#128 — Optimising the subscription lifecycle
After speaking to people who create content professionally — we kept hearing that it would be beneficial to have a place to share ideas, tips and stories about running email newsletters, and building content-based businesses.
So, we recently launched a brand new community for exactly that and there's already some great conversations taking place. If you'd like to get early access, reply to this email and we'll hook you up.
Enjoy your weekly curation of stories and resources!
💯 Top picks
Building a subscription-first company
This (free) FT strategies report shares the common challenges and learning points from their program with 8 publishers across Europe. The report is broken down into two areas, building a subscription-first company, and optimising the subscription lifecycle.
💸 Business models
Quartz sees record week for member signups, now has more than 25,000 paying members
The publisher enjoyed its best week for membership after announcing it was becoming an independent media company.
Sunnie Huang Newsletters editor at The Economist, discusses the role of newsletters
"Newsletter producers spend a lot of time obsessing over every single pixel in the email but the email itself is only a very small part of the reader’s experience. The relationship with email readers starts long before they actually open the first email and it continues long after they’ve finished reading it."
How to price a paid newsletter
Based on 30 top paid email newsletters, the average price per month is $11.
✍️ Modern journalism
Attention software developers! Media organisations need you
As digital media companies become tech companies, their need for people with technical backgrounds grows, creating opportunities for software developers interested in journalism and media.
How the Seattle Times sold 71,000 digital subscriptions
"People just love to read about bridges and tunnels"
Q&A with Ed Yong: “It’s like staring into the abyss, and the abyss is shouting LOL HOAX into your mentions.”
Deez Links interview The Atlantic’s Ed Yong about the past eight months of nonstop COVID coverage.
💻 Technology
Journey to a first-party data world
"Whether you’re a large publisher with multiple domains and engineering teams, or a small independent title, there are steps you can take to prepare for a cookieless world."
Google will end preferential treatment of AMP pages
“We will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we rank the results,” Google said in a blog post.
Why it’s easy to hate Facebook but hard to leave
Facebook invested heavily in the one feature it knew people couldn’t leave behind: Their groups.
🤷 WTF?
Is the new Instagram update a new form of dark pattern?
They've moved the camera and notifications icons and replaced them with reels and shopping!