With Paid Newsletter Program, Mel Magazine To Make Money

This Thursday, the men’s lifestyle publication Mel Magazine, best known for giving the world such literary gems as Beware of the Carhart Beanie Dick, is launching three paid newsletters—Melanie, Shitposting with Miles Klee, and Dispatches from the Manosphere—in the hopes of accruing 10,000 subscribers in their first six months. An important milestone for Mel Aiming to appeal to the 40% of Mel readers that are women, the publication will start by launching Melanie, a newsletter about men for women. Likewise, Shitposting with Miles Klee, which launches Friday, promises to chronicle the Internet's biggest wins and losses, including content "too insane to post even on Mel." And next Tuesday, Dispatches from the Manosphere will bring news inspired by the rise of QAnon and other manifestations of male anger, calling it a zone “where dangerous and disaffected men gather and plot."Mel currently reaches around 4 million monthly readers and already has one newsletter featuring 60,000 subscribers. Readers receive bi-weekly emails containing a “magazine-style” overview of the site’s latest content, and open the newsletter at a 40% rate, according to Mel. However, the announcement of a paid newsletter program marks an important new milestone for Mel, which does not run advertisements, sell subscriptions, or generate revenue outside of merchandise sales. The publication largely relies on the men's grooming brand Dollar Shave Club for its financial support. It launched Mel in 2015 as a diffuse marketing arm for its line of products. A spokesperson for Mel declined to share how much capital the Unilever-owned Dollar Shave Club has invested in the publication, but confirmed that the "ultimate goal" of Mel is "working toward profitability." The Washington Post Amps Up Its App Strategy to Drive More Subscribers Reaching audiences through original content has long been an efficient marketing tool, but the method has gained renewed attention as traditional advertising has grown more challenging. For example, Hubspot's recent acquisition of the newsletter The Hustle underscores marketers' rising interest in owning a preformed audience. For more than five years, Mel has had the rare luxury of operating without needing to finance its 21-person editorial operation. The space has allowed it to develop an audience and signature brand. While this arrangement remains unchanged, Mel editor in chief Josh Schollmeyer says that the publication has shown there is a market for its writing, including paid newsletters. The newsletter program is only the first in a series of revenue generators the brand plans to unveil this year, along with advertising and intellectual property extensions. “We've been in this enviable position where we could really focus on the brand and content and figure out if there's a real audience for it,” Schollmeyer said. “And I think that we've proven that there is.” Free for the first three months Each newsletter will run without ads once a week and will be free for the first three months. The newsletter content will not be reproduced on the Mel website, keeping it exclusive. In late spring, Mel will introduce a paywall, charging between $5 and $15 a month for access to the newsletters, depending on the newsletter, Schollmeyer said. For readers looking to subscribe to more than one newsletter, bundling options will be available at a price point to be determined later. While the newsletter writing will be behind a paywall, Schollmeyer said the website itself has no plans to introduce subscriber-only content. Even as many of its peer publications have pivoted to paywalls, Mel has been able to keep its general content free to access, thanks to its support from Dollar Shave Club. Twitter Acquires Newsletter Publishing Platform Revue and Will Keep It Running Mel, whose relationship with its financial sponsor is famously discreet, will not share the email addresses it collects with Dollar Shave Club, Schollmeyer confirmed. Indeed, the launch of this suite of newsletters changes little about the relationship between the editorial arm and its sponsor outside of helping Mel generate revenue. “We've always had a serious firewall between Mel and Dollar Shave Club from day one,” Schollmeyer said. “That will never change.” Mel reaches 1,081,000 unique visitors per month, according to Comscore data. Generating reader revenue Many publications provide access to subscriber-only newsletters to sweeten their value proposition, giving subscribers more for their money. Others rely on free newsletters to build habit in readers. Using a paywall, Mel makes the operation lucrative without involving advertising. The newsletters generate reader revenue without cannibalizing the brand's existing readership by existing as a supplemental product—housed under the umbrella of a brand rather than being indistinguishable from it. The system resembles Forbes’ new Journalist Entrepreneurs program, where Forbes' authors create newsletters that readers can pay to subscribe to. In the Forbes model, newsletter writers split the generated subscription revenue 50/50 and the publication retains the IP. Mel declined to comment on whether newsletter writers will profit from the revenue generated by their newsletters, but a spokesperson confirmed that the publication will retain the IP to products. Halo effect Eunice Shin, a digital strategy partner at the growth consultancy Prophet, said that Mel's newsletter expansion has a halo effect on its parent company, Dollar Shave Club. Direct-to-consumer brands like Dollar Shave Club rely on canny marketing to reach new customers, and the more popular Mel becomes, the more visibility the men's grooming company receives. "We are seeing the rise of marketplaces across DTC," Shin said. "Mel’s marketplace is a really interesting advertising opportunity for brands who want to get in front of Mel’s readers. And there are plenty of brands who covet those eyeballs." If these initial newsletters find a willing audience, Schollmeyer and Mel hope to expand its product offerings. “We have a lot of voices that people on the internet like,” Schollmeyer said. “Building these kinds of properties around them is something that we could do well.” Media Newsletters Are Booming, and Substack’s Co-Founders Lit the Fuse

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Mel Magazine to Launch Paid Newsletters

A trio of newsletters hopes to grow 10,000 subscribers

An important milestone for Mel

Mark Stenberg

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