Hello there! I appreciate everyone that’s been reading, sharing, and sending feedback about Out-Of-Pocket. It’s crazy to think there are now nearly 6,000 of you on this newsletter - I really didn’t think this was going to resonate with so many people.
One of the main reasons I started Out-Of-Pocket was to make it more accessible for people to understand how healthcare worked in a more fun way, even if they aren’t in healthcare currently. To that end, my goal is to have a free tier of the newsletter forever. Hopefully by the time I die, GPT-69 can just train itself on my old posts and keep spitting them out.
I’m thinking through some different monetization strategies - and one of them will be advertising.
Before you skewer me and call me a sellout, I’m going to try advertising slightly differently though. I think the main problem with ads is that the ads themselves are terrible, intrusive, and generally not relevant to the audience they’re actually sent to.
I plan to actually make interesting ads that are fun to read as sponsored posts. They’ll look a bit more like analyses - clear cut and understandable about what the product is and even include pros/cons of the product and company.
My rules for ads are going to be:
I’m not going to do any ads for products I don’t personally believe in
I’m not going to do any ads that wouldn’t be relevant for this audience
You will understand exactly what the company does by the end of the ad
I’m going to paint as objective of a picture as I can about the company (e.g. how it compares to alternatives, tradeoffs picking this specific solution, bring any reviews of the product/service that would be relevant, etc.)
I’m in the camp that good products are worth giving attention to, and unfortunately these good products now have to compete for attention with a bunch of bad products (who usually have more $ to deploy for attention).
I also think publishers should actually care about the ads that get displayed with their brand instead of outsourcing that to third-party ad network.
So hopefully you won’t freak out when you see sponsored posts going forward! It’ll help me keep the free tier available to everyone and I think you might actually like some of these ads. I’ll give a disclaimer for all of the sponsored posts.
If you’re interested in advertising on Out-Of-Pocket and you’re willing to play by the rules above, let me know! You can email me at nikhil@outofpocket.health.
Thinkboi out,
Nikhil aka. “my landlord does not accept ‘social capital' as rent payment'“
Twitter: @nikillinit
If you’re enjoying the newsletter, do me a solid and shoot this over to a friend or healthcare slack channel and tell them to sign up. The line between unemployment and founder of a startup is traction and whether your parents believe you have a job.
You’re spot on with this approach. Love the Mainstreet post. Best of luck!
I appreciate the approach. Looking forward to the content!