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Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

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Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#41
post #31

Have you looked at how your competitors make money? This reminds me of omg-facts.com which I follow on Twitter and greatly enjoy (@OMGFacts). Seems they're reasonably successful with 1.6mil followers and various subcategory accounts (OMGFactsCelebs, OMGFactsSex, etc.) Their strategy seems to be occasional cross promotion and funnel readers to their site which is laden with advertisements. That's one option. (1) (2) C…

Thanks. All great points.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#42
Drop MailChimp and save the $50. Get a server running Linux. Use Mailman to manage your mailing list or do something custom. Write a custom maier program in Python to distribute the emails. Write the list content in HTML If you don't have a spare server, you should be able to find one suitable for this task for $20 or less per month. Use other suggestions here to generate additional income.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#43
post #3

If it is a daily email, I'd put a little note that says something like "Advertise here for $5 a day and be seen by over 3000 viewers!" If I was an active reader of the newsletter, and owned a small website somewhat related to what you email about, I'd spend 1/10th of a penny per eyeball.

I've considered it a few times, but I don't really like asking my readers to become my advertisers. (Among other things.) But I grant that I may be overly stupid here.

I will confirm you are being overly stupid here.

Your readers are of a certain type. The probably have projects and businesses that align with that type. They want their projects and businesses to have more attention from people like them.

You could even not allow ads that don't represent high quality awesomeness if you're so inclined. Make it an exclusive type of advertising and say, "$5 to offer my readers something awesome" so then you're aligning your readers wishes of finding out about cool stuff and getting a discount on cool stuff with your own financial interests.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#45

Drop MailChimp and save the $50. Get a server running Linux. Use Mailman to manage your mailing list or do something custom. Write a custom maier program in Python to distribute the emails. Write the list content in HTML If you don't have a spare server, you should be able to find one suitable for this task for $20 or less per month. Use other suggestions here to generate additional income.

I am curious why this post was down-voted. It provides a simple engineering solution to the problem as stated.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#46

If you ever write anything around a women centered topic, hit me up, I'd like to advertise.

Thanks. I have one planned for the day before Mother's Day, how should I best reach you?

Can you send me your mail ID and the link to your newsletter? mail me at:

sv at tamarint dot com

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#47

Drop MailChimp and save the $50. Get a server running Linux. Use Mailman to manage your mailing list or do something custom. Write a custom maier program in Python to distribute the emails. Write the list content in HTML If you don't have a spare server, you should be able to find one suitable for this task for $20 or less per month. Use other suggestions here to generate additional income.

I am curious why this post was down-voted. It provides a simple engineering solution to the problem as stated.

Didn't downvote, but hes not goign to get Mailchimp'ss deliverability doing it himself. And its going to cost him at least $30-$40 for an appropriate server.. so spending an extra few hundred hours to set all that up properly, in exchange for saving $10...blah.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#48
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why this post was down-voted. It provides a simple engineering solution to the problem as stated.

Didn't downvote, but hes not goign to get Mailchimp'ss deliverability doing it himself. And its going to cost him at least $30-$40 for an appropriate server.. so spending an extra few hundred hours to set all that up properly, in exchange for saving $10...blah.

why no one mentioned Sendgrid? For $10 a month he can send 10000 emails which is more than enough. Sendgrid has Newsletter App and also great deliverability.

Re: Ask HN: I have a 3,500 subscriber email newsletter. How do I make $50/mo off it?

#49
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why this post was down-voted. It provides a simple engineering solution to the problem as stated.

Didn't downvote, but hes not goign to get Mailchimp'ss deliverability doing it himself. And its going to cost him at least $30-$40 for an appropriate server.. so spending an extra few hundred hours to set all that up properly, in exchange for saving $10...blah.

He has a group of subscribers who have opted-into receiving his emails. He is not sending email to people who do not want to be quasi-spammed. He has only 3500 emails to send. Setting up such a simple system might take an hour or two, not a "few hundred hours".
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