Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years | Hacker News Reader

Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years

businessofbusiness.com

136 pointssmalera59 comments

I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert.

Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal.

I find the idea of a newsletter compelling. But I never read any of the newsletters that I signed up for. So to me it feels like even if I did have people sign up for a newsletter that I’d write, most of the recipients would not be reading it either. Like 98.8% of this hypothetical audience of mine probably would not read the letters I feel like.

Do you find the idea of writing a newsletter compelling, or the idea of having a successful newsletter compelling?

I started my newsletter because I recognized I was constantly thinking/analyzing a specific topic, but not really doing much with that knowledge, and could not find an existing community focused on that topic. I started writing to put into words what I was thinking, and found I really enjoyed writing with an audience in mind, even though I had none.

If someone signs up for a newsletter of yours, that is pitched as some sort of original writing, there's a very high chance they're going to read it. If they stop reading, or unsubscribe, you can ask them why, and get valuable feedback so you can improve your writing. You end up with someone interested, or feedback. I see it as a win win.

The bigger problem is finding the hypothetical audience!

> Do you find the idea of writing a newsletter compelling, or the idea of having a successful newsletter compelling?

Slightly OT, but I often ask people I know, when they're struggling with things like this, "Do you want to be an <x>, or do you want to have been an <x>?", because they're two completely different things.

I, too, have signed up for a few newsletter subscriptions——just in the last few months——that I never seem to read. Is there an email-newsletter equivalent for "tsundoku?"

For scientific research the rule used to be that if you printed out a research paper then you don't have to read it. Now that also applies if you just download the pdf.

> I, too, have signed up for a few newsletter subscriptions——just in the last few months——that I never seem to read.

Me to. I wonder why that is, though. Is it the fact that I have little time? Is it my email client's user interface where an entire folder of unread newsletter emails always looks particularly intimidating? Or maybe I'm just associating unread emails with yet-to-do tasks and, thus, with stress?

I think, (for me) it might be the latter two points. I mean, I listen to podcasts on Spotify, too, and am able to make time for them. But with the Spotify UI I never get the feeling that I have to listen to each podcast or that I have unfinished business to take care of. I can listen to a couple podcasts in a row and then not touch that podcast for a couple months and Spotify won't nag me about it.

Ha! I love that there's a word for that.

I learned that word, tsundoku, right here at HN, from user Xophmeister.

My newsletter (only 100 people) has a 60% open rate, so it can be read.

OTOH, your newsletters cannot be found through $FAVORITE_SEARCH_ENGINE, are not archived through the Internet Archive, they cannot be linked to, …

I don't know, as a reader I like blog posts a lot more.

Why not have both?

You send your newsletter, but show the contents in a blog post format as well.

Yeah this the standard approach, I don’t know of many newsletters that don’t make their writing available elsewhere.

I do. In my experience a lot of newsletters that are monetized in some way or another don't get published on the web.

Exactly this. As a reader, I want to search old posts when I have time to read them and am looking for a specific topic, rather than wait for a weekly email and hope it's relevant.

Exactly. I started one newsletter a year back...I felt quite relieved writing in public [0], especially when I quit all other social media. So, I just write for my own knowledge reinforcement. There will be times when I had to force myself to write. Eventually, I took a break (and still on a long hiatus).

---

[0] - https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/

thanks for the shoutout :)

I don't understand how everyone is expecting to monetise newsletters. Who in their right mind pays for a newsletter unless the newsletter provides some transactable value (cheap flight deals etc)?

One way is likely through product placement and sponsorship. Just have to make sure not to lay it on too thick or you'll lose readers.

People read newsletters to be informed on certain topics, entertained, or for their curiosity.

Those who find enough value out of a newsletter that does one of those things for them, will be willing to pay for it.

You could say the same thing about books, newspapers, magazines, etc.

I do say the same for magazines and newspapers. Most books however are in a distant category. Their primary purpose is not to extract a dollar from you.

I think if you looked at the newsletters that people are paying for, you’d see they are very different from most of the newsletters we’re familiar with.

The newsletters that are treated like lead generation tools are not the ones making subscription revenues.

You could say that about any online content. And transactable value is not the only type of value to be found in the world.

Transactable value or unique information on some niche topic you're really interested in. Years ago, I subscribed to a (print) newsletter on folding kayaks for example. Of course, that's harder today given the amount of freely available information on the web.

People who are not struggling or cheap? I pay for a couple of newsletters (on Substack).

How is it different from a blog with subscribers?

When you write a new blog post and it gets emailed to your subscribers, wouldn’t you say that’s a newsletter?

It's a little light and snarky for my taste, but if you see it as a thin slice of "what people are talking about" more so than "what happened," then it makes sense. If you read this every day it basically hands you clever hot takes on current events you can use to sound smart with your friends. Not hard to see the appeal.

Personally, for thin-sliced news that's more about "what happened," I prefer Axios :)

I agree about the tone, but the 5 minute daily read to get some idea about things that happened the day before is really appealing. I get to have at least some idea what happened without having to scroll past the same topic repeated for the thousandth time or some sort of clickbait title.

I looked for some other "5 minute news" alternatives when I first found it, and didn't really find anything in the same vein.

I also really like Axios, always very informative

Then you would love Wikipedia's current events page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

This is great! I've been passively looking for a concise list of world events without any sports for a while now.

We'll see how it works long term, but I was able to get the daily list to show up in my RSS feed with this:

https://patrick.cloke.us/posts/2017/05/26/rss-feeds-for-wiki...

This is fairly unrelated, and late enough after this was posted that not many will see this, but it's interesting how marketing works.

I fast-forwarded through an ad for Morning Brew after some youtube video the other day and thought to myself that it might be worth looking into. I'd completely forgotten about it until I saw this come up. Haven't even read the article yet, but I have subscribed.

Had I seen one without the other, I don't think I would have ever noticed or cared about them - or at least not any time soon. But the two in combination got my email address onto their list. This is also that sort of stat that never shows up in analytics dashboards. I googled it and subscribed. There's no way for them to know that the ad, which I barely watched, along with this bit of PR, which I haven't actually read, was what brought me to them (unless they see it here, I suppose).

This is well known in psychology, a combination of the mere exposure effect as well as Baader–Meinhof phenomenon (frequency illusion).

The latter makes sure you notice again something you've already seen. The former makes you associate that thing to being good, by its mere presence.

And as to your first sentence, HN will put newer comments at the top of the comments list in order to get people to see and engage with them (as I've done) :).

I learnt during my studies (can't remember the exact name or details of it) that seeing a product through 7 different channels (print ad, TV commercial, etc.) will leave you under the impression of knowing and thus trusting a product. Of course other factors come into play, but in front of the yogurt aisle for example, (given similar tastes, packaging styles, prices, etc.) you'll be much more likely to buy the one you've heard of through many channels, rather than the one you've barely heard of. Even if you've tasted none before.

If somebody recognizes this approach, I'd love to know the name of it

Edit: it could be the mere exposure effect mentioned in the other comment, but I'm pretty sure the number of different channels had a play in the process.

A video recently went viral of David Bowie in 1999 saying that the internet was going to be the future. We're at a similar place with newsletters - a frontier that is on the verge of exploding.

I run Thinking About Things [0], a simple newsletter that is a single link every other day to something interesting. The response has been astonishing - it's gotten thousands of subscribers in a single year with no marketing. It started as a way to send articles to family and friends and yet the simple act of triage and curation seems to be something that many find valuable.

It's impossible to underestimate the degree to which curation is becoming the differentiator in the digital economy; those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers.

[1] thinking-about-things.com

> those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers

Isn’t this what journalism was supposed to do before they discovered money?

We are currently in an unbundling phase and probably an extreme version of it. Too much choice so we go back to 3 TV channels and you watch what's on that day.

> It's impossible to underestimate the degree to which curation is becoming the differentiator in the digital economy; those who can be trusted to provide valuable content from the fire hose of all that's available on the internet will become the new information brokers.

Getting someone to pay for curation has always been the problem. It was easier in the pre digital days because access to information wasn’t as easy as a click.

We share the same passion and world view :) I definitely believe too that curation will become increasingly important.

I started my own daily newsletter [1] about startups, tech trends and business ideas just recently.

Sending out a daily newsletter is much tougher than I would have imagined... But at the same time it’s really rewarding because your basically shipping something every day :)

[1] www.shoto.io

"Curation is becoming the differentiator" is not only relevant for newsletters, but also for readers. To paraphrase Cal Newport, in a distracted world, the ability to focus and to singletask is a "superpower". Curation is a service (newsletters etc), but also a skill.

As someone who is subbed to TAT, your newsletter has provided me with quite a few interesting reads, especially when some of the articles are years old, yet still relevant. Keep up the good work!

Love your newsletter! It's the only thing I've found that curates diverse topics and viewpoints that authors written thoughtfully about. Thank you and keep it up!

> with no marketing

Hard to believe when you’re in fact promoting it here.

They were the first newsletter that my friends and coworkers consistently read, although I never got hooked.

They speak in the tone that appeals to college students, and on the topics that they are all starting careers in.

It seems like there's a market here...

I envision a future "news email" where stories are curated by AI, where all of the parameters (and I mean absolutely all of the parameters) of that news email are completely user-customizable...

I'm sure there are already services like this -- but in my opinion, like a search engine, these services can always be done better, one way or another, in some aspect or some other aspect...

In other words -- there's a lot of room in that market...

Why would someone pay $75 much less $75 million for a site that’s just little blurbs?

You need to read the interview the right way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4

I like the idea of morning brew as a way of getting my morning news, but I do find it a bit US centric still.

Anyone know of any good UK equivalents?

I need to figure out how to scale my newsletter to this point :)

The trick is to sell the ads yourself directly to marketers who want to reach your audience without networks or middlemen.

It looks like the trick is to balance direct marketing with other income streams, so that no advertiser feels like they have leverage over your content.

Linus Tech Tips has merchandise in part because it means that their single biggest income source is not a sponsor.

Swag might not be your thing, but the message I got was pretty clear: make sure you can always walk away from any advertiser, either because they're a small part of your revenue, or you're living below your means.

Sure, like any business it's a bad idea to rely on only one or two big customers.

I think people don't give readers enough credit. They can tell if you start compromise your coverage for an advertiser. And you'll never be able to recruit and retain quality journalists if they get even a whiff that they won't be editorially independent.

Is your Industry Dive content all ad supported? I'm mostly asking because I recently took a position on the board for my city's municipal utilities and I've been looking for a source to follow some news in the sector, and Utility Dive looks interesting. Others I've come across have pretty steep paywalls. Given I'm already donating my time to my community, it's hard for me to justify spending on those.

Correct, it's free to read and we make money off the ads. We hope you'll sign up for the newsletter, but you can also see all the same content on utilitydive.com without an account or paywall.

If you refer 10 other board members we'll send you a shirt :)

How does one find these marketers?

Sales and lots of business development. I know people running ad-monetized newsletters who have entire sales teams just for this.

Kinda like how magazines work. Because really a newsletter is just a digital magazine.

Yup. Our largest team is editorial, but the second largest is sales.

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