
Ask HN: Monetizing newsletter with 2M and 1M members - dangelov
Does anyone else run large newsletter lists? We&#x27;re having a hard time monetizing our weekly emails to our members.<p>We have nearly 2 million members (that haven&#x27;t opted out) in English and close to a million in Spanish for a book website. We send weekly emails with new featured books. We&#x27;ve been looking for interested sponsors and I&#x27;ve been looking at other previous discussions here on HN on monetizing NLs for ideas. Most of them seem to be for a much more niche&#x2F;focused NL list though. Any tips or ideas on how to monetize a large NL list like this that isn&#x27;t too focused (other than it relates to books)?<p>I&#x27;ve tried submitting to Upstart.me but don&#x27;t see it added yet, so maybe it&#x27;s a bit too generic to be listed there as well.<p>We&#x27;ve been using it mostly for promoting our own products (such as membership upgrades), but using the same few products over and over again start getting diminishing attention and returns from our members.<p>(note that we are capable of segmenting our list internally by topic based on the books our members are interested in, but I&#x27;m not sure how to turn that into a steady revenue stream as of yet)<p>Thanks for your answers!
======
tixocloud
Based on what you shared, I'd recommend knowing/learning more about your
membership base if you haven't done so already. Your membership list and their
feedback is probably the best source for getting monetization ideas that
actually work.

1\. Figure out how many of the 2M and 1M members are actually engaged (reading
emails as opposed to just opted-in).

2\. From the engaged audience, who are they and what keeps them interested in
the newsletter? What do their lives look like and is there any value that you
can bring?

By knowing who your audience is and what they potentially need, you can
deliver more personalized content. You could also think about promoting
content from partners that go beyond straightforward ads (i.e. discounts,
exclusive offers, developer bundles, Amazon AWS credits, affiliate links,
etc.)

~~~
dangelov
That's good advice. We've actually reached out to our members in the past with
some similar questions/survey. It's been a while since we last did it, so
maybe a fresh one will bring some new ideas to the table.

In our particular case, affiliate links haven't been a good revenue stream,
though from what I've read they work really well for some others. The rest are
definitely worth thinking about and exploring further.

Thanks!

~~~
jermaustin1
Another point is, CLEAN UP YOUR LIST!!!!

If you don't have 2M engaged readers, why are you paying to email them? They
are costing money and don't bring any revenue in.

At an agency I was with a few years ago had an active list of a few hundred
thousand, which was really closer to a million when you added the people we
purged from our lists monthly. If you haven't opened any email in the last 3
months, purge.

~~~
dangelov
That's great advice and I agree. We actually do purge the list from inactive
members and we maintain an even more aggressively purged "segment" of highly
engaged readers.

Perhaps worth exploring in reducing further the cutoff for the general list as
well. Thanks!

------
rayalez
The first thing that comes to mind is sending them affiliate links to
Amazon/Audible, that's pretty straightforward.

You could also find authors who are looking to promote their books, and charge
them for adding their ad to emails.

Also I'm sure there are plenty of software/info-product companies and startups
looking for audience in this niche.

If you can segment books by niche, it should be even more awesome and
profitable. Send programming books and courses to programmers(a lot of them
have affiliate programs), business books to business people, etc.

If it's not a secret, can you share with us what you did to build this list?
The more details the better, it would be incredibly useful!

~~~
infomofo
Just in case the OP goes with this you should be very careful-

Amazon Affiliate links in email are explicitly against their terms of service
and you could get removed from the program.

[https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/2020494...](https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/202049410)

------
vram22
Might want to check out Peter Cooper's work on newsletters - e.g. a podcast he
was interviewed on (about how he started and grew his newsletter business) was
interesting and may give some ideas. Don't have the link right now but if you
use relevant keywords in a search, you should find it.

~~~
dangelov
Thanks! Googled it and I believe this is the one you're talking about:
[http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails/161](http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails/161)

I'll check it out.

~~~
vram22
NP. Found the one I saw, it is actually this:

[https://devchat.tv/freelancers/the-freelancers-
show-133-runn...](https://devchat.tv/freelancers/the-freelancers-
show-133-running-a-successful-newsletter-with-peter-cooper)

published later than your find, but both probably have roughly the same
content.

~~~
dangelov
Great, thanks for looking it up and sending the link.

------
amrrs
1.Have you tried setting up a Paetron account?

2.'If you enjoy our content, support us via PayPal'

3\. And once in a month or bimonthly sharing your expenses and asking for
support.

4\. Contacting relevant youtubers for traffic or brand campaign where you can
embed their videos along with the newsletter.

5\. Finally, Checking with Book Publication to add relevant new releases as
Sponsored.

~~~
Mz
Re #2: How to make a PayPal tip jar:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-
make-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-paypal-
tip-jar.html)

------
shanecleveland
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/hacker-news-
books](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/hacker-news-books)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765307)

~~~
dangelov
Thanks for the links. It seems that in the first case it's mostly Amazon
Affiliate links and in the 2nd they don't really mention the ways they
monetize their website and newsletter.

------
tobltobs
I am not sure if "not opting out" is a good indicator for "being a newsletter
member". Be careful with trying to monetize this. You could damage your email
delivery rate and thereby your core business while trying to squeeze those
additional pennies.

~~~
dangelov
Thanks for the feedback. I agree about having to be careful.

We extensively check any/all emails we send out to make sure we keep a great
delivery rate even on routine emails. If we were to include an ad for example,
we'd work with the advertiser to make sure the copy is good, is not misleading
and that it doesn't trigger spam filters etc. Our members can easily
unsubscribe or select the type of emails they receive and we avoid dark
patterns.

------
msrpotus
It might take some work but you'll definitely be able to get advertisers. The
first step would be audience surveys to find out who your readers are and what
they are interested in, and then you can go out and find advertisers who want
to reach those folks.

However, if you're already doing books, what about Amazon affiliates or even,
depending on the topic of these books, selling related products? If someone is
interested in finance, business, or home improvement, for example, there's a
lot of items they might buy beyond books. You can recommend them and make some
money off each sale.

~~~
dangelov
I guess the trick here is that while we can segment our lists based on
interests, it might be a bit tricky & time consuming to constantly find
interesting products to offer and tailor them to the many different groups.
Which is not to say it would not be worth it.

Good idea about the audience surveys - though we do know our audience's
geography, perhaps a general demographic survey would provide some interesting
insight. Thanks!

~~~
matt_the_bass
I think that offering products that are interesting to your segments is
exactly the reason they would be interested in them. Who's going to buy
products/click on ads that are not interesting to them.

You're already doing the work to build the list. Why are you opposed to
spending the effort to target the advertising?

~~~
dangelov
Of course we're not opposed to spending the effort to target the advertising.
It's a recurring theme in many suggestions here and we're definitely going to
look for ways to improve our targeting. Thanks for your comment!

~~~
matt_the_bass
Ahh. Perhaps I misunderstood the parent comment?

------
gargarplex
I wrote a book. If you have people who are interested in technology I would be
interested in promoting it to your list.

~~~
dangelov
Hi!

Yeah, we're able to send to a subset based on recent interests (downloads) and
we have many categories. I've just added my email to my profile - please feel
free to get in touch.

~~~
gargarplex
Sent you an email. I haven't added DKIM yet so check spam as I also included
several attachments.

Edit: Just added DKIM. Very easy with GSuite + CloudFlare. Also added an SPF
record for Google.

~~~
dangelov
Got it - thanks!

------
erainey
It seems like you've got everything needed for a thriving marketplace without
the market.

Why is your content all free? Have you tried to directly monetize the content?
Why not have the first x,xxx downloads free, then monetize the content and
split revenue with the author & publisher? Or have a graduated cost based on
popularity, similar to what pinboard did? Something like this may have the
side benefit of creating a sense of urgency and anticipation for your
newsletter.

~~~
dangelov
We're already doing some of those things on our website, or we have
experimented with them in the past. At the moment we are trying to focus on
the newsletter a bit and find ways to better monetize it. Thanks for your
comment!

------
michaelthiessen
Why not ask your members?

You have the attention and trust of a LOT of people. Figure out what they
need, what problems they have.

------
csallen
How many weekly emails are you sending, and how much money are you spending to
send them?

In your shoes, I might attempt to break the newsletters up further into more
easily monetizable niches. You can track which links are clicked by different
subscribers, segment them, and then start sending slightly different emails.
Or just straight up create new mailing lists and ask your readers to subscribe
to those occasionally.

Just spitballing here.

P.S. You might consider asking on the Indie Hackers forum, too:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/forum](https://www.indiehackers.com/forum). Lots
of people there have monetized various apps and mailing lists.

~~~
stevesearer
I'd suggest a similar approach as csallen, though Step 1 should probably be to
do research to find similar newsletters, websites, magazines and find out who
is advertising in them.

Once you know that, you will have a much better idea of who specifically is
currently spending advertising dollars (display or affiliate).

Knowing who is spending money already is really important because getting
companies to carve out some of their existing budget for you is easier than
getting companies to create a budget out of thin air for you.

~~~
dangelov
That's actually a really good idea. Thanks. I'll do some research there and
then see if I can get in touch with some potential advertisers.

Good insight about companies having existing vs creating a budget - will
remember that. Thanks again.

------
robhunter
I think this was largely the business model for BookBub - take a look at them

~~~
dangelov
Thanks! I'll have a look.

------
kichik
Have you considered using Amazon affiliate links to make it easy for your
users to buy the books? They get an easy way to buy the recommended book, and
you get a cut of the purchase.

~~~
dangelov
Yeah, but our books are either indie books by independent authors or classics
in the public domain. They're all free, so there are no affiliate links to
use.

We've tried using affiliate links to other Amazon books/products in the past,
but it hasn't worked well for us in terms of revenue. Can be a bit hard to
sell a book to an NL list expecting free books :)

~~~
kichik
If the books are free, what about making money on the way people read them?
Kindle affiliate links, maybe a service that sends the free books to your
Kindle, affiliate links to reading accessories, etc.

~~~
dangelov
Yeah, we offer an upgraded membership that allows people to directly send
books from our site to their Kindle.

Affiliate links in general have not worked that great for us in the past
though. Perhaps as has been hinted on here, it was a targeting problem and we
were sending too general of an ad to the list, instead of more targeted ads
based on list segments. We might give it another try with more focused ads.

------
iRobbery
If i would have signed up for a mailing by a bookstore, i'd only really care
about specific recommendations for me. Just a single title, based on set
preferences/previous purchases and not too often.

Bit like parties as Netflix do if they release some new series they strongly
think you'd like. It feels more like a 'reminder' then an ad, but its an ad of
course.

~~~
dangelov
The books on our sites are free, so while we do our best to email interesting
content to our members (with our hand selected weekly picks for example), it
doesn't bring any revenue in and of itself, unless they decide to upgrade
their membership.

------
hayksaakian
You should promote interesting blog content to your list, and get them to go
to your website to learn more.

I'm looking at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/books/](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/) and it
looks like there's so many different things that 'book people' are interested
in.

~~~
dangelov
I feel like perhaps one of the "problems" is that there are too many different
things people might be interested in. So if 5% are interested in cars, the
other 95% would find the ad or promo fairly uninteresting and irrelevant.

~~~
cannonedhamster
You are not targeting properly, you're not solving something customers want,
or your product is bad. Those are the three things you'd need to look at. With
a couple million subs, it's unlikely you've got a bad product, but it's highly
likely you're targeting incorrectly or your product isn't solving a problem.
As someone who reads a ton of books, this is a saturated market, what problem
are you solving that isn't solved yet or that you're solving better?

~~~
dangelov
All of our books are free and most of them are by indie authors that don't
publish on Amazon or other platforms. That works great both for our members
who want to keep finding new reads and authors looking for an interested
readership base to share their work with.

Based on yours and other comments here, it seems it's highly likely we should
work on better targeting. Any suggestions on improving in that regard?

Thanks, appreciate the feedback!

~~~
cannonedhamster
Targeting is all about knowing the true habits of your audience versus what
your audience claims are their true habits. As others have said, breaking out
your newsletter to the highest value people is probably a good start. You can
leave the general email general and require an opt-in for people instead of an
opt out. You'll immediately know who is engaged enough to want more of what
you're offering, then just ask them what they find the most valuable in a
survey and find a way to monetize that isn't what you're already doing but is
in addition, in other words, create extra value for them.

------
andy_ppp
The content you are sending them "new featured books" sounds like it's going
to be not hugely interesting for most people. Maybe try to create really
engaging content around the original means of signing up (was it book
specific) and you'll probably find sponsors around that relevant content.

What do you think?

~~~
dangelov
People sign up to find & download new/interesting books to read that they
can't always find in other places. That's what our weekly NL is about, so I
feel it's fairly on point, but of course there's always room to improve and
play with the kind of books we recommend or even the format. Perhaps worth
exploring different formats that allow for more interesting content/ad
combinations.

Have you seen an interesting format/combination you could share?

------
hackerews
If community is at all important to your members, you can set up a hiohmy
community for them ([https://www.hiohmy.com](https://www.hiohmy.com)).

It's free but you could place it behind your own paywall.

~~~
dangelov
We did use to have forums way back in the day, but both ours and many other
forums had fallen out of favor for a while and we had shut them down. Forums
seem to be making a bit of a come back in some communities so perhaps worth
exploring. Thanks for the suggestion and the link.

~~~
hackerews
It's actually not a forum, but a way for members to connect over email. More
networking.

------
pski007
Shoot me a PM. I run an email service provider and work actively with clients
on monetizing clients email lists.

------
sogen
Forget about free content and free books , 2 focus on reaching book authors
and publishers, 1 segment lists 3 profit Contact me for marketing campaign
ideas

------
sixQuarks
wait, how did you get 2 million subscribers in the first place? And what does
"haven't opted out" mean? Did you buy this list?

~~~
dangelov
No, haven't bought the list, built it ourselves over the last 11+ years of
running well established sites with lots of traffic.

~~~
sixQuarks
Then my next question is: why did they sign up to the list? What value are
they getting out of it?

------
notadoc
That's an enormous email list, how did you get such a big member list together
in the first place?

~~~
dangelov
Websites have been running for 11+ years now and they're well established with
lots of traffic.

~~~
frandroid
How much traffic are you getting on those sites? I'd say don't try so hard to
monetize the mailing list, try to monetize the sites (membership/patreon,
premium services, new paywalled content verticals, paywalled podcasts) and use
the mailing lists as an audience to bring to your sites.

------
NicoJuicy
Also, minimize your cost. What do you use to send your emails? Eg. Sendy is
pretty cheap

~~~
dangelov
SendGrid at the moment, but thanks for mentioning Sendy. Looks promising!
Reducing email cost is definitely one way of making the NL more profitable. :)

One potential problem with switching is trust in the new IPs. Any tips for a
successful migration?

~~~
NicoJuicy
add the required domain name records, ptr, ... DKIM in amazon is suggested
also :)

------
mcnnowak
Maybe sneak an Amazon Affiliate link to some book that isn't on your site.

~~~
dangelov
As another comment here mentions it[0], it's actually against Amazon's policy,
but either way affiliate links in general have not worked that great for us.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14993332)

------
jraby3
For a newsletter that size I'd try an Israeli startup named PowerInbox.

------
pryelluw
Is it a standard newsletter format or a drip?

~~~
dangelov
We email our members a weekly selection of new books from our website(s).

We do have drip emails for other stuff (eg: a user hasn't confirmed their
account, or a user abandoned the membership upgrade process).

~~~
pryelluw
Have you tested using drip for the weekly emails? Might prove profitable
without devaluing content.

~~~
dangelov
Sorry, not sure how drip weekly emails would work or help? I'd love to hear
more but not sure what exactly you had in mind.

------
ajohnclark
liveintent or powerinbox maybe?

~~~
dangelov
We had looked at PowerInbox before but can't remember why we hadn't given them
a try. Hadn't heard of LiveIntent. I'll look into both of them a bit more.
Thanks!

~~~
ajohnclark
PowerInbox ads can be a bit spammy. LiveIntent has a more strict contract so
keep an eye on the terms though but they are the largest ad email network to
my knowledge so advertisers are likely spammy.

