> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://outpost.pub/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Outpost Office Hours: What Makes Publishers the Most Money - URL: https://outpost.pub/outpost-office-hours-what-makes-publishers-the-most-money/ - Published: 2026-03-17T22:28:17.000Z - Updated: 2026-03-17T22:28:17.000Z - Description: Outpost co-founder Ryan Singel and Lex Roman talk subscription revenue and membership growth tips and tricks for Ghost and Outpost publishers. - Author: Ryan Singel - Tags: Office Hours I had a great time last week with [Lex Roman](https://lexroman.com/?ref=outpost.pub) and a bunch of Outpost member publishers (and some folks that were just Outpost curious), answering questions about what we see helps Ghost/Outpost publishers make the most money. Lex did a great job of keeping things moving fast and keeping all the astronauts from getting bored. Here's the recap for those of you who missed it! ## **Recap** **Question:** Why did you found Outpost? Where did this come from? **Ryan's Answer:** - Started at WIRED, frustrated by the clunky way reporters had to manually link to previous stories — that frustration led to building Contextly - Contextly's goal was to build loyal audience communities, but publishers didn't care during the Facebook traffic era (just slapped ads on traffic) - In 2020, discovered Ghost and saw it as the future — memberships, subscriptions built in - Outpost is a continuation of what Contextly set out to do; now nearly 5 years in as a cooperative --- **Question:** What are the roles between Ghost and Outpost? How are they different? **Ryan's Answer:** - Ghost handles core publishing — getting content out, managing permissions and subscriptions - Outpost extends Ghost with things better handled outside the core CMS: group subscriptions, CTAs, autoresponder/welcome flows, retention offers, special offers per tier - Not competitors — Outpost is like a "power tool" plugin layer on top of Ghost --- **Question:** What are best practices for Welcome Flows for free newsletter subscribers? **Ryan's Answer:** - First email is the most important — lean into your mission, founding story, and why your work matters - Include links to favorite pieces and always offer a discount - Don't worry that discounts dilute your brand (build pricing with discounts in mind from the start) - Don't be afraid to write long — be yourself, not generic - Remember: new subscribers often know nothing about you beyond one piece they read --- **Question:** What welcome offer works best to convert people — monthly or annual? (Re: Riley's question about discounts feeling too big a jump to annual but monthly feeling low-commitment) **Ryan's Answer:** - Strong preference for annual over monthly — monthly churn is significantly higher - Would rather have someone pay 40% of annual price than full monthly price - Make the annual discount look dramatically better than monthly in the email (show the comparison) - Something in the works: 3-month intro subscriptions that graduate to annual - Avoid the "$1 for a year" trap --- **Question:** How do you get people to open and read welcome emails? **Ryan's Answer:** - Mix up styles — if the first email is long and earnest, make the second short and snappy - Be honest and conversational (Tangle is a great model — look at their free sign-up flow) - Enlist readers into your specific mission, not generic "support indie media" messaging - Stay within your publication's tone, but push as far toward fun and honest as you can - Make readers feel like they're joining a mission, not just handing over money --- **Question:** What's the recommended pacing for the welcome sequence? Should emails go out 90 days later? (Lucy's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - Cap the welcome flow at 2–3 weeks max - Propensity to pay is highest right when someone signs up — drops significantly after 90 days - For the 90-day+ segment, use campaign emails tied to seasonal moments (St. Patrick's Day, Pi Day, etc.) instead - Don't be afraid of selling hard early — the risk of losing someone from overselling is low --- **Question:** What's the recommendation on deepening discounts across the welcome sequence? **Ryan's Answer:** - Each later email in the sequence should offer a deeper discount (e.g. 25% → 30% → deeper) - Early subscribers never see the later offers, so there's no "devaluation" risk - Even a deeply discounted subscriber at $20/year is a win — cost of free vs. paid subscriber is the same to you - Never say "this is the best offer you'll ever get" — locks you in - Avoid sharing the same discount over and over (10%, 10%, 10%) — diminishing returns --- **Question:** Do you recommend everyone uses a metered registration wall (reg wall)? **Ryan's Answer:** - More publishers should use it, especially nonprofits worried about access — it doesn't block readers, just requires email registration - The Guardian does this successfully — it's a proven model - It's set up in Outpost so only people who read a full article (not partially paywalled posts) have it count against their limit --- **Question:** What's the recommended number of articles to allow before the reg wall kicks in? **Ryan's Answer:** - Start in the 3–5 article range; 3 is a solid sweet spot - 3 articles in 30 days signals genuine interest and justifies asking for an email - Setting it at zero (wall immediately) may be too aggressive - It's easy to adjust — just change a number in Outpost settings --- **Question:** When should someone put in a metered paywall (for registered free subscribers)? **Ryan's Answer:** - Start with the registration wall first — see how it performs for a month or two before adding a paywall - Set the metered paywall number higher (5–6 articles) since these are already registered free subscribers - Think of it as identifying people who should be paying but aren't - Treat it as an additional conversion lever, not the core strategy --- **Question:** Where do you see publishers promoting tip jars, and how should they use them? **Ryan's Answer:** - Tip jars are underutilized — put them in emails, sidebars, and CTAs - People aren't annoyed by tip requests — it's normalized - Even paid subscribers will tip extra — it adds up, and occasionally you get large surprise donations - Outpost now has design controls to customize colors and tip jar language/page --- **Question:** What about tip jar language for non-tipping cultures? (Théo's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - You can fully rename the tip jar page in Outpost (URL, title, language) - Consider calling it a "support fund" or tying it to a specific goal (e.g. "investigative journalism fund" or "help us hire a public records reporter") - Goal-specific framing converts better than a generic "donate here" --- **Question:** Any recommendations on tip jar preset amounts? **Ryan's Answer:** - Default presets probably lean too low — consider raising them - Psychology: most people pick the middle option, so make the middle amount the one you'd "really love" - Have a "ridiculous" high option that makes the middle feel reasonable - Make the bottom option a slight stretch (e.g. $15 rather than $5) - Have fun with the amounts — e.g. $27 (Bernie Sanders-style), $51 (The 51st) or $1337 for the top --- **Question:** What's the bare minimum retention setup you recommend? **Ryan's Answer:** - Send both renewal reminder emails (don't turn them off — be transparent with subscribers) - Focus retention offers in the 45-day window before renewal - For canceling monthly subscribers: send a deeply discounted *annual* offer — most effective retention tactic seen; discounting monthly for monthly subscribers doesn't work - Turn on all retention offer emails; go deeper on discounts as you approach the final one (e.g. 25% → 40–50%) - Tone should be respectful — acknowledge "if we're not for you, that's okay" but make the case to stay --- **Question:** What's the recommended timing/spacing of retention emails? **Ryan's Answer:** - Final email should be 1–2 days before renewal (not hours before — too late) - Spread the earlier emails across the 30–45 day window before expiration - If you have paid-only perks (ad-free podcast, full-text RSS), Outpost can send a separate email when that access is about to be removed — include a renewal offer there too --- **Question:** Should publishers reach out personally when someone cancels? **Ryan's Answer:** - Yes, if you have the bandwidth — a personal email can reveal *why* you're losing people (too many emails, topic drift, financial hardship) - More valuable for qualitative feedback than just win-backs - Outpost sends a notification to you when someone cancels so you have the opportunity - Automations handle most of it, but personal touch helps at the margins --- **Question:** What CTAs do you recommend for list growth? **Ryan's Answer:** - Use a pop-up *or* slide-up — not both (unless you publish very long articles) - Pop-ups outperform slide-ups - In-article CTAs: the top-of-post and bottom-of-post placements perform best; mid-article CTAs rarely convert (people don't stop reading to subscribe) - Set pop-ups to trigger on scroll (e.g. 60%) or after a time delay — don't hit readers the second they land - Customize CTA language beyond the default — express your voice, your mission, even a sense of urgency if your topic warrants it - Homepage CTA also works well for some publishers --- **Question:** Thoughts on sliding scale / pay-what-you-want pricing? (Chas's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - Intrigued but Outpost hasn't built it yet - Molly White (from Citation Needed) has a custom implementation — it's actually fixed price tiers, not true PWYW but interesting to check out - Technical challenges with Ghost/Stripe make it difficult to implement cleanly - Not high on the roadmap currently, but worth watching --- **Question:** How does Ghost's native welcome email compare to Outpost's welcome flows? **Ryan's Answer:** - Ghost's version is fine for small/starting publishers - Outpost gives you multi-email sequences, analytics, per-tier offers, and the ability to route different subscriber groups through different flows - Ghost's new retention/cancellation offer (just announced) is complementary to Outpost — it hits subscribers at the cancellation moment, while Outpost handles the backup retention flow --- **Question:** Is it more effective to market free or paid subscriptions? (Théo's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - Funnel thinking: concentrate on making your free content great — it's the pipeline to paid - Even Tangle, which keeps \~80% of content free, converts 16% of their audience to paid - Occasionally send your paid-only newsletter to your entire list as a "taste of what you're missing" conversion strategy - For most publishers: get people reading → get them on the free list → demonstrate paid value → convert --- **Question:** Is there a way to move people up to a higher tier with a discount? (Courtney's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - Ghost's native offers won't show to existing paid subscribers - Outpost *can* do this: create an offer for a higher tier with a discount, send via campaign email to lower-tier subscribers - Outpost handles proration automatically (applies unused portion of current subscription to the new one) --- **Question:** Can you track who clicks on a sales campaign and send a follow-up only to those people? (Lucy's question) **Ryan's Answer:** - Not yet — but it's on the roadmap - More analytics features coming soon, along with events functionality --- **Question:** What do you think publishers are sleeping on most with Outpost? **Ryan's Answer:** - **Lead magnet tool**: drop a PDF or EPUB into a post, gate it behind free or paid membership — underused - **Group/organizational subscriptions**: two versions — a simple tiered option on your site, and a behind-the-scenes invoicing system for organizations (universities, law firms, nonprofits, businesses) - Real money available in institutional subscriptions — one publisher added 200 organizational members in a single month --- *(summary compiled with the help of an LLM)*