Hacker Monthly Breezed Past 2,000 Paid Subscribers | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Monthly Breezed Past 2,000 Paid Subscribers

hackermonthly.posterous.com

44 pointsbearwithclaws21 comments

So that would be a max of $15,363 monthly income or a minimum of $2,416.

Since he collected a year up-front, he has generated a max of $184,360 to a minimum of $60,755.

A portion of the number comes from contributors, students* and AppSumo bundle.

*We've been offering students free digital subscription, but not yet publicly announcing it (still figuring out the best way to implement it).

Could you verify the same way facebook used to, via active .edu email address confirmation?

That would probably be the best way. The downside is that some people would continue using .edu email address even after they long graduated (any solution for that?).

not perfect but filter for /alumni/

Then they're not really all "paid subscribers" as it says in the posting ;-)

Impressive nonetheless.

Im quite impressed. I never thought it would actually make it. Congrats guys!

I thought it would be just another side hack and be left to nothing, but surprisingly, it worked.

Now all you need is to hit Barnes and Noble Magazine Shelfs to hit it big. haha

It was difficult to find the main site from the posterous blog. Resorted to editing the URL to hackermonthly.com

Ah, added.

I wonder how many of those new subscriptions came from the AppSumo deal that they were a part of last month - I bet a significant number, which means they aren't full paying customers, because of the reduced rates on the deal.

Amazon.com lets you self publish. You should look into getting it into the Kindle store. I'd love to get it streamed into my iPad and read it on the Kindle application.

Will look into it later. Currently, the best way to read it (both PDF and EPUB) is directly drag them to iBook. Also you could try the MagCloud app.

What's the split of digital / dead tree edition?

Let's guess. I guess...92% digital, 8% print.

Way less than that (the print proportion), partly due to the high international shipping fee ($10/issue). Most readers are just happy to get the digital edition and print it out.

i was wondering about that, UK is $2 whereas NL is $10, seems unfair for how close they are compared to san francisco - new york

I suppose this would be an argument in favor of the print industry not being dead.

It's not. In fact, it probably it might be the next big thing, again, if done right. To see another example other than HM, check out 8faces (http://8faces.com). They sold out their first issue within hours, and currently in the progress of selling out 2,500 copies of their second issue.

In essence, is the transition from print to electronic actually cyclical? As in, will print journalism full transition online only to realize that people still want print?

Why would anyone want print when they can get the same information online? Another way of looking at it is, "Why would anyone hassle with reading news online when they can get it delivered to them in print?"

There will always exist a market for physical content. I will always prefer to read news off a newspaper than on a screen. Print may never be delivered in "real time" but in the end, do I really need to read articles as they are written?

The gradual transition to online nowadays comes as a result of print journalism generally sucking. HN Monthly offers a print subscription to quality news, and that is why it is succeeding.

In sum, the argument has nothing to do with convenience or "real time". It's all about content. No matter which delivery method you choose, deliver great content and you will succeed.

This is a real example of crowdsourced publishing done right. Well done!

I don't understand this -- are the article authors compensated in any way or only cc type articles chosen to be printed?

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