Ask HN: How to make a profitable business from a newsletter app?

situation: I created a project that helps instagram users to rediscover their old photos buried down deep in their timeline. It’s a service that randomly draws a photo that the user taken 6 months on instagram and sends it to them via email on a weekly basis. (like the flashback feature, that everpix just to have)

questions: 1. what is a likely business model you would use in a pdt like this that only engage with the users once a week via email.

Initially, I was thinking of adding ads into the email that I sent. However, I later realised that it is not possible todo that. adsense programme does not permit adsense ad code to be placed in email messages

some plans in mind: - Advertiser-Supported Email Newsletter - still go for ads, but I would go and find sponsors. Like the sponsored post on iosWeekly or JavaWeekly

- Or I try to add features to the emailer. For example. I will add flickr integration and this is a paid service. (but I also understand from many HN reading, that to be a paid service I must really be solving a pain point. (which I think I am, but I’m not sure thou)

- Or I would go for open source. Maybe be using gittip service. If there is donation, great. Otherwise I would just let it run, since I using the service myself.

What do you think? How would you create a business model around such a product. Love to hear your feedbacks.

p/s this is actually my first post on HN and to avoid fellow readers to think that I’m creating an Ask HN question to spam my project url. I did not put project link in the question itself. But if you any of you are interested to find out more so that you can help advise me. The service is here (http://bit.ly/marcusapp)

Send them the photo, and then give them the option to buy a print / hat / sticker / skin / etc.

2) you can use display ads from other networks in your email news letter if you want to try that, but it's a pretty abstracted revenue stream

3) sponsorships are much better than ads on low traffic properties.. I have luck selling ads at close to $1k / cpm equivalent for a blog I ran.

4) joint ventures -- run the app for free and then once a week / month / whenever promote a specific offer to your list.

5) I'd be focused on getting users first and probably the only action I'd want them to take is to recommend the service to friends.. Otherwise, you are trying to reinvest ad revenue from users to recruit more users - it seems that focusing on getting your viral coefficient above 1.0 would be a better use of focusing the actions of your users since the users are the best evangelists... Maybe even just having a feature for them to share the photo on Facebook, etc and include a link back.. Better yet, have an automatic option to autopost the throw back photo to their time time.

Over time, you will build your user base/email list. You may be able to identify certain segments within that list that share a particular interest. Now you know what these users like, and have explicit permission to market to them. Use this service as a platform to engage your users and discover other ways that you can add value to their lives in such a way that they are happy to pay for it.

In summary:

1: Build the service, get users

2: Where possible, segment those users by interest

3: Based on the major interests, build and/or sell other products that your users will pay for

Thanks for sharing.

How about this:

Create a website called "Life goes on..." (or something like that, 'It wasn't that bad really' also conveys the sentiment).

In your newsletter send a few news headlines for the day that the regurgitated instagram picture was taken.

Invite your subscribers to post the picture to the "Life goes on..." site, with a few words regarding what they were doing.

On the "Life goes on..." site juxtapose the big picture media headlines for the day (which are inevitably bad things) along side people's happy stories. Allow some simple tagging system for submissions to facilitate this. For instance, recently the entire world was in mourning because Africa's greatest ever Freedom Fighter passed away. However, whilst that was going on plenty of other people were celebrating christenings, new births and that sort of thing.

Allow people to upvote, add comments, share and so on. Make it searchable/sortable by tags.

Also consider music, people like to have a soundtrack to their lives. Do something with that.

You will be able to create a site useful to social historians and give people a means to participate in the project in a fun way using your original idea.

Most importantly to you, there will be something to monetize using the standard advertising model we all know.