Recently you may have heard about creators who are switching to WhatsApp as their tool to run a newsletter.
Rather than email as the delivery vehicle — which lets face it, is a very busy place (how many emails are sitting in your inbox now as you read this?) — WhatsApp gives you a much quieter, direct line to your audience.
The concept is simple. People subscribe by joining your WhatsApp group, you then drop newsletter style written content as weekly, bi-weekly or daily updates.
When you publish a new update, WhatsApp sends a notification to all subscribers on their phones. This generally results in higher open rates and more engagement.
WhatsApp newsletters can work for news style creators, summarizing the day’s events and why they matter to their specific audience. Or, if you’re a content creator who focuses on teaching and advice, your WhatsApp newsletter can deliver lessons, explain concepts and provide case studies.
It’s the same thing you already do over email, but with the benefit of WhatsApp as a more direct line to your subscribers.
The same idea can work for a newsletter powered by whatever App you prefer — Telegram, Line, KakaoTalk, Signal, etc — can all be used to deliver newsletter content, resulting in a much more direct line of communication to your subscribers.
The Premium (Paid-For) Newsletter
Premium content newsletters have existed for almost as long as email has.
Most premium (paid-for) email newsletters range in price from $25 a month all the way to $1,000.
In order to charge a premium price and attract subscribers, there is usually something unique about the content. For example –
- Research and/or data that’s been collected and distilled into useful content for subscribers
- Case studies or other forms of curated stories that appeal to a certain group of people
- The author is a specialist and has unique insights to share that comes from experience and real results
- Interviews with hard to reach experts, celebrities or leaders
- Curation of content, helping subscribers to stay up to date with what matters in their industry, without needing to follow every expert, read every book and research paper
- More advanced training taken from behind-the-scene sources that is not shared anywhere else
Convenience, exclusivity, curation, research and expertise all make for compelling content that people are willing to pay for in the format of a premium email newsletter.
What If You Charged Money For A WhatsApp (Or Other App) Newsletter?
Candid makes it easy to charge a monthly subscription fee for anything you can deliver over commonly used free apps.
You don’t have to provide images, audios, videos, or even have discussions with your subscribers. If text content is your focus, an app can be the delivery tool.
You can charge money for a premium app newsletter, setting whatever monthly fee works for your audience.
Candid gives you the ability to create a sales page, including a name, description and short video to describe what your premium newsletter is about. Candid will charge your customers each month, and then send the funds to your bank account each month after the 30 day refund period has passed.
It all takes just five minutes to setup, is 100% free for creators, and makes for possibly the easiest and quickest way to set up your premium newsletter.
Create your Candid account now, or login here if you have one already.
Your job is to come up with something compelling and make sure you deliver value to your paying subscribers.
Just like with the examples above for premium email newsletters, you can use any of those formats for your premium newsletter.
In terms of format, you can keep things simple and just drop your newsletter as text articles directly into the group chat. This could be daily, bi-weekly, weekly, or whatever frequency works for you.
Alternatively if you need more space for longer content, or to make your content more dynamic with images, graphs or spreadsheets, you can drop a PDF into your group.
For creators who focus on writing, this can be an ideal next-level product to offer on top of all the free articles or blog posts you release.
All you need is Candid + Your App Of Choice and you have the potential to turn your writing into a recurring income stream, giving your audience more of what they already want from you.
If you have any questions, test Candid first. It’s so easy to create a product, I’m sure you will have plenty of ideas once you understand how the platform works.
