If you ever contacted Indiegraf, chances are you eventually met me. As the senior manager of publisher success — a title I take quite literally — I welcome anyone interested in working with us. Since joining the Indiegraf team almost 2 years ago, I’ve interacted with more than 350 journalist-entrepreneurs, by my estimate. It’s the joy of my job to talk shop with news founders who are doing incredible work, and it’s also an opportunity to elaborate on Indiegraf’s offerings.
Q) What exactly is Indiegraf?
Fair question — and one we get a lot. When describing Indiegraf, we like to say that we’re “accelerating the growth of independent community news.” We’re also on a mission to validate your career choice to become a journalist-entrepreneur. But what do we actually do?
- We build, maintain and host your website and newsletter
- We offer expert strategy and quarterly goal-setting
- We grow your audience and your reader revenue
- We support your ads and sponsorship revenue
Ideally, publishers gain back capacity while working with Indiegraf so they can focus on creating content and building community.
Q) I already have a website. Do I need your tech stack to work together?
Technically, no. We recently created new, limited tiers of audience and ads/sponsorship services available to publishers on WordPress, Ghost and Mailchimp. We did this because we want to be able to serve publishers wherever they are in their growth journey. But our Indie Audience and Indie Ads teams work best when using Indie Tech, our content management and newsletter platform. So we recommend publishers upgrade to Indie Tech once they have grown their revenue sufficiently.
Q) What is the best team size for working with Indiegraf?
Most network publications are run by one- to three-person teams, although we support bigger operations, too. You don’t need to hire a developer because we cover those needs. We can also fill in for audience and sponsorship roles, so you can hire more reporters. And if you already have an audience expert or sales rep, we can complement existing members of your team.
Q) What type of performance can I expect if I join the Indiegraf network?
On average, Indiegraf publishers grow their email subscribers by 280% and their monthly recurring revenue by 60% in their first year. That said, performance depends on a lot of variables, so we can’t make any guarantees. Fortunately, we have more success stories than lessons learned, and we have a pretty good idea how much a loyal reader might be willing to pay, based on 2022 network data:
- $12.88 average monthly recurring donation
- $73.12 average one-time donation
Q) When is a good time to launch my new outlet?
Start right away! There will always be adversity when getting started, so don’t wait for the perfect moment or a lump sum of cash to launch. However, you should plan financially because you are starting a business, after all. Plan stories that have a long shelf life so new audience members have plenty of relevant content to consume.
Q) I’m getting a lot of different advice — whose advice should I follow?
Trust your instincts! There are a lot of industry resources available, including LION’s Tools & Services Directory as well as GNI’s Resource Library, so make the best decisions for your publication based on what you learn from the wealth of information out there. And there is no substitute for talking to other journalist-entrepreneurs. That’s why we encourage Indiegraf network partners to collaborate on our company Slack channels.
Have more questions? Let’s connect! You can book me via Calendly or reply to this email. Can’t wait to hear from you!
