87.26% readers said no to subscription fees.

Major Win 🥳🤩

1. We ran our first ad in MarketingMonk last week and received 60 clicks on the link. Got validation and numbers to show the future potential sponsors.

Lessons from last week’s experiments 🥹

• We started doing guest posts on productmonk last week, and our readers loved it. We got good feedback and we shall continue doing it. We intend to bring leaders from across the world:

  1. Give our readers exposure and different leaders to follow

  2. Give the leaders a bit of our audience.

  3. On the business front, because now we have to write 1 less story, it helps us focus deeply on the two stories.

  4. It also helps us build connections with industry leaders.

• We asked our ProductMonk community if they would be okay with paying us Rs. 499/month for a subscription to our newsletter and I was so glad that I was not in front of them when I asked this. They would be cursing in person. 😅

  

  Astoundingly, at least 13% were ready to pay for the subscription, as expected. I was expecting around 3-4% to say yes.
  
  

  Crux of the comments:
  - Our content is still now there. We need to work on content better to make it to the top league.
  - Rs. 499 is too much, almost 100 readers were ready to pay something around Rs. 99/month.
  - Most of the students think Rs. 499 is out of budget. I am living on another planet probably where Rs. 500 is not too much. A very grounding learning.
  - A major chunk of our readers are okay with advertisements.

• The reason why referrals don’t work very well is because people try to scam the system. 4/5 emails are fake. Had to remove them from the list.

Future Experiments 🤩

We are designing 5 India maps for travel enthusiasts and will sell them online. Some other topics:

1. Street food hotspots in every state / most famous dish of the state.

2. Wildlife sanctuaries and national parks to visit

3. Adventure sports and outdoor activities

4. Spiritual/pilgrimage map

5. Literary and artistic heritage

6. Hidden gems / offbeat destinations

Why we are doing this?

• We will gain experience building a store on Shopify and DTC. Will eventually help in the toy business.

• Understand the buyer's psyche.

• Being a road trip enthusiast, I would want this map on my walls.

Stats ☕️

Product Monk → 26,608 Readers (↑ 545)

Marketing Monk → 10,564 Readers (↑ 1,117)

Adventures of India → 1,377 Readers (↑ 290)

Experimentality → 1,285 Readers (↑ 260)

Click Worthy 🔥 Worth Your Attention

• This powerful framework for Product Design is applicable to so many things, we do on a daily basis. Checkout, the founder of Airbnb explains that one route to great UX and word-of-mouth growth → here

• Why Congress is struggling 😂

• Why financial security is so important to do tremendously well in life. Moving from 1. to 2. in aspirations is so significantly dependent on financial security.