
Hacker Monthly: One year old, 5000 subscribers - bearwithclaws
http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/one-year-old-5000-subscribers
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bearwithclaws
This might sound a bit cliche but without the support of the readers and
subscribers (especially when we started charging for digital edition), the
help of contributors (most notably rdela in early issues), the authors and
commenters who graciously granting permission to publish their work, and most
of all the HN community, Hacker Monthly wouldn't be possible at all.

Thank you! I will continue to pump out great issue + free special issue (one
coming up in May) for a long time to come.

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antirez
I love it, fortunately at some point I was asked to contribute an article and
I received a free electronic subscription. Then I purchased a Kindle. HM +
Kindle = a very cool way to consume interesting articles in a relaxing way
(the .mobi is one of the default formats you receive your electronic issues).

Also both the printed edition and the PDF are very well done from the point of
view of graphic design IMHO.

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boyter
I will be honest and admit I didn't think that this would take off from the
beginning. Some rough calculations show this is now looking at $100,000+ a
year in revenue. Pretty impressive and goes to show that there can be a large
enough market for anything if you deliver a good product.

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alain94040
Except the subscriber count includes students, so your revenue estimate is
probably completely off.

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boyter
I factored that in somewhat. Going all digital is about 140,000 a year. Dead
tree is about double that. Either way I would guess over $100,000.

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acangiano
Plus advertisers.

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sasvari
I haven't done enough research about available options, but most probably you
could extend your subscriber base quite significantly offering a print edition
to _old europeans_ without ridiculously high shipping costs. would be awesome
to receive it here _on paper_ ...

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zeugma
Indeed. To ship in the Netherland it would cost me $120 compared to $88 for a
subscription. May be finding a printer in Europe would help ?

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sasvari
_May be finding a printer in Europe would help?_

it definitely would! I'm not aware of any _magcloud for europe_ , but I would
be happy if somebody proofs me wrong and HNM gets a distributor for europe.

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hammerdr
Because I spend most of my days and half of my nights head down and working
hard, I miss many insightful articles that blow through the front page. Hacker
Monthly is the reason I feel that I can keep up.

Thanks and congrats to everyone that puts this together!

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duck
Hacker Monthly is great and sometimes it is just hard to beat the reading
experience with paper. If you want another way to keep up you might check out
my side project - the weekly Hacker Newsletter
(<http://hackernewsletter.com>). Both projects compliment each other for
people that are too busy to visit HN daily.

~~~
bearwithclaws
Hacker Newsletter is great and I really recommend it.

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duck
Thank you!

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techsupporter
I keep forgetting to ask anyone about this, but I signed up as a student
(which I am) awhile back and never received any issues or a confirmation.
(This is one of those "meant to do" tasks.) Should I e-mail the general
inquiries address? It looks like the original offer isn't present any more or
I'd just try again.

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bearwithclaws
Drop me an email.

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staunch
If you're willing to talk about number of subscribers you're revealing the
rough revenue. You might as well just talk about revenue directly. People love
to hear about someone making money, so it's much better link bait.

"Hacker Monthly breaks $100k in revenue!"

The Balsamiq Effect.

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jackowayed
But Balsamiq isn't asking people for free content ...

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boyter
Thats the exact reason I didn't expect it to work. Looking at the product
though, while the content you can get for free, the presentation is excellent.
The digital is somewhat lacking though and frankly I find instapaper + kindle
works just as well and is free.

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tlrobinson
Hacker Monthly is great. It's a great way to catch up on the gems that I
missed even though I read HN daily.

Awesome support too. For some I never received a couple issues and they were
able to quickly get MagCloud to send me new copies.

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robryan
The back issue package and having it formatted for kindle is great. Hadn't
looked into it much since the first issue but having the 10 of them on the
kindle to read on the go or just away from the comp will be great.

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mhartl
Hacker Monthly is a great success story and should be more widely emulated.
You don't have to start the next Google, Facebook, or recently acquired
_Company X_ to have success as an entrepreneur.

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crasshopper
This is beautiful. You should be very proud of yourself.

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dchs
Congratulations! Just ordered my first one :)

