Monetizing underserved audience segments (part 2)
You probably have reader segments that you aren’t serving or monetizing well yet.
Almost every media company does.
Today we’ll explore how to grow your revenue by monetizing these segments better.
Recap of part 1
As you look through your audience, you’ll notice audience segments that you could
- provide a better experience to (= serving them better) and
- make more money from (= monetizing better).
Part 1 of this series focused on identifying those audience segments and serving them better through content.
In this second part, we’ll explore more ways to serve and monetize them better.
As you’ll notice, serving and monetizing often go hand in hand.
Courses
Matt McGarry
Matt McGarry is the founder of Newsletter Operator, the largest newsletter about newsletters.
Matt monetizes through his agency GrowLetter. It helps established media companies with paid subscriber growth.
When looking at his audience data, he could, however, see that most of his readers were at the beginning of their journeys:
- 74% of his readers do not monetize their newsletters yet.
- 58% have fewer than 10,000 subscribers.
- 83% make less than $500,000 in revenue per year.
Most of those won’t be able to afford his agency.
He wasn’t monetizing beginners. That was an undermonetized audience segment.
Thus, he launched Write Grow Sell. It’s a course for beginners on how to start, grow, and monetize newsletters.
It has been wildly successful. Matt has done many cohorts, and it has been printing money. (Plus, I’ve met multiple people who took Matt’s course and then later became clients of his agency.)
Courses and other educational programs are great ways to monetize, especially if you have lots of entry-level subscribers.
Nathan May
Nathan May also runs a newsletter about newsletters.
He noticed that there were many courses on how to start a newsletter. However, there weren’t many courses for more established media companies.
This audience segment of more advanced operators had a need that wasn’t met by Nathan or by anyone else.
Thus, Nathan teamed up with Beehiiv to start the Newsletter Accelerator, a course for media companies already doing $1–10M+ in revenue.
There was a gap in the market. Nathan filled it. The accelerator became a success.
Thinking it further
I’ve even seen media companies that had different courses for different audience segments.
One was a finance newsletter. They had a course for accountants. They had a course for FP&A professionals. And they had a course for founders who needed to understand how to do accounting themselves.
Events
The Newsletter Conference
Ryan Sager and Jesse Watkins run The Newsletter Conference and Email Intelligence, a newsletter for email publishers.
They noticed a growing segment of people starting local newsletters, covering the news and events in their cities.
How could they serve and monetize that audience segment better?
First, they added a panel about local news to The Newsletter Conference.
The hypothesis was: If they address this audience segment directly,
- more local news publishers will attend the conference (leading to more ticket sales), and
- those publishers will enjoy the conference more (making them more likely to attend again and spread the word).
This worked well.
Yet, Ryan and Jesse still thought this audience segment was underserved and undermonetized.
Thus, they launched a whole new conference just for local news publishers!
They named it The Business of Local Conference. It will take place in October 2025.
And they’re doing it with the support of Blue Engine Collaborative, a company helping local news organizations. By niching down, Ryan and Jesse unlocked a new category of sponsors that want to reach this specific niche.
It’s a smart move!
Audience Camp
Matt McGarry was serving beginners really well after launching Write Grow Sell.
But what about his most experienced audience members? What about CEOs?
Let’s think about it: CEOs and C-level executives are your highest-value readers. They have the most purchasing power. You should spend A LOT of effort on making sure you monetize them well.
Thus, Matt launched Audience Camp, a retreat for successful media founders. He gave them a chance to meet peers and learn from each other.
The event sold out. Matt made over $100k in ticket sales. The attendees were happy. And I’m sure he’ll win some of them as clients for his agency.
Think long and hard about how to better monetize CEOs and C-level executives. They are extremely valuable and likely undermonetized!
CJ Gustafson
CJ Gustafson is another great example of monetizing high-value readers.
CJ runs Mostly metrics, a newsletter for finance people.
His most valuable readers are CFOs. They control the budgets for their whole companies.
As one way to monetize them, CJ launched a series of private dinners for CFOs. Sponsors pay a lot of money to attend.
It’s a great way for CJ to monetize this high-value audience by giving them the peer connections they desire.
(Image source: Jordan Gauthier)
Want to run your own events?
Check out my previous article series on organizing events.
It has tips from CJ Gustafson, Matt McGarry, and Ryan Sager.
Peer groups
Hampton
Sam Parr has been hosting the My First Million podcast for a long time.
Its audience is founders. Some of them are just starting out. Some are very successful.
Sam noticed that there were many online and offline communities for founders who were just starting out. However, there weren’t many communities for experienced founders. Many successful founders felt lonely and lacked connections to peers.
That’s an underserved segment!
So he launched Hampton, a community for successful entrepreneurs. He helps them find the peers they crave. In return, he charges $9,500 per person per year.
It’s a smart way to better serve and monetize that audience segment.
He identified a need that this audience segment had. Then he addressed it.
(I know of at least one Hampton member reading Audience Doctor. They’re really happy in the community.)
Slack communities
If you notice that your readers crave connection, an easy first step is to start an online community, e.g., a Slack group. You can charge a monthly fee to join it.
Jacob Donnelly of A Media Operator does this. He charges $395 per year.
Thinking it further
Adam Ryan from Workweek went even further and built a group of B2B social networks.
They have one for HR employees, one for the FinTech industry, one for e-commerce marketers, etc.
They monetize their communities through annual subscriptions (e.g., $399 per year) and advertising.
Subscription sales
In part 1 of this article series, we talked about changing your content strategy to gain more subscribers from a specific audience segment.
To sell more paid subscriptions, you can do the same for your premium content:
- You can write more premium content for a certain audience segment.
- You can move some of your free content for that segment behind a paywall.
Both will hopefully encourage more members of that segment to convert to paid subscribers.
Readers win because they get more content. You win because you get more revenue.
Arizent
Arizent has built a bold strategy around this.
Arizent’s publications are targeted at financial services companies.
They’re planning to create premium content for every individual role in a financial services company, leaving nobody at these companies underserved.
Then they hope to sell corporate subscriptions to these companies at premium prices.
Consulting
A while back, I was talking to a cybersecurity publication.
They had cybersecurity professionals as readers.
However, they also found that lots of small-business founders and CEOs signed up. These companies were too small to have dedicated cybersecurity people. Therefore, the founders and CEOs had to figure out cybersecurity themselves.
The publication noticed that these founders and CEOs needed help. Therefore, they launched a consulting offer targeting those CEOs. It worked out well.
Recruiting
Some media companies have recruiting arms.
If you do, are there any additional roles that you should be recruiting for?
Do you cover all lucrative roles that your subscribers have?
Sponsorships
In part 1, we looked at CRE Daily, a publication covering commercial real estate.
Lenders make up 15% of their audience.
Advertisers might not want to buy a primary ad in the newsletter if they only want to reach those 15%. (They’d have to pay for the irrelevant 85%, too.)
As a result, lenders might be undermonetized.
If CRE Daily helps advertisers reach lenders in more targeted ways, that will increase their revenue. They will be able to work with sponsors who wouldn’t work with them otherwise.
Here are some ideas for what that could look like:
- Offer dedicated email blasts only to that audience segment
- Write whitepapers targeted at that audience segment for lead gen
- Run webinars relevant to that audience segment for lead gen
- Run sponsored events for that audience segment
- Do personal intros between advertisers and people from that audience segment
We’ll cover these strategies in depth in future Audience Doctor articles. To receive them, subscribe below.
What should you do?
Here’s how to figure out the best path for your particular audience.
For each of your audience segments, ask yourself:
- What are the needs of these people?
- How can I serve them better?
- How can I monetize them better?
You might find that you can copy some of the examples above. Or you might create completely different products or services.
Start from the needs of your audience! Dream big!
And remember: Ask yourself if serving a given segment is worth it.
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(This content is meant for the US market. If you process EU data, comply with the GDPR.)
