How Apurva Chaudhary Monetizes Her Newsletter

Quite often, we see our users use Instamojo in ingenious new ways. So from time to time, we publish their success stories here to inspire others.

Today, we have Apurva Chaudhary (@unitechy) who handles business development at ClassMatrix. She also writes a short newsletter called DMN (acronym for Digital Media Newsletter) which brings readers with curated news articles from Indian startups, telecom, digital services and international digital companies. She also blogs at Unitechy.

We caught up with her and did a short Q&A about her monetization strategy she used for DMN:

1. What motivated you to create DMN newsletter?

Apurva: I love to travel and contributing to MediaNama meant I had to stay up to date all the time. Then, I realised that there’s no option like Techememe in India that highlights important news in digital media & tech that I could skim through during my travels. So I thought I’ll create one myself. That’s when I came across Jason’s newsletter @launch. He was hiring researchers that time. I sent him an email asking if I could contribute India related news that he could sent out during our time zone. I even sent him tweets, but he never replied. Hence I started with DMN. A newsletter that provides news in brief is a perfect catching up you need to do when on a Vacation. Once I started the newsletter, I realised that VCs and Industry leaders were among the ones who subscribed. I am guessing they don’t have much time go through each and every startup blogs out there.

2. What made you choose Instamojo?

Apurva: When you guys launched Instamojo I kept thinking of what I could give away. If you know me, I am really a simple living kind of a person with not much to sell or give away. That was until I launched my newsletter and wanted to monetize it. I DM’ed Sengupta on whether I could use Instamojo to let others support my newsletter. At that time it didn’t allow users to do that. Only sell. Sengupta, instead called me and found a way to do it on the same day. The next day, I sent out a newsletter asking others to support my work.

3. How has Instamojo helped you monetize your newsletter?

Apurva: When I started DMN I wasn’t hoping to monetize it. I wanted to keep it as a hobby, however, it took me lots of time to write the newsletter. I would start at 18:30pm to write the newsletter and would sometimes send it out at 20:30PM. In fact, when I sent out a newsletter asking others to support my newsletter, I honestly wasn’t expecting much but the response overwhelmed me. Almost every regular reader supported. It has motivated me to keep going.

4. Are there any tips or suggestions you would like to give other bloggers or content creators?

Apurva: I am still experimenting. However, there’s one thing I would like to say is build/write something which you want to use/read. If you want it, certainly somewhere someone else is looking for it too.

5. Is there any special trick that helped along with way that you would like to share?

Apurva: When it comes to content: Be honest and always ask yourself whether you would like to read what you’ve written. Are you providing any value add?

6. What is the best feature that Instamojo has provided you?

Apurva: It has be Pay What You Want feature. Earlier, people would ask me whether they could contribute more, however, the only option was to ask them to contribute twice or thrice, which is asking for too much efforts from them. With flexible payment, my readers are supporting generously. Just last week Vijay Shekhar Sharma of One97 donated generously. I am a happy soul 🙂

7. What can Instamojo do better to help you in your journey?

Apurva: I am not sure if you’re already providing it (I couldn’t find it), but a support or buy using Instamojo button that I can embed on my newsletter or blog would be helpful.

Now if you’re also thinking something similar and want a helping hand, do reach out to us at support@instamojo.com or tweet us.