Bundles, One of the Futures of Newsletters

Perhaps I’m spending too much time thinking of my subscriber numbers (very likely) or perhaps I’m overthinking it (also likely) but one of the big hurdles to the bundle idea, in my view, is the size of audience for each title. For it to be a group price and to know how to split, you need to have either similar audiences sizes, a formula for how to ... See more

Wrap a few newsletters together under one price, where the price is higher than each would charge individually, while providing more. Five (or six, or…) for the price of four if you will. Each audience (hopefully) feeds into the other, both by making it more likely for each reader to buy the bundle than any unit, and the group as a whole bringing r... See more

“These are tiny companies from a revenue perspective and the audience sizes are huge out there. It is hard to fathom just how large the internet is. But that’s also why I’m a big fan of B2B media. When you throw something on a corporate card, which you can do with B2B media, fatigue is less of an issue. I’ve got an industry subscription. I don’t re... See more

One of Donnely’s comments, paraphrased, was that to insiders it looks like fatigue but really, if you take all the top newsletters, it’s still a tiny tiny fraction of potential readers, we are nowhere near mass market or late adopters, there’s still plenty of room to grow beyond early adopters and the slice of them who today feel there are too many... See more

In the end, my reckon so far is that since there’s no physical or logistical reasons to wrap things together, a bundle must make a lot of sense content, deal, and revenue wise. All other combinations either fail or represent the first steps in becoming a more common publication.