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My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

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Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#151

Post by ryangilbert »

99cent wrote: post #146

I'm curious about this too. And as a non-developer myself I don't see this asked/answered: What platform do yo use for your website and for the newsletter? Do you self-host or have a hosting service you recommend for doing this? I have always wanted to do a similar thing, targeting a niche segment, but don't know how to start on the technical side of things. Thanks!

I am hosting this on Substack (https://substack.com/) which was free to get started in minutes. I was able to buy and add my own domain later as well.

If I were starting from scratch today I would choose Beehiiv (https://www.beehiiv.com/ ) over Substack. They just seem to care more and are more or less the same but adding features much quicker.

I am moving to a custom setup soon but the above options are very useful in getting something off the ground.

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#153

Post by ryangilbert »

laserlight wrote: post #142
cercatrova wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for them may not work for you, that's why it's their workspaces, who are you to judge them for how they like to work? If you want to compare, submit your own workspace then.

I didn’t read any judgement in the parent comment. It just states that those setups wouldn’t work for them.

“I need a place to work, not a staged photograph from an IKEA catalog.”

Not sure how that isn’t judgement… but parent comment is more than welcome to share their space with the community so we can get a more diverse catalog of how people work. :)

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#154

Post by ryangilbert »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #152

New subscriber. Thanks for sharing. Would you be willing to expand on and clarify your revenue model? So inspiring and aspirational I'm sure to many of us on HN. Who was your first paid sponsor?

Glad you liked it!

The revenue model is simply charging sponsors (1 per newsletter edition) a flat rate to get their message in front of my growing and engaged subscriber-base.

First paid sponsor (and most that have followed) was a reader of the newsletter who wanted to promote their product to the audience.

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#155

Post by kuboble »

Do you have much more traffic on the most recent additions as compared to the most popular historical ones?

Are you selling place for "message from X" on a post for a limited time or the ad stays forever? Sounds like a bargain for buyers to pay once and benefit from all future visitors.

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#156

Post by saaaaaam »

laserlight wrote: post #142
cercatrova wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works for them may not work for you, that's why it's their workspaces, who are you to judge them for how they like to work? If you want to compare, submit your own workspace then.

I didn’t read any judgement in the parent comment. It just states that those setups wouldn’t work for them.

“Absolutely dreadful” is 100% a judgement.

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#157

Post by ryangilbert »

kuboble wrote: post #155

Do you have much more traffic on the most recent additions as compared to the most popular historical ones? Are you selling place for "message from X" on a post for a limited time or the ad stays forever? Sounds like a bargain for buyers to pay once and benefit from all future visitors.

The most popular historical editions still rank towards the top in terms of traffic and sign ups from them. The more recent “average” spaces have more traffic than similar ones from months ago.

The ad appears in the newsletter and also the blog but is sold for the newsletter (the blog and tweet traffic after are a nice bonus and can’t be guaranteed - every tweet performs differently).

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#158

Post by bradwood »

ryangilbert wrote: post #99
bartread wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know I wanted to know the answer to this question but having now looked at that picture I reeeeaaaally do. You touch on a more serious point though: one of the issues that's apparent, at least here in the UK, is how suboptimal a lot of peoples' home setups are. Even mine, which I consider to be otherwise decent, is in a tiny little room that imposes considerable constraints. Moreover, loads of people don't h…

I've highlighted many "minimal" spaces that are mostly just a Macbook. https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/032-teresa-man https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/172-pat-walls https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/168-samiur-rahman https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/048-leah-fessler https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/036-mike-slaats https://www.workspaces.xyz/p/workspaces-020-devin-bramhall

These all look very on trend, with only one that looked remotely like an engineer's setup (a front-end dev, IIRC).

It would be cool to see some tech professionals' setups. I'm looking for lots of hardware, server innards hanging about, NVMe drives on the desk, and arduino nano with some blinky LED display, a nest of cables on the desk, and a lot less macbooks to boot!

Maybe some Dell or Framework machines running Sway or i3 or some such...

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#159

Post by nscalf »

ryangilbert wrote: post #150
nscalf wrote: post #145

Congrats! Awesome to see some others from the newsletter world here. I'm a bit earlier than you are along the process, I have a crypto based newsletter which has about 1200 subscribers, ~50 editions sent, and just started conversations with interested sponsors (we also had inbounds which we have not really engaged with). Our SEO is doing pretty well, we get roughly 3500 people coming to the site per month, and when s…

Thanks for the questions! 1. The $250 is a flat rate for one newsletter edition but also ends up on the blog portion which is then shared on Twitter. Some of these tweets do 50,000+ impressions on Twitter. This isn’t guaranteed but is something the sponsors are considering when placing an ad. We typically don’t even get into CTR before or after the slot but can if a specific sponsor or potential sponsor wants to. The…

Awesome, thanks for the answers! I'd also love to hear an update on what trending on HN does for subscriptions, we've had some articles trend on here before and it's a pretty nice bump, but people were clicking primarily for a story not a newsletter. This got me to sub at least!

Re: My newsletter is making $2k per month with 7k subscribers – AMA

#160

Post by ryangilbert »

nscalf wrote: post #159
ryangilbert wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the questions! 1. The $250 is a flat rate for one newsletter edition but also ends up on the blog portion which is then shared on Twitter. Some of these tweets do 50,000+ impressions on Twitter. This isn’t guaranteed but is something the sponsors are considering when placing an ad. We typically don’t even get into CTR before or after the slot but can if a specific sponsor or potential sponsor wants to. The…

Awesome, thanks for the answers! I'd also love to hear an update on what trending on HN does for subscriptions, we've had some articles trend on here before and it's a pretty nice bump, but people were clicking primarily for a story not a newsletter. This got me to sub at least!

500+ new subscribers and counting without directly linking to the newsletter in top portion.

Not sure on traffic - not currently tracking that!

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