#140 — The proven way to find your niche, explained

There's lots of genuinely useful things to read in this issue, including a guide for how to find a profitable niche, takeaways about how successful startups acheive content-driven growth and a deeper look at how the creator economy is just getting started. Plus: A couple of important Google updates.


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There's lots of genuinely useful things to read in this issue, including a guide for how to find a profitable niche, takeaways about how successful startups achieve content-driven growth, and a deeper look at how the creator economy is just getting started. Plus: A couple of important Google updates. Have a great Sunday!

💯 Top picks

The unexpected (but proven) way to find your niche in the creator economy

Finding a niche in the creator economy can be tough. It's not just about the topic you create content about, but more about what unique value you bring to that topic. The latest article on our blog explores how to find the overlap and find a monetisable niche that gets noticed.

💸 Business models

0-5,000 subscribers in 10 months

Don't miss this thread on IndieHackers where Linda Z shares an impressive milestone and some insights from the journey to 5,000 subscribers and launching a paid product that generated $22k in 4 weeks!

Content-driven growth

A great overview of which startups are best at content-driven growth and what you can learn from them, with a list of high-level takeaways over at Lenny's Newsletter.

10 reasons to be bullish on the creator economy in 2021

The world is more online than ever, the gatekeepers have gone, and there's an audience out there for everything.

How to build a successful value-driven membership model

Dive into the thriving membership model of Argentinean news site RED/ACCIÓN in this episode of the Reuters Institute 'Future of Journalism' podcast.

The Arizona Republic considers killing “zombies” a staple of its digital subscription strategy

"Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to maximize your digital subscription growth, you must have a focused plan on not only how to grow your subscriber base, but also how to retain and improve the engagement and loyalty of your current subscribers."

📝 Modern publishing

The Subscription Economy has grown over 435% in 9 years

The Subscription Economy has grown nearly 6x (more than 435%) over the last 9 years, according to Zuora, and the uptick is expected to continue.

What happens when a publisher becomes a megapublisher?

"The merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has the potential to touch every part of the industry, including how much authors get paid and how bookstores are run."

📬 Email newsletters

Improving open rates with a creative subject line

Get some tips to improve your subject lines and increase your stats.

10 novel content ideas for your next marketing newsletter

If you need a bit of inspiration for the emails selling your products, check out this list. Even if you don't find an idea you like in here, at least you can discover that thisweekin.cat is a thing that exists in the world!

💻 Technology

Google’s massive algo update in 2 months will impact publishers

"This update will introduce new page experience signals, combining Core Web Vitals—designed to measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page—with the existing search signals."

Google says it won’t track you directly in the future

The search company clarified its plans for targeted advertising, promising not to use other ways to track users around the internet following the end of support for cookies in Chrome by early 2022.


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