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Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

businessofbusiness.com

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Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#21

Post by eli »

hinkley wrote: post #12
eli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to sell the ads yourself directly to marketers who want to reach your audience without networks or middlemen.

It looks like the trick is to balance direct marketing with other income streams, so that no advertiser feels like they have leverage over your content. Linus Tech Tips has merchandise in part because it means that their single biggest income source is not a sponsor. Swag might not be your thing, but the message I got was pretty clear: make sure you can always walk away from any advertiser, either because they're a s…

Sure, like any business it's a bad idea to rely on only one or two big customers.

I think people don't give readers enough credit. They can tell if you start compromise your coverage for an advertiser. And you'll never be able to recruit and retain quality journalists if they get even a whiff that they won't be editorially independent.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#22

Post by eli »

Swizec wrote: post #11
cavalcade119 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one find these marketers?

Sales and lots of business development. I know people running ad-monetized newsletters who have entire sales teams just for this. Kinda like how magazines work. Because really a newsletter is just a digital magazine.

Yup. Our largest team is editorial, but the second largest is sales.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#23

Post by cm2012 »

codetrotter wrote: post #17
alex_g wrote: post #15

I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert. Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal.

I find the idea of a newsletter compelling. But I never read any of the newsletters that I signed up for. So to me it feels like even if I did have people sign up for a newsletter that I’d write, most of the recipients would not be reading it either. Like 98.8% of this hypothetical audience of mine probably would not read the letters I feel like.

My newsletter (only 100 people) has a 60% open rate, so it can be read.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#24

Post by [deleted] »

alex_g wrote: post #15

I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert. Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal.

[deleted]

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#25

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

burlesona wrote: post #3

It's a little light and snarky for my taste, but if you see it as a thin slice of "what people are talking about" more so than "what happened," then it makes sense. If you read this every day it basically hands you clever hot takes on current events you can use to sound smart with your friends. Not hard to see the appeal. Personally, for thin-sliced news that's more about "what happened," I prefer Axios :)

I agree about the tone, but the 5 minute daily read to get some idea about things that happened the day before is really appealing. I get to have at least some idea what happened without having to scroll past the same topic repeated for the thousandth time or some sort of clickbait title.

I looked for some other "5 minute news" alternatives when I first found it, and didn't really find anything in the same vein.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#26

Post by Wistar »

codetrotter wrote: post #17
alex_g wrote: post #15

I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert. Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal.

I find the idea of a newsletter compelling. But I never read any of the newsletters that I signed up for. So to me it feels like even if I did have people sign up for a newsletter that I’d write, most of the recipients would not be reading it either. Like 98.8% of this hypothetical audience of mine probably would not read the letters I feel like.

I, too, have signed up for a few newsletter subscriptions——just in the last few months——that I never seem to read. Is there an email-newsletter equivalent for "tsundoku?"

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#27

Post by tasogare »

cavalcade119 wrote: post #9

A video recently went viral of David Bowie in 1999 saying that the internet was going to be the future. We're at a similar place with newsletters - a frontier that is on the verge of exploding. I run Thinking About Things [0], a simple newsletter that is a single link every other day to something interesting. The response has been astonishing - it's gotten thousands of subscribers in a single year with no marketing.…

> with no marketing

Hard to believe when you’re in fact promoting it here.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#28

Post by alex_g »

Wistar wrote: post #26
codetrotter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the idea of a newsletter compelling. But I never read any of the newsletters that I signed up for. So to me it feels like even if I did have people sign up for a newsletter that I’d write, most of the recipients would not be reading it either. Like 98.8% of this hypothetical audience of mine probably would not read the letters I feel like.

I, too, have signed up for a few newsletter subscriptions——just in the last few months——that I never seem to read. Is there an email-newsletter equivalent for "tsundoku?"

Ha! I love that there's a word for that.

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#29

Post by hellbannedguy »

vecter wrote: post #19
neronero wrote: post #14

Very interesting, but the guy sounds as if he's choking on dick.

Hi and welcome to Hacker News! There's no need for that kind of vulgarity. Setting aside whether or not that's a meaningful topic of discussion, there are other ways to get the point across.

Why do I feel this flagged statement might be the most honest?

I will never know though?

Re: Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

#30

Post by pottertheotter »

eli wrote: post #7
ericmay wrote: post #5

I need to figure out how to scale my newsletter to this point :)

The trick is to sell the ads yourself directly to marketers who want to reach your audience without networks or middlemen.

Is your Industry Dive content all ad supported? I'm mostly asking because I recently took a position on the board for my city's municipal utilities and I've been looking for a source to follow some news in the sector, and Utility Dive looks interesting. Others I've come across have pretty steep paywalls. Given I'm already donating my time to my community, it's hard for me to justify spending on those.
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