AKA: Paid Podcasts
Payments for news in form of a paid recurring newsletter, podcast, or videos created by the maintainers. Often recurring payments with the option to integrate income from other sources such as job postings, ads, etc.
Requires:
- Setup of a newsletter mechanism (hosted or self-build)
- Creation of the content (might include payment for designers)
Variants & Options:
- Newsletter: Weekly or monthly news about new features, bugfixes, future changes, etc.
- Podcast: Daily to monthly talks about news or the ecosystem by one or more maintainers (plus guests)
- Videos: Daily to monthly podcast-like news videos by one or more maintainers (plus guests)
- Substack (Selling Newsletter or Podcasts)
- Revue (Selling Newsletter)
- Youtube (Videos with ad revenue)
| Characteristics | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Effort to set-up | Hours | Some descriptions and bank info is sufficient |
| Effort to maintain | Medium | Continuous producing of content |
| Cost to set-up | None | |
| Cost to maintain | None | Hosting services often take a share of income |
| One-time Income | Medium | For additional ads such as job postings |
| Recurring Income | Low | Created content is probably not very valuable |
| Income Predictability | Low | Constant reminders to newsletter might be necessary. |
| Full income Threshold | 500+ | subscribers per month; Youtube CPM is 1-5 USD; |
| Recipient | I/C | Depends on who contributes to the newsletter |
| Additional Work | Medium | Extra time to create and update newsletter |
| Visibility | Medium | Easy to forget, ignore, or overlook |
| Necessity to pay | Low | Voluntary but with countervalue |
| Entry Threshold | Low | Credit card is sufficient |
| Countervalue | Work | Creation or producing the content |
| Scalability | Medium | Scales with the number of users (who want the news) |
| Effort for marketing | High | |
| Competitors | O? | Everybody can create a online course to the OSS |
| Software types | Big SW | Better for big projects that change often or have a big ecosystem |
NOTE: Potentially, "unofficial" newsletter can also be issued by non-maintainers (i.e., just expert), which could increase the competition. However, if internals are communicated (e.g., next roadmap steps) this might not be a problem.