it's finally happening (today I hope, but lets see how much of a pain in the arse it is to implement)
Discussion
Replies:
14
@decryption Oh wait, it’s you again? When did that happen?? I had no idea. 🤦🏻♂️
@mrowe like two weeks ago, lol
@decryption ahahaha nice, glad I didn’t miss too much then! Welcome back!
i think i'd like to start publishing it on the web too - email is just getting too unreliable these days - need to think about how to lock it down so only paying subscribers can access, but also not having to use a bloated CMS that locks me in to that platform (i.e: Ghost or Substack or Beehiiv)
@decryption why not leverage the existing publishing & auth mechanisms in the forum? Discourse supports creating topics via email, so you could create a Newsletter category & each newsletter email then becomes a forum topic for further discussion 💁♀️
as a bonus, each category also gets an RSS feed so you wouldn’t need to create those separately either. I don’t know whether the RSS feeds (can) require auth (I assume no but ¯_(ツ)_/¯) but if they don’t you should be able to configure it to just display a summary (first X lines of the topic w/ bullet points of what that day’s newsletter covers) & ppl should have to auth to the forum when they hit the link to view the full newsletter/ topic post
I don’t know if you cash configure RSS feeds to be unique for each user (blecch, potential unintentional tracking) but if ppl have to with to the forum to read the details a single feed for all users probably doesn’t matter – and if ppl share it, then yay (you could share it on your main site / social media as a taste / teaser)
and if you really want to switch up the workflow, I think you could just write the topic in Discourse (or email it just to the Discourse email-to-topic email addy) & set new subscribers to auto-receive topics in the Newsletter category (only) by email – now you’ve migrated from Maileroo to Discourse for your outbound emails as well
the (obvious? 🤔) caveat for this bit (for me) is that I don’t know how this would effect email reputation scores, etc.
I’ve also seen discussions in the Discourse docs where ppl have migrated over their old mailing list emails (not really applicable here) but that means it should be possible for you to do a bulk import of all previous newsletters so you’d have a new large archive in the forum category, and ppl could potentially trawl / search through them to find info & also spin up discussions around older newsletters / topics as well – you’ve then effectively added a retroactive archive that gives new subscribers access to everything that happened before they subbed as a “value-add” (🙄 but 🎉?)
@itgrrl what you said is exactly what I used to do :)
(and hardly anyone used the forum despite mentioning it every week!)
@decryption I find it hard to stay on top of emails^ & prefer being able to drop into a forum periodically so forum-first-with-email-reminder-to-visit works for me, but obvs. you have the numbers so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
^ plus ADHD means that every email is a potential side-quest… 😩
@decryption fwiw, Podnews stats for a typical day (this was Monday):
Total sent: 33,041; total opens 24,160 (73.1% open rate); total unique opens 15,533 (47.0% open rate).
Website: total pageviews (for this day’s edition) 460
Just 460.
Podnews is free, but I’ve designed the front page to funnel new subscribers to the newsletter because it’s those that are monetiseable, not web views.
I was just idly thinking that I should put the web version behind a login for the first few days, to encourage people to sign up (free), but looked at those figures and thought I should be doing something more useful with my time, like perhaps cutting my toenails or having a good scratch.
The web, as you say, might be useful for people who have got their newsletter rejected by email servers or something, and it’s good marketing perhaps, but it doesn’t replace the newsletter.
@decryption I think The Sizzle would benefit from “read a sample edition” on your front page - I’ve never read an issue and it’s genuinely too much friction for me to give my email address to a form. I don’t really know what I’d get.
About a third of Podnews signups are from the website - many of those from archive editions (but more, interestingly, from longform articles and press releases).
@james yeah, the site is still under construction - used to have a few samples there previously
@decryption *holds nose* WordPress
nobody would pay for web access alone - might even look into an iOS/Android app (but fuck giving them a 30% cut)
@decryption not that I'm recommending you use it by any means, but this sounds a bit like Patreon's membership model. Free gets a feed/newsletter and unpaywalled content while paying members at various tiers get more things based on tier.
Good luck rolling your own!
@trib no way I'd tie my income to the ghouls at Patreon
