Mailman – Find email newsletters you can sponsor to promote your product/service | Hacker News Reader

Mailman – Find email newsletters you can sponsor to promote your product/service

hellomailman.com

89 pointspixelfeeder33 comments

Great idea, but I'd rebrand due to the main mailing list software being called Mailman already.

(the "mailman" part is probably the wrong thing for branding, anyway -- I'd pick branding focused on the sponsor/trust/endorsement/patron aspect, so you can extend to other channels like video. You should decide if you're selling single branded links or (limited duration?) sponsorship.

If it's a sponsorship marketplace, the value is a lot higher to both sides -- if there were a great "devops security bulletins" newsletter or alert list, it would easily be worth $10-20k/mo for a remediation vendor, platform vendor, or specialist recruiter to sponsor it, and you'd get a larger amount of money than selling a bunch of $100 links. There are probably thousands of valuable niches out there.)

Great feedback! Tnx. Will rework the branding and positioning in the coming days.

Good, because I was just about to send a note to Barry Warsaw about this.

However, I do look forward to seeing where this project goes.

I'm sure you're aware of the name clash with the well-known (at least in my circles...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Mailman

Updated for now. Working on rebranding it.

Interesting model -- I went to add a niche newsletter* I help run, but saw that you are charging newsletter operators $9/month to post their list.

It makes sense, but I was expecting you to basically be the broker that takes a cut on the ad buy side from potential sponsors instead.

  * Hyper-local newsletter for developers in Indianapolis: http://www.indyhackers.org/

Do this, but for devs with big social followings. Have them name the price for a tweet, post, like, etc. There is nothing like it right now and its a huge market.

Thats a good idea. Let me see what I can do. If there are devs in the house with a solid following, send me your details.

Wrong approach. Contact them with a quote on how much they can make.

The problem is the devs you'd most likely want to do it are the least likely to want to (at least, indiscriminately and in a marketplace style) because they have the most reputation to lose. Now dev oriented accounts on the other hand..

I've often wondered how you feel when you see other newsletters that use the "$TECH Weekly" name format. I know that in the history of the world it's not unique but, in recent years, it has become likely that a newsletter with that sort of name might be a Cooper Press publication.

Mostly okay. I was on the leading edge of a wave that was going to happen anyway, and the term is relatively generic. As long as someone doesn't start one with the same name as any of ours, I'm good. Many of the people behind other * Weekly dev newsletters have become good acquaintances.

We have a rebrand in the works, however, as due to our reluctance to heavily promote or send arbitrary emails to subscribers, we have a lot of subscribers who don't know about the other publications.. and our stable is not very cohesive branding wise. This will be resolved by the end of the year :-)

There are always trends in naming, especially when it comes to spamming - err, I meant to say growth hacking.

Scroll back over Hacker News over a few months and you can spot the moment when people caught on that putting "Machine Learning" in their titles got clicks, regardless of how valid that was.

"$TECH weekly" is a similar level of branding to all those lists of projects which are "curated". Seriously search past submissions for "A curated list of ..". They're cookie-cutter posts that could probably be generated by machine-learning!

It does get insane. I saw a newsletter that sold itself as a "hand curated list of hand curated newsletters". Almost emailed the "curator" to ask WTF.

How much are you paying? Money usually trumps any objection. Or give them a percent. Multiple devs with smaller devs also work and are cheaper.

Gee, I now realize I sound like a total dick in the comment above. What I mean is that you can get most people to promote a product as long as they have a match of values and reputation, and the money is right. Given how this is fairly new to devs its going to take a good deal to break the ice. Though I suspect the upside is going to be huge. Maybe a deal similarnto what copywriters get. Base plus a percentage.

I think Hypr: https://hyprbrands.com/ comes pretty close?

Horrible choice for product name, too close / collision with the widely-used Mailman mailing list software.

I like the idea (barring name issues) but the cost for getting on the list ($25/month) is a little high considering the idea is untested and, unlike the orgs on the list, I don't know how big your potential audience is.

As a NL owner with 8k subs, I would recommend offering a test plan of some kind.

cool, how would a 'test plan' ideally work for you?

I would offer a limited trial of some kind—probably a few days, enough to get a taste of the service without giving away the whole thing. That way I can get an early idea if the idea is effective.

(My list, by the way, is also not not dev-related—which might help you branch out your offerings some.)

quick 2 Q's: What industry is your list for. & what price would be low enough to not need a 'free' trial?

It's a history/pop culture NL with a lot of pieces on vintage technology (located here if you want an idea: http://tedium.co). I think if the cost were closer to $10 a month, it'd be closer to impulse territory for me.

done & done. I'm also letting go of the Dev only niche since I've been getting a bunch of feedback from other niches.

Love the idea. Really appreciate the upfront pricing information.

Obviously, needs more than developer-focused mailing lists.

Really cool but it would be even cooler if it offered sponsored newsletters in other industries like finance, real estate, faith, gaming, etc. Are there other services like this or is this the first of it's kind?

I'm planning on expanding for sure. I couldn't find anything like this, that's really why I built it. So I didn't have to google them every time I was looking for one.

Fantastic idea! I am always struggling with ways to reach devops/IT/developer communities to promote StatusGator.

Was this hacked together at breakneck speed since the HN discussion made the other day about mailing lists [1] or just happy coincidence? :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086259

How is this any different from udimi.com / clickdrop.com / soloadx.com / safe-swaps.com ?

Cool, but why do I need to open a mail program to send a message? I think it would be better to be able to send a direct message from the site and receive more information about the newsletter. How long they exist, how the company will appear in the message and other things.

Neat idea.

Is there a way you can link to the source of your information regarding the List Size, Average Clicks and Sponsor Rate?

Please add your contact info and the sending frequency of the newsletters.

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