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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

#51

Post by ghaff »

rorykoehler wrote: post #33
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 don't understand how everyone is expecting to monetise newsletters. Who in their right mind pays for a newsletter unless the newsletter provides some transactable value (cheap flight deals etc)?

Transactable value or unique information on some niche topic you're really interested in. Years ago, I subscribed to a (print) newsletter on folding kayaks for example. Of course, that's harder today given the amount of freely available information on the web.

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

#52

Post by comeonseriously »

alex_g wrote: post #20
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.

Do you find the idea of writing a newsletter compelling, or the idea of having a successful newsletter compelling? I started my newsletter because I recognized I was constantly thinking/analyzing a specific topic, but not really doing much with that knowledge, and could not find an existing community focused on that topic. I started writing to put into words what I was thinking, and found I really enjoyed writing wit…

> Do you find the idea of writing a newsletter compelling, or the idea of having a successful newsletter compelling?

Slightly OT, but I often ask people I know, when they're struggling with things like this, "Do you want to be an , or do you want to have been an ?", because they're two completely different things.

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

#53

Post by RikNieu »

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.

How is it different from a blog with subscribers?

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

#54

Post by gibspaulding »

nicbou wrote: post #43
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 :)

Then you would love Wikipedia's current events page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

This is great! I've been passively looking for a concise list of world events without any sports for a while now.

We'll see how it works long term, but I was able to get the daily list to show up in my RSS feed with this:

https://patrick.cloke.us/posts/2017/05/26/rss-feeds-for-wiki...

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

#55

Post by rorykoehler »

KoftaBob wrote: post #44
rorykoehler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how everyone is expecting to monetise newsletters. Who in their right mind pays for a newsletter unless the newsletter provides some transactable value (cheap flight deals etc)?

People read newsletters to be informed on certain topics, entertained, or for their curiosity. Those who find enough value out of a newsletter that does one of those things for them, will be willing to pay for it. You could say the same thing about books, newspapers, magazines, etc.

I do say the same for magazines and newspapers. Most books however are in a distant category. Their primary purpose is not to extract a dollar from you.

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

#56

Post by eli »

pottertheotter wrote: post #30
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.

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.

Correct, it's free to read and we make money off the ads. We hope you'll sign up for the newsletter, but you can also see all the same content on utilitydive.com without an account or paywall.

If you refer 10 other board members we'll send you a shirt :)

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

#57

Post by alex_g »

k3liutZu wrote: post #50
codethief wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, your newsletters cannot be found through $FAVORITE_SEARCH_ENGINE, are not archived through the Internet Archive, they cannot be linked to, … I don't know, as a reader I like blog posts a lot more.

Why not have both? You send your newsletter, but show the contents in a blog post format as well.

Yeah this the standard approach, I don’t know of many newsletters that don’t make their writing available elsewhere.

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

#58

Post by alex_g »

RikNieu wrote: post #53
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.

How is it different from a blog with subscribers?

When you write a new blog post and it gets emailed to your subscribers, wouldn’t you say that’s a newsletter?

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

#59

Post by alex_g »

rorykoehler wrote: post #55
KoftaBob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People read newsletters to be informed on certain topics, entertained, or for their curiosity. Those who find enough value out of a newsletter that does one of those things for them, will be willing to pay for it. You could say the same thing about books, newspapers, magazines, etc.

I do say the same for magazines and newspapers. Most books however are in a distant category. Their primary purpose is not to extract a dollar from you.

I think if you looked at the newsletters that people are paying for, you’d see they are very different from most of the newsletters we’re familiar with.

The newsletters that are treated like lead generation tools are not the ones making subscription revenues.

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

#60

Post by Wistar »

alex_g wrote: post #28
Wistar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I learned that word, tsundoku, right here at HN, from user Xophmeister.
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