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Daily newsletter, then a 2,000-person conference
Beating the rival's cadence
The magazine came out once a month. A competitor launched a weekly email newsletter that beat that cadence and kept scooping the magazine. The publisher went crazy and told his team they were launching a daily email newsletter.
The 2,000-person conference
Then another monthly newsletter put on a conference, and 200 people showed up. The publisher decided his company needed a conference of its own, with 2,000 people in the room. He got 2,000 people to come, and each of them paid 1,000 dollars.
Outworking everyone
Early in his career he had decided to outwork everybody, and he was at the office seven days a week. Any time a competitor created a product, he told his team to build a better one and make the rival feel unable to compete.
Why do newsletters grow into conferences?
A newsletter builds a list of people who care about one subject, and sponsors will pay to meet that group in person. A conference turns the audience into a room, which also gives it a face and a place to meet each other. Events earn money from tickets and sponsors, a revenue source separate from print or email advertising. TechCrunch launched its Disrupt conference series in 2011, years after it began as a blog.
How do daily newsletters build reader habits?
An email that arrives at the same time every day becomes part of a reader's routine, and routines raise open rates. Morning Brew, started in 2015 by two college students, built its business on that daily format. A buyer from Insider's parent company took a majority stake in 2020. The daily cadence also gives publishers far more inventory to sell to advertisers than a monthly magazine.
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