After 60 issues, 13 months and $13 MRR I shut down my paid newsletter - 7 hard lessons I learned
In October 2021, I launched a paid newsletter
Deep research and insights drawn from indie businesses
After -
- 60 issues
- 13 months
- 2000 free subs
I could only reach $13 MRR
I shut it down and pivoted to a sponsorship model
7 hard lessons this failure taught me -
1. If you don't ask, they will no buy
I was so naive
I used to write free articles and then put more research behind a paywall
And then I would send out the free ones to all subscribers
Expected readers to find the paid articles themselves and upgrade
Never happened 🙈
2. You have to be your own best promoter
I was so afraid to promote the paid subscription on Twitter.
I thought the audience here will feel cheated.
That somehow I was only meant to share free content.
And they will magically find out about my paid subscription.
3. Monetizing content is hard
Content is abundant on the internet today.
Even the most successful newsletters, only end up converting 2-5% of their audience to paid.
So for a small audience size like mine, it just doesn't move the needle.
4. B2B is easier to sell than B2C
I've started running ads in my free newsletter now.
And it's easier to sell ads compared to selling subscriptions.
Because now, my value proposition is views, leads, sales.
Before, with a paid NL, it was insights, ideas and inspiration.
5. Format matters
I've made more money packaging the newsletter content as e-books and guides than from the paid newsletter.
Somehow people get some tangible value when they buy a book.
But just getting the same content delivered via email isn't as valuable.
6. Cookie cutter content doesn't cut it
Your audience wants results, not information.
I've been able to help people get better results from a paid mastermind program, instead of a paid newsletter.
Even if my insights are the same.
Because my work is way more high touch and personalized now.
7. The market doesn't care about you
A paid newsletter was my dream business model
Because I love writing and researching
I can spend days diving deep into a topic and write a 2500 word piece on it
But that doesn't matter to the market
It only cares about how I can add value
There are probably more lessons which I'm forgetting right now.
So if you have any questions, drop them below, or feel free to send me a DM on Twitter
I'd be happy to help in any way I can.
For reference, here's the archive of the newsletter
And now I've pivoted to a free newsletter supported by ads -
Consider signing up for it, every week 1 share 1 actionable framework for indie hackers and solopreneurs -
Loved by 2400+ readers - SuperFrameworks
Crossed $500 in sponsorship revenue recently :)
Hope this helps someone.
Thanks,
Ayush 🙏
That last one the market doesn't care about you is a great point. A lot of people start something, then fail and try to understand why when the reason has been staring them in the face the whole time - the world doesn't really need what they created. Something like a startup newsletter is so unbelievably competitive and there are so many out there for free, the market probably doesn't need a paid one except in super rare circumstances - either it's somehow so much better because of some specific angle, or the promoters behind it can just push anything with their influence. For the rest of us, better to somehow carve out a defined need in the market than enter into a space that is already over served.
Exactly!
Learned it the hard way 😅
same..... many times.
Thanks for sharing! I think more people should share their learnings from failures, as they're a bigger part of the journey than successes.
Thanks a ton! appreciate it..
Try productising that, it will sell much better.
There are tools which just make users work through a checklist of items to grow their business & they also sell as good as courses.
The value is either in curation of those checklists.
Like a tool which can just help you reach First 10 customers for SAAS.
And with the current no code tools like Bubble available, MVP can be made easily to test if it works or not
Interesting, thanks for the idea, will look into it.
Have you tried to create it as a newsletter courses ? Where people are given a proper course content/topics even before subscribing along with relative timeline for each topic based on when they start subscription.
Do you think that will create more perceived value for the customers ?
Yes, I am doing that, I'm picking specific topics and turning them into workshops/courses and including them all in my mastermind community.
The newsletter stays free and I promote e-books occasionally.
Ebook sells. That's kind of proven in the market. However, I was wandering do paid newsletter course sells.
It should be advertised like the way udemy courses. If you look at udemy page for a particular course, it has
Then run a free newsletter that covers related topics as well that directly and indirectly promote this paid newsletter.
This is like drip education for business people.
Yea, I do everything in that list except for the certificate of completion 😅
And promote it as part of the community membership.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing your experience
cheers!
Many lessons resonate a lot with me too.
I had a B2C SAAS that I charged only 5/month for. I was offering betting advice and had maybe 10 paying users.
Packaged it into a book and surpassed my 2 year revenue in only 6 months.
For my next project I am only going for B2B.
Fantastic example!
By the way, I am trying to push live a B2B forum here on IH, to share experiences, advice and learn from each other how to build an effective B2B business. I would love if you could help me by joining it.
would like to join https://www.indiehackers.com/group/b2b
Hey! Great piece, love the insights!
I have a resource directory - Knowledgehunt.co that focuses on curating the best free startup knowledge on the web.
Take a look and let me know if any of your piece fits it. I will be happy to feature it.
Yea, looks good
Wow thanks for sharing. Kudos for writing your points so precisely as well.
Cheers, glad you found it useful!
B2B is def easier than B2C. How do you market ebooks tho?
Mostly on Twitter and in my newsletter.
giving u a follow
Cheers man.
We usually fail a few times before we hit the jackpot, and you have shared some real-valuable insights.
Building a strong personal brand and a community should be the first step before we launch our product.
And congratulations on crossing $500 in revenue
Thanks Rishabh, appreciate it 🙏
nice detail
Thanks
Ton of good advice in here.
"And they will magically find out about my paid subscription."
Lol, everyone makes this mistake. Me included. We all learn the hard way.
Haha thanks brother.. you're an inspiration always !
Feeling truly is mutual my friend :)
Ayush, thanks for sharing your newsletter journey! Your honesty about the lessons you learned is super helpful. It's awesome to see how you adapted and found new ways to deliver value to your audience.
Congrats on the $500 sponsorship milestone! Your resilience is inspiring, and I'm excited to see how SuperFrameworks keeps growing. Keep rocking it!
Thank you for the kind words Miguel, appreciate it!
How do find advertisers?
I do not have a system yet, still testing stuff. I usually tweet out that ad spots are open and people can DM if they're interested. Then I get some interest from sponsors in the DMs
B2C is generally harder that B2B. I learned that after launching my own iOS app an AI chatbot(https://apple.co/40oSG45). But I am getting decent results so it's not that bad. Also congratulations on getting 2400 subs on your newsletters.
Thanks man, and congrats on your app.
You're right man!
I really like your this point you is the good promoter of your business. If you think your team will perform well, it may not necessarily be true. I really appreciate you sharing some good points that most people face.
Nowadays, people not only want information but also want to see proper results and processes. Everyone puts their own effort in their own way, and if you share the correct process and results, they can easily compare it with their own efforts. This helps to identify what we are doing well and what needs to be improved.
We are currently working on a detailed case study for our product, Churnfree customer retetion tool. We hope to complete it soon and will share everything in detail. Anyone can try Churnfree for free to reduce high customer churn in their membership business.
Thank you for this post. There are some very good thoughtful points.
To add to all this, it seems to be not so much about adding value - you do offer a lot of value yourself in you products, but about getting attention of the right people the right people. All markets are super-saturated. A lot of great value products are floating around unnoticed simply because there are too many choices... No matter how good/valuable your product is, there are many other similarly valuable products, or not so valuable but look valuable and a lot of garbage, of course... It is simply too much of everything everywhere....
Yes of course...
That's why I'm moving to as much personalization as possible.
Looking to help people 1:1 or in group settings instead of generic 1:many settings.
I think that is the only edge I can have in such a noisy environment.
Thanks for sharing ! :)
These are great insights, really appreciate the sharing Ayush. Very useful now that I'm launching a newesletter to highlight PoCs and pilots between corporates and startups.
Tnx for sharing, "The size of your audience is not the same as the size of your market": I agree with this lesson. It's important to not only consider the size of your audience but also whether or not they are willing and able to pay for your product or service.
I appreciate that post Ayush!
$500/mo in sponsorship rev or in the aggregate?
Sponsorship revenue over the last 6-7 weeks or so since I started running ads.. It's NOT $500/m recurring.
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This comment was deleted 8 months ago.
Agreed!