Why I'm launching a (paid) newsletter about daily tech news.

In my opinion I don't like to give out my email address without seeing some examples of the content I'll be receiving so my advice would be to perhaps add same sample content on the frontpage.

I am curious to know if you're able to get any traction with this. There are a ton of newsletters out there that are free. The value in newsletters, as I understand it, is in building a large list and then getting the advertising dollars. Very targeted marketing yields better revenue opportunities. Serious question for you to answer: Why would I pay for your newsletter over a free alternative?

I would suggest a cheaper weekly version.

Good luck! You really got to identify a specific group that a willing to do so. And ideally insider/exclusive infos. "Only" syndication is going to be a tough sell, unless your expertise is somewhat already established.

Thanks for the name drop - good luck! This sort of thing (though unpaid) has been sitting on my mile-long to-do list in regards to my mini e-mail newsletter empire, so it'll be interesting to see how it works out. I think the tweet you were referring to was one of my usual 'casual market research' tweets where I see if my followers already know something I don't ;-)

Whatever happens, the tech industry is so ridiculously large than there's room for everyone. The success of TechCrunch, The Next Web, Mashable, et al, show that :-)

I see great potential in paid e-mail newsletters. Whether that's in tech or at $0.50 I have no idea, but I definitely think you should give it a go, and if you have any questions, etc, you're more than welcome to get in touch.

Some thoughts: 1. Jason Hirschorn's email list Media ReDEFined (http://twitter.com/mediaredef) does exactly what you are trying to do, and it is free and curated by someone who is fairly well-known in the tech world. I read it every single day. He does weekends too.

2. $0.50 a day is WAY too expensive.

3. Is your goal to be a curator or a creator? This seems like you want to be a curator, but what makes you so sure that your newsletter is going to be so much better than my hand-picked group of people on Twitter that I would pay $15/month for it? That is more expensive than Netflix, Rdio, Pandora, Dropbox, etc. not to mention free curation services like Flipboard, news.me (recently made free), etc.

4. What I found - people don't want to pay for content. Period. I had, over the course of 6 months, around 100 people subscribe to my paid letter.ly newsletter ($2/month, btw), while around 30,000 people visit my blog. It made me realize that it's more important to have an audience than it is to have some short-term cash. That said, I am not sure if the same necessarily applies to curators.

5. IMO, the rewards are much better if you are "known" as a curator vs. "paid" to be a curator.

Best of luck, though. Interested to see what happens!

Background: I had a paid email newsletter through the service letter.ly for around 6 months from July-December 2010. I have also had an on-and-off blog since March 2009.

I would have immediately signed up for $5 per month.

At $15 you have to start thinking what credentials and sources do you have, or how could you filter news for me better than HN already does? this? that?

That being said, congratulations. There is definitely a need for PAID curated news.

Take a look at Smart Brief. They do this for social media and a few other verticals. There's value in human curation, but more value in creation I believe.

I suggest making it free and trying to make money from advertising. Unlike websites, newsletters are able to command much money per 1000 impressions.

Interesting, there's also http://hackermonthly.com which digests this very site into a print magazine format.

There's huge opportunity in filtering - availability of information is not the problem, but filtering the signal from the noise and turning the firehose of information into useful, actionable knowledge.

The Economist does an incredible job of providing high-level overviews and forecasts, and has subscriber numbers going through the roof despite being a) a print magazine and b) one of the most expensive on the newsstand.

Will your offering provide editorial and forecast, or just a list of links? What makes your list of links better than everyone else's?

Cool, I'm interested in this. I tried to sign up, but it looks like you have to enter your credit card info now? Is there no way to enter it after the free trial month? I'm just not sure yet if it'd be worth replacing my daily RSS habit with this, and I'll have to remember to cancel, etc.

I took a look at your samples[1] and there are many people doing this for free[2] with more content. I'd recommend you start with a smaller amount of summaries, make it free at first, improve to the point you have a loyal following and then charge.

[1] http://hackingfresh.com/?page_id=19

[2] Shameless plug: I run http://skimthat.com A free site that fully summarizes tech news stories. You most likely won't even need to visit the source articles.

$.50 is steep (that's about $15/month) unless you can get great content that is actionable and can't be gotten elsewhere (for example, stock tips or financial analysis)

As a more consumer-ish type product, you probably should start around $5.

I run a weekly newsletter that goes out to about 8,000 people (it's free) and I can tell you that my audience would probably drop by 99% if I charged anything. Churning out good content is tough and not a model that really scales from a revenue standpoint but it can be monetized in other ways (ie. thought leadership leading to new opportunities)

Furthermore, looking at your example letter (on your site), I'm not sure there is $.50's worth of news there. Take a look at the competition (eg. This web day at http://www.thiswebday.com/ ) and you will realize you've got a high mountain to climb.

That said, don't get discouraged by people who doubt your idea. There's always an exception out there and you may be it so think and do it but take the advice and synthesize into something awesome.

Forgetting what you are charging for a moment, what are your qualifications to be a curator of the information you are trying to save others time gathering by going to the obvious places? You site doesn't talk about that at all.

Also I think you should be targeting people who are not in the tech community. Management of mid size companies or larger. People who want to stay on top of things but don't have the time or interest and additionally aren't in front of a screen most of the day.

Too expensive, for a newsletter.

You indicate in your Edit 2 that your newsletter is now free but it is still written that only first month is free on your site. I'm planning to subscribe but would rather be sure that it will stay free.

I'm not convinced there are 20 interesting stories a day. I certainly don't think I'd have time to read 20 interesting stories a day. Therefore I'm not sure you are really helping me to "trim down".

I personally like weekly newsletters.