Need quick revenue? Run a one time reader raise!

Last September, I wanted to fire my only client.

This client was most of my income. I have a few other minor revenue streams like products and referral commissions that run in the background, but I needed a replacement anchor revenue stream. Fast.

So, I turned to my newsletter audience. I had 1500 subscribers at the time.

I offered them lifetime access to a new membership called Legends for $99.

And…

41 people took me up on it. It brought in a little over $4k in one month.

Looking back, I low balled this. I wish I had charged $197. But, still, $4k was enough cash to buy me at least a month working on my newsletter full time. Six months later, I’m still running this venture.

I now think of this strategy as a one time reader raise. Whether you approach it like a lifetime offer, a crowdfunding campaign, or a donation drive, the result is the same. Your readers come together to financially back your work in a bigger way than a $10/mo subscription.

But how do you pull this off? Today, I’ve got some examples and recs so you can run your own reader raise. You may think it could never be you, but I am here to tell you that it absolutely could be. Let me show you the way!

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How much can you raise from your readers?

The Flytrap raised $57,405 before they launched.
The 51st raised $276,251 pre-launch.
Flaming Hydra raised $40,942 pre-launch and $47,642 on their second campaign.
Radiotopia raised $620,412 in their second campaign.
Escape Collective got 5k paying readers in the first week of their launch campaign.
Block Club Chicago raised $183,000 in one of the most successful local news campaigns ever.

Sure, they all raised a lot, but can you?

YOU CAN.

The amount you can raise will depend on your existing traction, appetite for your project and how you execute your reader raise.

But some of these teams I mentioned are SMALL.

Block Club Chicago was created by only three people. The 51st began with six founders.

I can say confidently from my own experience that you can raise a few thousand dollars, at least. If you are solo with a small audience like me, I’d wager you could get up to $10-20k if you push it. With a team or a bigger starting audience, you can and should aim higher.

But, how do you actually do this?

I combed through a few of these campaigns, public case studies on them and my own results with reader raises and pulled together these tips:

• Appeal to your biggest fans. Your email list, your channel subscribers and your social media, if you’re established. If not, you’ll turn to 1:1 emails, texts, DMs and phone calls. Pretend you’re a Girl Scout who needs to make cookie quota. “Want to be a part of this?” Of course they do!

• Less tiers, higher amounts. The smaller you are, the higher cost your tiers should be. If you’re a solo journalist, don’t ask people for $1 donations. It’s great if your platform allows people to give any dollar amount, but suggest that people give a specific amount (like $50 or $100) or give them 2-3 options to pick from.

• Don’t be afraid to call out systemic barriers. Is your topic controversial? Do you come from a marginalized group? Let your readers know why you rely on their support and how much more important it is when other funding is not available to you. (See how Evette Dionne from The Flytrap put it)

• Prepare to send several messages. It’s rare that people pay up on the first message. Don’t get discouraged. Every time I run a new promotion of any kind, I get the fewest upgrades in the beginning and the most upgrades at the end. It can take 10+ messages and you should leverage email, social and communities (Discord, Slack)—and automation—as much as possible.

• Set a target and share progress. The team at Aftermath is hands down my favorite example of how to do this well. Check out some of their progress reports from their subscriber drive “Inside Baseball” happening right now.

• Engage your champions. When they ran their very successful reader raise, The Correspondent enlisted 100 ambassadors (don’t think you need that many!) including Judd Apatow and Jimmy Wales to record messages of support. If you have famous friends, absolutely lean on them, but anyone you know with a sizable, relevant audience could be a fit. That can be someone with only 1k followers on Instagram but whose followers listen to them!

• Make a specific ask of your fans. The 51st is great at helping their readers understand exactly how to support. They provided specific types of people you could share the campaign with and they asked you to share with 5 potential fans.

• Pair it with a live event, especially if your project is local. Block Club Chicago partnered with a local brewery to throw a party for 500 of their Kickstarter backers. Alissa Walker is doing something similar for the one year anniversary of Torched.

• Offer one time only perks. Radiotopia created a ringtone pack (how 00s of them!) They also had perks where backers could record 15 seconds of audio for inclusion in one of their shows. If you’re small, go VERY LIGHT on perks, choose only one or two to deliver and don’t underestimate the appeal of a handwritten thank you or a virtual shout out. I have a perk call the List of Legends and Legends absolutely dig it.

What’s the difference between a reader raise and a subscriber drive?

It’s a thin difference, but mainly that readers give more money at one time.

Rather than having a supporter stop at $7, $10, $20 (the cost of your subscriptions), you are asking for $50, $100, $500 donations. And they aren’t recurring subscriptions usually. Either you offer a lifetime deal or it’s a one time donation with or without perks.

You could also treat this as an annual subscriber drive (meaning asking readers to lock into an annual plan—that’s what Escape Collective did), which also provides a nice infusion of cash.

Platforms for your reader raise

It’s IDEAL if your raise has a live donation counter where readers can see how much has been contributed and how far until you hit your goal. Without this, you’ll have to do more messaging about progress. Transparency is only becoming more important and it’s just better if your campaign is visible through a platform your readers trust.

• Buy Me a Coffee (affiliate link): Designed for solo creators. It has built in social features where it takes in a testimonial and can tweet out every new donation plus you can embed it on your site. I use this platform the most for my own fundraising. It costs 5% + payment fees (8%-ish) per transaction.

• Ko-Fi: Very similar to Buy Me a Coffee but they offer a platform fee option of $12/mo with no transaction cut so that’s pretty worth it if you’re going to raise more than $50 or so.

• Givebutter: This is what The 51st used. Givebutter has a tips option where your donors tip the platform and you just pay payment processing (about 3%).

• Kickstarter: Famously all or nothing—meaning you don’t get the money if you don’t hit your goal—and probably my least favorite choice of the bunch UNLESS you think on-platform visibility will do something for you. They take 5% + payment processing (so about 8%).

• Indiegogo: Over here you can choose to keep your funds even if you don’t raise the full amount. They take 5% + payment fees (8%)

• Crowdfundr: Similar to Kickstarter and Indiegogo but they have three pricing settings you can choose from. They have both “all or nothing” and “keep it all” campaign options.

• Stripe (on its own): You can just use Stripe by itself. Stripe has a nice standalone check out and you can set a default donation amount, which the donor can edit. You’ll pay 3% to them (and you’ll probably pay that anyway since Stripe is behind most of the above platforms too). Main downside with Stripe is no one else can see these contributions but you could hook up a Zap to tweet/post donations as they come in. Or you could act like a tech founder and post your revenue charts on social.

I wouldn’t use Patreon unless you’re already there because they take the highest cut of any platform (except Substack) at 11%+, including payment processing.

If you’re going to take in donations above $1k per person (or if a generous reader offers that), you might want to get a fiscal sponsor who can pass on their nonprofit status to you. Look at Tiny News Collective and Alternative Newsweekly Foundation.

So, are you gonna try a reader raise?

The one time reader raise is underused by solo journalists and creators. Maybe we think we are not worthy of support or maybe we don’t believe people care about our projects enough to pay more. I know we’re heading into a recession, but it’s never been a more important time to back individual journalists, creators, writers and artists. We are drowning in nonsense 24/7. What a breath of fresh air your project is for your audience!

If you decide to try this, reply and let me know! I’d love to follow along and break your campaign down for a future issue.

👀 Coming next: we’ll dig into subscriber pledge drives and annual sales!