How The Ankler converts its free audience into paid subscribers

When Richard Rushfield launched his Hollywood industry newsletter The Ankler in 2017, he ran every aspect of the business, from the content creation to the customer service. Today, The Ankler resembles a more traditional trade magazine, with a seasoned editor-in-chief and multiple staff writers.

But even though Richard took on a small amount of VC investment, most of the company’s growth has been organic, fueled in large part by an extremely successful paid subscription model.

In a recent interview, Richard walked through The Ankler’s comprehensive strategy for converting its free audience into paid. The conversation included how his staff determines which articles to place in front of and behind the paywall, why they diversified into multiple newsletters focused on specific niches, how The Ankler uses teaser content to drive conversions, and why he’s decided to stay with Substack:

There are certainly things that we want to do that Substack isn't doing yet. You'll get plenty of people that come and tell you, ‘oh it’ll cost you $5,000, and I'll have a new site for you by Monday. And I've been through a lot of site builds in my time, and I know that it's never easy or simple. And the advantage of Substack is that they've now been out there for how long? Six or seven years? And they've had six or seven years of catching the bugs and sorting out all those little things that you don't necessarily think of in advance. It's still a new platform, and there are things that they haven't got into yet, and so that is a little frustrating bumping up against it. But I like how much they've thought through. And also they have a really robust internal community now where substackers recommend each other, and that's a huge driver for us of the internal Substack audience.

Watch our interview in the video embedded below: