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Why I'm launching a (paid) newsletter about daily tech news.
32 points by freshfey on Sept 26, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 40 comments
Hi all,

Today I'm launching a daily tech newsletter. Basically I'm doing this because I want to stay up to date with the tech scene, but I can't afford to surf all the blogs (incl. HN) multiple minutes/hours per day. That's why I created www.hackingfresh.com - a daily tech newsletter.

The idea is that you sign up for a daily newsletter, which arrives around 6pm GMT+1, and get up to 20 interesting stories with a little comment by me (describing the story). If you're interested you can dive in, if not, you just skip the story and read the interesting ones. This service costs you 0.50 $ a day, not one penny more (See Edit 2, newsletter is now FREE!)

I kinda got the idea also by Gary Vaynerchuk (http://garyvaynerchuk.com/post/166652911) who names this the "DJ Business" and Peter Cooper, who was looking for a daily podcast with the most interesting stories of the day (still searching for the exact tweet).

If you have any questions, email me (email in profile) or ask here directly.

Edit: As requested a sample email I put together for today: http://hackingfresh.com/?page_id=19. Like I said, not much content from my side, I just get the most interesting and most compelling stories into one easy digestible format.

Edit 2: Newsletter is now FREE and will officially start tomorrow (will be startup-ad-supported!).




Some thoughts: 1. Jason Hirschorn's email list Media ReDEFined (http://twitter.com/mediaredef) does exactly what you are trying to do, and it is free and curated by someone who is fairly well-known in the tech world. I read it every single day. He does weekends too.

2. $0.50 a day is WAY too expensive.

3. Is your goal to be a curator or a creator? This seems like you want to be a curator, but what makes you so sure that your newsletter is going to be so much better than my hand-picked group of people on Twitter that I would pay $15/month for it? That is more expensive than Netflix, Rdio, Pandora, Dropbox, etc. not to mention free curation services like Flipboard, news.me (recently made free), etc.

4. What I found - people don't want to pay for content. Period. I had, over the course of 6 months, around 100 people subscribe to my paid letter.ly newsletter ($2/month, btw), while around 30,000 people visit my blog. It made me realize that it's more important to have an audience than it is to have some short-term cash. That said, I am not sure if the same necessarily applies to curators.

5. IMO, the rewards are much better if you are "known" as a curator vs. "paid" to be a curator.

Best of luck, though. Interested to see what happens!

Background: I had a paid email newsletter through the service letter.ly for around 6 months from July-December 2010. I have also had an on-and-off blog since March 2009.


What I found - people don't want to pay for content. Period.

But they would pay for curated content. I don't want to pay for the news. There is lots of great news written by great journalists for free. However I want to pay for someone to take the time to sort through it and give me the best of it daily. I just wouldn't pay $15 bucks. $5/month, yes.

I remember signing up for Kevin Rose's video newsletter for $5/month without thinking. I cancelled the subscription after 2 months because I found the videos were available later for free anyways.


On #4, I gladly (along with apparently nearly 4,000 others) have paid $2,500 a year in subscription fees to an investing newsletter done by a heavyweight in the industry. Knowledge gained has more than made up for the high cost. The question is: what is the relevant value and utility of said content?


following pivoting offer: newsletter free, but three ad-links (startup related though, can be for upcoming startups!). thoughts?

I'm trying to maneuver to good content, nothing more.


Yes, yes and yes. If you do that, I am signing up tomorrow. I love consuming content via email, especially if it's curated. Bonus points for an "export all to Instapaper" button. Another tip: sign up for Charlie O'Donnell's NYC Tech Events newsletter for a good model on this. I also have another friend who is also obsessive about curation - email me off list (email in profile) for more ideas.


You should check out HARO (help a reporter out). That's a 3ish times a day newsletter that goes out. Reporters who need quotes, information, contacts, etc list the stories they're working on and what they need, and then it goes out to x00,000 people.

Their newsletter is free, but at the top is a sponsored paragraph/text blurb about a product/services/etc. I think that is a much better monetization strategy than getting people to pay $15/m.


Thanks for the name drop - good luck! This sort of thing (though unpaid) has been sitting on my mile-long to-do list in regards to my mini e-mail newsletter empire, so it'll be interesting to see how it works out. I think the tweet you were referring to was one of my usual 'casual market research' tweets where I see if my followers already know something I don't ;-)

Whatever happens, the tech industry is so ridiculously large than there's room for everyone. The success of TechCrunch, The Next Web, Mashable, et al, show that :-)

I see great potential in paid e-mail newsletters. Whether that's in tech or at $0.50 I have no idea, but I definitely think you should give it a go, and if you have any questions, etc, you're more than welcome to get in touch.


Thanks for the motivation! :) Yeah I even saved the link to the tweet for a long time, but it got lost somewhere :(

Paid is difficult if you don't have an audience though. :)


Interesting, there's also http://hackermonthly.com which digests this very site into a print magazine format.

There's huge opportunity in filtering - availability of information is not the problem, but filtering the signal from the noise and turning the firehose of information into useful, actionable knowledge.

The Economist does an incredible job of providing high-level overviews and forecasts, and has subscriber numbers going through the roof despite being a) a print magazine and b) one of the most expensive on the newsstand.

Will your offering provide editorial and forecast, or just a list of links? What makes your list of links better than everyone else's?


at the beginning, just the links. editorial and forecast may be added later, depending on how it evolves. reasons see my answer below.


I am curious to know if you're able to get any traction with this. There are a ton of newsletters out there that are free. The value in newsletters, as I understand it, is in building a large list and then getting the advertising dollars. Very targeted marketing yields better revenue opportunities. Serious question for you to answer: Why would I pay for your newsletter over a free alternative?


because the newsletter isn't cluttered with ads or other stuff, doesn't have too much text (I'm not copy-pasting content) and has a 30 day trial period (you can find out for yourself whether you like it or not, without spending a dime).


But the content that you link to will still have ads. Good luck, but I don't see why I would pay $15 a month for this when I could go to any of the many tech aggregation sites click on their top 20 links and read the first paragraph to see if I want to read more.


Unless you have superior content, do you believe that's compelling enough? I don't like ads, but I wouldn't pay for an ad-free version of google search (or gmail for that matter).


$.50 is steep (that's about $15/month) unless you can get great content that is actionable and can't be gotten elsewhere (for example, stock tips or financial analysis)

As a more consumer-ish type product, you probably should start around $5.

I run a weekly newsletter that goes out to about 8,000 people (it's free) and I can tell you that my audience would probably drop by 99% if I charged anything. Churning out good content is tough and not a model that really scales from a revenue standpoint but it can be monetized in other ways (ie. thought leadership leading to new opportunities)

Furthermore, looking at your example letter (on your site), I'm not sure there is $.50's worth of news there. Take a look at the competition (eg. This web day at http://www.thiswebday.com/ ) and you will realize you've got a high mountain to climb.

That said, don't get discouraged by people who doubt your idea. There's always an exception out there and you may be it so think and do it but take the advice and synthesize into something awesome.


Thanks for the kind words :) Looking at thiswebday it doesn't have that much more information than the example I quickly put together?


I took a look at your samples[1] and there are many people doing this for free[2] with more content. I'd recommend you start with a smaller amount of summaries, make it free at first, improve to the point you have a loyal following and then charge.

[1] http://hackingfresh.com/?page_id=19

[2] Shameless plug: I run http://skimthat.com A free site that fully summarizes tech news stories. You most likely won't even need to visit the source articles.


In my opinion I don't like to give out my email address without seeing some examples of the content I'll be receiving so my advice would be to perhaps add same sample content on the frontpage.


great point, will do that!

Edit: done. http://hackingfresh.com/?page_id=19


IMO your summaries are too concise to be useful - they barely tell me anything more than the articles' titles, which I can see easily by just scanning the HN front page.

I would be more interested if there was a 1 or 2 paragraph summary of the article that went in a little more detail than what you have right now.


Forgetting what you are charging for a moment, what are your qualifications to be a curator of the information you are trying to save others time gathering by going to the obvious places? You site doesn't talk about that at all.

Also I think you should be targeting people who are not in the tech community. Management of mid size companies or larger. People who want to stay on top of things but don't have the time or interest and additionally aren't in front of a screen most of the day.


I would suggest a cheaper weekly version.


A fellow HN user: duck has made a weekly version - http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ and its free


Thanks for the mention! I thought briefly about going with a subscription fee, but in reality I want to get it in front of as many people as I can. After about a year of doing it and showing that I was committed to it, I started taking on advertising. It is just a side project, but glad to make some money and looking to do a lot more with it in the future.


Cool, I'm interested in this. I tried to sign up, but it looks like you have to enter your credit card info now? Is there no way to enter it after the free trial month? I'm just not sure yet if it'd be worth replacing my daily RSS habit with this, and I'll have to remember to cancel, etc.


Hm, tinyletter doesn't offer putting the CC info in later. How about: You sign up, email me and I'll remind you three days before you free trial expires through email that you can cancel if you want? :)


I would have immediately signed up for $5 per month.

At $15 you have to start thinking what credentials and sources do you have, or how could you filter news for me better than HN already does? this? that?

That being said, congratulations. There is definitely a need for PAID curated news.


It's free now :)


Ah come on, Freshkey :) ... I know I would still have to pay 15 bucks afterwards.

I think you should have a lower price point. The way I think of it is I am almost sure I would like the digest, and in the future I would like to subscribe to at least one more vertical (business).


No, I'm serious. Free now, trying the ad-supported model (ads by cool startups) and I have no more intentions to make it paid any time soon.


Awesome. At least ad a donation bottom at the bottom of the email. I don't mind supporting at the rate of $5/month so long as the quality is decent.


http://www.hackingfresh.com


I'm not convinced there are 20 interesting stories a day. I certainly don't think I'd have time to read 20 interesting stories a day. Therefore I'm not sure you are really helping me to "trim down".

I personally like weekly newsletters.


Good luck! You really got to identify a specific group that a willing to do so. And ideally insider/exclusive infos. "Only" syndication is going to be a tough sell, unless your expertise is somewhat already established.


You indicate in your Edit 2 that your newsletter is now free but it is still written that only first month is free on your site. I'm planning to subscribe but would rather be sure that it will stay free.


sorry, forgot to edit the pages. done now. I won't be charging in the future! :)


Take a look at Smart Brief. They do this for social media and a few other verticals. There's value in human curation, but more value in creation I believe.


Too expensive, for a newsletter.


I suggest making it free and trying to make money from advertising. Unlike websites, newsletters are able to command much money per 1000 impressions.


Good point, same answer as above: following pivoting offer: newsletter free, but three ad-links (startup related though, can be for upcoming startups!). thoughts?




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