I'm not minimizing the amount of effort it takes to curate links, but does a mailing list need to constantly grow for it to be viable ? What does it mean to "operate at a loss" in this case ?
My first guess is ESP pricing. Just to pull numbers out of thin air to anchor the conversation, mailing to 20,000 subscribers costs $200–$400/mo at Mailchimp/ConvertKit/Klaviyo, three of the top choices in the space. If it's 50,000 subscribers, that's $380–$800/mo.
These are email marketing platforms, not bulk transaction email platforms, and I don't see why they can't do with the latter. At a bulk transaction platform, such a tiny amount would cost at most $20-$50/mo. If you're willing to do a bit of work to use AWS SES, that would be $2-$5 a month. Azure ACS would be even cheaper.
Just playing devils advocate, but why not just switch to posting on a free hosted blog platform? The information can be there for all to see, it doesnt need to be distributed directly into mailboxes by premium mailer services.
Regardless of the growth discussion, I liked reading the newsletter! Thank you for curating it :)
I'm not minimizing the amount of effort it takes to curate links, but does a mailing list need to constantly grow for it to be viable ? What does it mean to "operate at a loss" in this case ?
My first guess is ESP pricing. Just to pull numbers out of thin air to anchor the conversation, mailing to 20,000 subscribers costs $200–$400/mo at Mailchimp/ConvertKit/Klaviyo, three of the top choices in the space. If it's 50,000 subscribers, that's $380–$800/mo.
These are email marketing platforms, not bulk transaction email platforms, and I don't see why they can't do with the latter. At a bulk transaction platform, such a tiny amount would cost at most $20-$50/mo. If you're willing to do a bit of work to use AWS SES, that would be $2-$5 a month. Azure ACS would be even cheaper.
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Just playing devils advocate, but why not just switch to posting on a free hosted blog platform? The information can be there for all to see, it doesnt need to be distributed directly into mailboxes by premium mailer services.
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You can send emails for free if you don't use some bullshit platform, no?
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Seems obvious that it wasn't generating enough money to make it a viable venture for the person putting in the work.
> The number of advertisers and subscribers has been slowly but steadily decreasing
This does not entail that they need "constant growth" to be viable.
it costs money to send a lot of emails that aren't immediately blocked or sent to the junk folder
Too bad, I liked it. Does anyone have a good alternative to the newsletter?
https://javascriptweekly.com, https://frontendfoc.us
Also https://nodeweekly.com.
Checked my emails, turns out I've been subscribed to ES News from the first issue in 2016.
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These both gave me an "invalid request" when I tried to sign up. I'm on my cell phone so I can't debug further.
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