Yesterday I decided to pull the plug on the Netterpress newsletter. Saying no to your own ideas is difficult to do. You want it to grow. You want it to succeed. It doesn't always end up this way though. The journey to a successful product is hard work and needs a significant amount of effort. After working on Netterpress for over a month it was clear that it wasn't something that was worth doing given the amount of money that was coming in from initial subscribers. This wasn't the only problem though.

A Small Community

App.net is still a small community when compared to other well known social networks but it shouldn't be pushed aside for its size though. There's still a fair amount of daily interaction that goes on here and it is growing on a daily basis. It can't be compared to the millions of users that other networks can and that restricts the number of potential customers that a premium newsletter like Netterpress can have.

I was buoyant about the newsletter when I first wrote about the idea, but when I unveiled the sign up page and price, the take up for it was low. The number of interested subscribers just wasn't there. With a bigger network, there may have been more of an interest, but App.net being a small community means that there just isn't enough people there interested in the newsletter.

Sourcing News & Content

I had a plan at the start which involved finding content to put in the newsletter from a number of sources. The first was to follow a number of developer accounts for apps on App.net and a few other accounts that would give me news on app updates and changes to App.net.

The problem with this is anyone else on App.net can follow these accounts and get the same news for free. I was counting on the fact that I would do the leg work in correlating the news and updates from a number of different accounts and present them in one easy to read list.

Another plan I had for finding content was the use of hashtags that people could include in their posts if they want a post with a link to feature in a newsletter. Unfortunately this idea wasn't conveyed as well as I could have and was never used in the entire time that Netterpress ran.

The last strategy I used for finding content was the use of saved searches in the Felix app on my iPad. I setup a number of saved searches within the app and checked them on a daily basis. Some content for the newsletter came through this way but it wasn't the flood of newsletter content that I was hoping for.

Most of the content for the newsletter came from spending a few minutes each day searching links in my own timeline and the timeline for the Netterpress account. It was time consuming and certainly wasn't an efficient method.

Content Curation

One thing I took away from the experience of running the newsletter was that it is a time consuming task. I now have new found respect for those people that curate content for the benefit of others, whether they run a newsletter, a blog or even a magazine. Publishing a periodical for others to read is hard work and it needs a lot of time and thought.

You can get so far by automating the curation process but it still needs a final check to confirm that the final content is okay for the newsletter. Although I didn't get the entire process automated, the curation process for one part of the newsletter was almost fully automated but it did need a last check before publishing the newsletter.

It's Not The End

The newsletter itself is not dead however. Shortly after announcing the retirement of the newsletter, I received an email from another App.net member who wishes takeover the newsletter and publish it on a more irregular schedule for free. I'm in the process of migrating over the assets of Netterpres including the account the subscribers that have allowed their email address to be given to the new owner.

It's good that the newsletter will in fact live on, but it wasn't a viable product during it's first run. This might change with a new owner and perhaps making it free for a while will get enough subscribers so that one day it could eventually pay for itself in some way.

I'm done with this idea though. It's time to sit back for a few days and catch up on reading, writing and code. Another idea will come along soon and when it does, I will start the process of evaluating it as a product all over again.