How did Tangle get to 70k+ paid subscribers?

Some publishers win by producing need-to-have information.

Other publishers win by promoting the hell out of their revenue streams.

The most successful publishers learn how to do both.

This is the balance that Tangle has mastered in the six years they’ve been in business. 70k+ PAID SUBSCRIBERS doesn’t happen by crossing your fingers and hoping readers smash that “pay us” button. It happens because of a smart, tested system you build around your work.

In Tangle’s case, a huge part of that system has been created in close partnership with Outpost.

I’d been hearing about this success story for some time so I finally reached out to Tangle’s founder Isaac Saul to understand what’s inside their paid subscription system. The best part is that it’s a system you can use too.

–Lex

Get a load of Tangle’s subscription system

Isaac founded Tangle in 2019 with the idea that you could balance out media bias in national news by presenting a range of perspectives alongside the stories. What began as a summer side project has matured into a media company with a team of twelve bringing in close to $4M in annual recurring revenue.

You do not reach this point by accident.

In 2021, Tangle ditched Substack for Ghost, hoping the move would “improve our business.” After talking with the Ghost team about exactly how to do that, Isaac quickly enlisted the help of Outpost and co-founder Ryan Singel to build out what would become their winning paid subscription system.

Isaac credits Ryan as a key thought partner in their growth over the last four years, and also as an implementer they’ve repeatedly relied on. From that first meeting, Isaac and Ryan were on the same wavelength about what kind of tools needed to exist for indie publishers. And Tangle made for the perfect testing ground for some of Outpost’s most beloved features.

So, what EXACTLY have they built together?

The system that runs Tangle’s paid subscription business has five parts:

• Paid ad buys

• Custom website pages

• Automated sequences

• Regular newsletter sends

• Dedicated promotional emails

(Editor’s note: I created the above map, not Tangle, based on what I heard during our interview.)

Those of you who are just starting to use Outpost may know them as software-as-a-service but they aren’t just a faceless tech company. They love to build and test alongside publishers like Tangle, and then they roll out the winners as production ready features in Outpost’s dashboard that all publishers can benefit from. Outpost was super involved in Tangle’s core site build too and they continue to optimize pages and flows together.

The paid subscription system you see above is part custom to Tangle, part available to everyone, thanks to Outpost’s cooperative model.

Goal 1: Get as many people on the newsletter list as possible

Tangle has over 400k newsletter readers—more than double what they had two years ago—due to their robust paid ads program, earned media and reader shares.

Driving traffic is one step. Making sure you get as many of those visitors onto your newsletter is a whole other project.

Tangle doesn’t use Ghost’s default subscription portal page because it overcomplicates and undersells what should be a split second decision: put in my email address and hit subscribe. Instead, they built a custom newsletter sign up page, with Outpost’s guidance and with help from a Ghost developer.

The landing page that’s doubled their email list includes skimmable value propositions and loads of social proof (“400k+ subscribers” plus 12 reader testimonials below the fold). Very few indie publishers are using a custom newsletter sign up page, and if you’re running paid ads without a proven-to-work page, you’re wasting money.

One catch here is that, because Ghost requires double opt-in subscribes, Tangle loses around 20% of people because they don’t confirm their email. To fix this, they’re about the tee up a new experiment with the Outpost team to validate those email addresses and see if they can keep more of those new readers.

This newsletter is produced in partnership with Outpost 🪐 

Want in on this Tangle + Outpost magic? The paid subscription system is all yours when you start a free trial of Outpost for your Ghost publication.

And join us THIS THURSDAY, September 18 when I walk you through how to turn more of your readers into paid subscribers with Outpost. Register free.

Goal 2: Convert paid subscribers when they’re most interested

One thing that surprised me about Tangle’s paid subscription system was how much of the conversion to paid occurs RIGHT on newsletter signup, or close after.

Tangle is using two mechanics to make this transaction happen quicker: a custom welcome page in Ghost and the welcome autoresponder in Outpost.

Isaac said that a custom welcome page is “our biggest converter” and it’s one way that paid ads recoup their cost right away. This is easy to do in Ghost by creating a page then going to your Tier settings and adding it as a “welcome page” on the free tier.

For readers who don’t upgrade from there, they get a three email welcome series sent automatically from Outpost. Those emails introduce Tangle and continue pitching the fast action discount for 20% off your subscription. They’re sent immediately, then 5 days later, then two weeks later and Isaac said they can see those automations working when batches of new paid subscribers join.

Worth mentioning here that Tangle doesn’t just convert paid subscribers on sign up. They also send direct appeals a few times a year like this one. Those persuasive promos combined with the automations are enough to keep the subscriptions growing.

Goal 3: Keep paid subscribers around as long as possible

Part of being a mature media company is knowing that your sustainability isn’t just about GETTING new subscribers, it’s also about KEEPING subscribers.

Tangle is proud that their churn is less than 1%. To keep subscribers around, they’ve invested in creating a members area and they’re about to add a whole podcast section to the site (which has its own separate paid subscription.) Outpost will enable this with their podcast publisher that automatically creates a new post for each episode in Ghost using a special podcast-friendly template. (Check out these examples from First Round Capital and Cascade PBS).

Beyond delivering a top notch member experience, Tangle uses automated retention emails running on Outpost to remind members about renewals and the cancellation flow to incentivize them to come back if they do leave (with a special discount).

Isaac said he sees that these automated flows are working in the weekly Outpost reports he gets in his inbox which show how many canceled subscribers they’ve won back over.

Goal 4: Increase the lifetime value of paid subscribers

If you’ve used the gift subscription or institutional subscription features in Outpost, you can thank Tangle. They had an organization with a few thousand employees come along and want to buy a bulk subscription so they turned to Ryan and soon Outpost had built a way to authorize new subscribers by email domain.

Creating more ways for people to pay you is a good thing and you don’t have to stop at one subscription type, especially if subscribers are asking for more.

Isaac said they haven’t used the institutional subscriptions as much as he’d like but they do promote their gift subscriptions around the holidays. You’ll spot it in their December newsletters if you’re a regular Tangle reader.

Get your own paid subscription system

Isaac Saul knows that you can’t build a long-lasting media company on your own. That’s why he’s enlisted Outpost as a thought and tech partner and it’s why they’ve collaborated on so many growth experiments over the years that are now part of Outpost’s core product.

A lot of what’s included in Tangle’s paid subscription system is available to you right now inside Outpost. But I also want you to consider whether you should become a closer partner of Outpost’s like Tangle has. Is there something you wish you could pull off that could use a little automation? Have you seen a cool feature on someone else’s site that you wish was available in Ghost? You should tell Outpost what you want to do and consider them a strategic partner in your work.

Isaac joked that he’s afraid to share the special relationship he has with Outpost with other publishers but said that you’d be “wise to take advantage” of their expertise. I think so too and you can start by joining us this Thursday.

There’s a lot of magic to be made at the intersection of building on top of what works for other publishers and pushing it farther in your own way. That’s what Tangle has done and you have an open invitation to take your place in the publisher’s cooperative right beside them.

Journalists Pay Themselves is officially becoming part of Project C on October 1.

If you are already a paid subscriber of this newsletter, you were moved this week to the Project C account. Manage your subscription at https://newsletter.projectc.biz/ (shoutout to Bill Curran at beehiiv who helped us merge these projects.)