site that were published the previous week. So not specifically a newsletter business, but we have a lot of subscribers who primarily interact with our content based on this newsletter so it is an important part of our business. We have some advertising in it which more than covers the cost of producing it.
- bwb 6y ago
  Any chance you want to share? Always interested to check out what HN people are doing :)
  - stevesearer 6y ago
    The site is in my profile and the signup is just a form at the bottom of it. My thinking is that the most engaged people get tot he bottom of articles so they will likely be the ones signing up for the newsletter. No need to play games of popups / modals.
RemingtonLak 6y ago
Yeah this was my interest at one point and did have a killer domain name which I let go. I've worked for all FAANG's except FB and I can sincerely tell you that every company struggles with this. There is not a single doubt it is helpful in every single way both personal and company, but maintaining after the initial enthusiasm. They all burn out. I know because I've started several from within. Both inter and intra-departmental. There are many great biz models around this topic but Corp culture and entrenchment mindset "if it isn't broke, don't' fix it" and high churn makes for difficult acquisition if you want to sell a service from outside. It's also something that doesn't really provide any tangible results outside of feel good, nice to know but won't kill me if I don't know. So because of it, it's a hard sell. This is still one of my passion to pursue now more so because of the pandemic. What about the newsletter are you pondering?
cercatrova 6y ago
You'll probably find better answers on Indie Hackers. I know of trends.vc making 20k a month, and Stratechery probably making an order of magnitude more.

22 points by bwb 6y ago

How do you do it and how much are you making? The community hasn't had this question since 2017 from my searches and I was curious what the story was at this point.

stevesearer 6y ago

Mine is a newsletter that I send out each week highlighting a few curated articles from my site that were published the previous week. So not specifically a newsletter business, but we have a lot of subscribers who primarily interact with our content based on this newsletter so it is an important part of our business. We have some advertising in it which more than covers the cost of producing it.

bwb 6y ago
Any chance you want to share? Always interested to check out what HN people are doing :)
- stevesearer 6y ago
  The site is in my profile and the signup is just a form at the bottom of it. My thinking is that the most engaged people get tot he bottom of articles so they will likely be the ones signing up for the newsletter. No need to play games of popups / modals.

RemingtonLak 6y ago

Yeah this was my interest at one point and did have a killer domain name which I let go. I've worked for all FAANG's except FB and I can sincerely tell you that every company struggles with this. There is not a single doubt it is helpful in every single way both personal and company, but maintaining after the initial enthusiasm. They all burn out. I know because I've started several from within. Both inter and intra-departmental. There are many great biz models around this topic but Corp culture and entrenchment mindset "if it isn't broke, don't' fix it" and high churn makes for difficult acquisition if you want to sell a service from outside. It's also something that doesn't really provide any tangible results outside of feel good, nice to know but won't kill me if I don't know. So because of it, it's a hard sell. This is still one of my passion to pursue now more so because of the pandemic. What about the newsletter are you pondering?

cercatrova 6y ago

You'll probably find better answers on Indie Hackers. I know of trends.vc making 20k a month, and Stratechery probably making an order of magnitude more.