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Week 322 | Entrepreneurship Section | 2
Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 322 | November 10-16, 2023
He Got 450,000 Newsletter Subscribers by Sharing ‘Nice News’ — Here’s How
By Jason Feifer | Entrepreneur Magazine | November 6, 2023
Extractive Summary of the Article | Listen
People often say they want positive news stories, but they rarely read them. Sean Devlin wanted to know: Why? “In our initial market survey, we noticed that 81% of people weren’t familiar with any positive news platforms,” he says. Others have tried to build positive-news brands, but with limited success.
Devlin has a newsletter-building background and wanted to see if he could crack the code. And it seems he has: His newsletter, Nice News, now has 450,000 subscribers and is building a healthy business on top of feel-good stories. How did he do it?
Do your research. You don’t just launch something and hope for the best — you instead understand a market and audience, and then run constant tests. Before launching Nice News, Devlin tried to understand why positive news wasn’t more popular. “There’s a desire for it, but is there enough good news out there for us to curate?” he wondered. “Do people feel the need to engage with this on a daily basis? What do people want to see in their inbox, and how can we make this entertaining, relevant, and enjoyable for people?” To answer those questions, he launched Nice News and experimented with different content and formats. The newsletter is intentionally broad: Each edition features a range of positive stories from around the world — everything from scientific discoveries to feel-good local news. To his surprise, no single subject was more popular than the other. “People are reading the entire email and engaging with what is the most relevant and interesting to them, and it varies on a daily basis,” he says.
Grow smart, not wide. To grow, Nice News does a lot of what he calls “cross-pollination” — partnering with other newsletters to cross-promote each other, and sometimes even sending dedicated email campaigns to targeted user groups. He also utilizes giveaways, which is a kind of promotional contest: People enter to win a prize, and when they do, they’re automatically subscribed to a newsletter.
Build a system (and a team to execute). Even though Nice News delivers nice news, Devlin realized that wouldn’t be enough. It also had to be surprising and unique — to be more than just a repeat of whatever readers happened to see online. He hired a small team of staff writers and editors who look through news stories decide what to feature, and write short blurbs about each. But he also assembled a group of what he calls “freelance curators” — people who review more than 100 news sources looking for Nice News-appropriate stories. “Ultimately, a lot of the content that we feature is emotional,” Devlin says. “It connects with our audience to their core, and it results in them feeling compelled to share that with members of their family, of their community.”
2 key takeaways from the article
- People often say they want positive news stories, but they rarely read them. Sean Devlin wanted to know: Why? “In our initial market survey, we noticed that 81% of people weren’t familiar with any positive news platforms,” he says. Others have tried to build positive-news brands, but with limited success.
- Devlin has a newsletter-building background and wanted to see if he could crack the code. And it seems he has: His newsletter, Nice News, now has 450,000 subscribers and is building a healthy business on top of feel-good stories. How did he do it? Do your research – understand a market and audience, and then run constant tests. Grow smart, not wide – partnering with other newsletters to cross-promote each other. And build a system (and a team to execute) who should search and curate.
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Topics: Startup, Marketing, Newsletter
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