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Ask HN: Monetizing newsletter with 2M and 1M members

69 points| dangelov | 8 years ago | reply

Does anyone else run large newsletter lists? We're having a hard time monetizing our weekly emails to our members.

We have nearly 2 million members (that haven't opted out) in English and close to a million in Spanish for a book website. We send weekly emails with new featured books. We've been looking for interested sponsors and I've been looking at other previous discussions here on HN on monetizing NLs for ideas. Most of them seem to be for a much more niche/focused NL list though. Any tips or ideas on how to monetize a large NL list like this that isn't too focused (other than it relates to books)?

I've tried submitting to Upstart.me but don't see it added yet, so maybe it's a bit too generic to be listed there as well.

We've been using it mostly for promoting our own products (such as membership upgrades), but using the same few products over and over again start getting diminishing attention and returns from our members.

(note that we are capable of segmenting our list internally by topic based on the books our members are interested in, but I'm not sure how to turn that into a steady revenue stream as of yet)

Thanks for your answers!

84 comments

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[+] tixocloud|8 years ago|reply
Based on what you shared, I'd recommend knowing/learning more about your membership base if you haven't done so already. Your membership list and their feedback is probably the best source for getting monetization ideas that actually work.

1. Figure out how many of the 2M and 1M members are actually engaged (reading emails as opposed to just opted-in).

2. From the engaged audience, who are they and what keeps them interested in the newsletter? What do their lives look like and is there any value that you can bring?

By knowing who your audience is and what they potentially need, you can deliver more personalized content. You could also think about promoting content from partners that go beyond straightforward ads (i.e. discounts, exclusive offers, developer bundles, Amazon AWS credits, affiliate links, etc.)

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
That's good advice. We've actually reached out to our members in the past with some similar questions/survey. It's been a while since we last did it, so maybe a fresh one will bring some new ideas to the table.

In our particular case, affiliate links haven't been a good revenue stream, though from what I've read they work really well for some others. The rest are definitely worth thinking about and exploring further.

Thanks!

[+] rayalez|8 years ago|reply
The first thing that comes to mind is sending them affiliate links to Amazon/Audible, that's pretty straightforward.

You could also find authors who are looking to promote their books, and charge them for adding their ad to emails.

Also I'm sure there are plenty of software/info-product companies and startups looking for audience in this niche.

If you can segment books by niche, it should be even more awesome and profitable. Send programming books and courses to programmers(a lot of them have affiliate programs), business books to business people, etc.

If it's not a secret, can you share with us what you did to build this list? The more details the better, it would be incredibly useful!

[+] vram22|8 years ago|reply
Might want to check out Peter Cooper's work on newsletters - e.g. a podcast he was interviewed on (about how he started and grew his newsletter business) was interesting and may give some ideas. Don't have the link right now but if you use relevant keywords in a search, you should find it.
[+] amrrs|8 years ago|reply
1.Have you tried setting up a Paetron account?

2.'If you enjoy our content, support us via PayPal'

3. And once in a month or bimonthly sharing your expenses and asking for support.

4. Contacting relevant youtubers for traffic or brand campaign where you can embed their videos along with the newsletter.

5. Finally, Checking with Book Publication to add relevant new releases as Sponsored.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
Patreon, no, but we've tried to ask for donations before. It worked well I guess but nothing recurring. I'll look into whether Patreon might work for us.

Thanks for the other tips as well!

[+] tobltobs|8 years ago|reply
I am not sure if "not opting out" is a good indicator for "being a newsletter member". Be careful with trying to monetize this. You could damage your email delivery rate and thereby your core business while trying to squeeze those additional pennies.
[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
Thanks for the feedback. I agree about having to be careful.

We extensively check any/all emails we send out to make sure we keep a great delivery rate even on routine emails. If we were to include an ad for example, we'd work with the advertiser to make sure the copy is good, is not misleading and that it doesn't trigger spam filters etc. Our members can easily unsubscribe or select the type of emails they receive and we avoid dark patterns.

[+] msrpotus|8 years ago|reply
It might take some work but you'll definitely be able to get advertisers. The first step would be audience surveys to find out who your readers are and what they are interested in, and then you can go out and find advertisers who want to reach those folks.

However, if you're already doing books, what about Amazon affiliates or even, depending on the topic of these books, selling related products? If someone is interested in finance, business, or home improvement, for example, there's a lot of items they might buy beyond books. You can recommend them and make some money off each sale.

[+] exolymph|8 years ago|reply
Can't do Amazon affiliate links in email (yes this is stupid but it's one of their rules)
[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
I guess the trick here is that while we can segment our lists based on interests, it might be a bit tricky & time consuming to constantly find interesting products to offer and tailor them to the many different groups. Which is not to say it would not be worth it.

Good idea about the audience surveys - though we do know our audience's geography, perhaps a general demographic survey would provide some interesting insight. Thanks!

[+] shostack|8 years ago|reply
And if you're going to the trouble of surveying for demographics, might as well add that data as fields in your ESP to allow for reporting and segmentation against those demos in the future. That lets you do things like target specific genders or ages with more relevant content/offers/ads.
[+] gargarplex|8 years ago|reply
I wrote a book. If you have people who are interested in technology I would be interested in promoting it to your list.
[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
Hi!

Yeah, we're able to send to a subset based on recent interests (downloads) and we have many categories. I've just added my email to my profile - please feel free to get in touch.

[+] erainey|8 years ago|reply
It seems like you've got everything needed for a thriving marketplace without the market.

Why is your content all free? Have you tried to directly monetize the content? Why not have the first x,xxx downloads free, then monetize the content and split revenue with the author & publisher? Or have a graduated cost based on popularity, similar to what pinboard did? Something like this may have the side benefit of creating a sense of urgency and anticipation for your newsletter.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
We're already doing some of those things on our website, or we have experimented with them in the past. At the moment we are trying to focus on the newsletter a bit and find ways to better monetize it. Thanks for your comment!
[+] michaelthiessen|8 years ago|reply
Why not ask your members?

You have the attention and trust of a LOT of people. Figure out what they need, what problems they have.

[+] csallen|8 years ago|reply
How many weekly emails are you sending, and how much money are you spending to send them?

In your shoes, I might attempt to break the newsletters up further into more easily monetizable niches. You can track which links are clicked by different subscribers, segment them, and then start sending slightly different emails. Or just straight up create new mailing lists and ask your readers to subscribe to those occasionally.

Just spitballing here.

P.S. You might consider asking on the Indie Hackers forum, too: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum. Lots of people there have monetized various apps and mailing lists.

[+] stevesearer|8 years ago|reply
I'd suggest a similar approach as csallen, though Step 1 should probably be to do research to find similar newsletters, websites, magazines and find out who is advertising in them.

Once you know that, you will have a much better idea of who specifically is currently spending advertising dollars (display or affiliate).

Knowing who is spending money already is really important because getting companies to carve out some of their existing budget for you is easier than getting companies to create a budget out of thin air for you.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
Hey - first I thought I'd say I love IndieHackers. I often check it out as people have some great products and I love learning about how they did it.

We send at least one regular weekly newsletter as well as other smaller ones depending on what we have going that week. Spending nearly ~3k/mo to send.

Yeah, we're already able to segment internally, based on downloads from a certain category etc. Now that you mention it, perhaps worth seeing if we can segment into 4-5 general groups and email those separately rather than a generic email to everyone, then try and find a product for each group that might be interesting. I'll think it through. Thanks!

Thanks for the link to the forum, I might post there as well.

[+] robhunter|8 years ago|reply
I think this was largely the business model for BookBub - take a look at them
[+] kichik|8 years ago|reply
Have you considered using Amazon affiliate links to make it easy for your users to buy the books? They get an easy way to buy the recommended book, and you get a cut of the purchase.
[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
Yeah, but our books are either indie books by independent authors or classics in the public domain. They're all free, so there are no affiliate links to use.

We've tried using affiliate links to other Amazon books/products in the past, but it hasn't worked well for us in terms of revenue. Can be a bit hard to sell a book to an NL list expecting free books :)

[+] iRobbery|8 years ago|reply
If i would have signed up for a mailing by a bookstore, i'd only really care about specific recommendations for me. Just a single title, based on set preferences/previous purchases and not too often.

Bit like parties as Netflix do if they release some new series they strongly think you'd like. It feels more like a 'reminder' then an ad, but its an ad of course.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
The books on our sites are free, so while we do our best to email interesting content to our members (with our hand selected weekly picks for example), it doesn't bring any revenue in and of itself, unless they decide to upgrade their membership.
[+] hayksaakian|8 years ago|reply
You should promote interesting blog content to your list, and get them to go to your website to learn more.

I'm looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/books/ and it looks like there's so many different things that 'book people' are interested in.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
I feel like perhaps one of the "problems" is that there are too many different things people might be interested in. So if 5% are interested in cars, the other 95% would find the ad or promo fairly uninteresting and irrelevant.
[+] andy_ppp|8 years ago|reply
The content you are sending them "new featured books" sounds like it's going to be not hugely interesting for most people. Maybe try to create really engaging content around the original means of signing up (was it book specific) and you'll probably find sponsors around that relevant content.

What do you think?

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
People sign up to find & download new/interesting books to read that they can't always find in other places. That's what our weekly NL is about, so I feel it's fairly on point, but of course there's always room to improve and play with the kind of books we recommend or even the format. Perhaps worth exploring different formats that allow for more interesting content/ad combinations.

Have you seen an interesting format/combination you could share?

[+] hackerews|8 years ago|reply
If community is at all important to your members, you can set up a hiohmy community for them (https://www.hiohmy.com).

It's free but you could place it behind your own paywall.

[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
We did use to have forums way back in the day, but both ours and many other forums had fallen out of favor for a while and we had shut them down. Forums seem to be making a bit of a come back in some communities so perhaps worth exploring. Thanks for the suggestion and the link.
[+] pski007|8 years ago|reply
Shoot me a PM. I run an email service provider and work actively with clients on monetizing clients email lists.
[+] sogen|8 years ago|reply
Forget about free content and free books , 2 focus on reaching book authors and publishers, 1 segment lists 3 profit Contact me for marketing campaign ideas
[+] sixQuarks|8 years ago|reply
wait, how did you get 2 million subscribers in the first place? And what does "haven't opted out" mean? Did you buy this list?
[+] dangelov|8 years ago|reply
No, haven't bought the list, built it ourselves over the last 11+ years of running well established sites with lots of traffic.