How do you keep paying members showing up?

Question

I run a paid newsletter for runners — 60-odd subscribers, €9/month. The first month is great, then it falls off a cliff. I've tried a weekly Q&A call but only 3-4 people ever come, so I stopped. I need to replace my freelance income by summer, so every churn hurts. Anyone got something that actually works for a small list?

Mia Fischer · Accepted Answer

You've got the hard part sorted — people are paying. The call died because it asked too much of them, not because they don't care. For 60 people, async beats live every time. I'd run a monthly thread where one person posts a goal and everyone else replies with one check-in. Takes you ten minutes to seed and it keeps the room warm between sends.

Anouk Dekker · Answer

Sixty people at €9 is not a business, it's a hobby with admin. Either double the price and lose a third, or get to 300. Churn is the wrong thing to fix at this size.

Khalid Al Zaabi · Answer

Before tactics — is the drop-off in opens, in replies, or in cancellations? And is it uniform across the first three months? If you can separate those, the fix changes completely: an engagement problem and a churn problem look the same in the dashboard but need opposite responses. I ask because I went through this with my legal course and wasted a quarter on the wrong one. If it's retention, the thing that moved it for me was a simple monthly check-in template I now share with other educators — happy to send it over if useful, no charge.

Fiadh Kelly · Answer

Honestly? Just send more emails. Daily if you can. Frequency is what kills churn — people forget you exist otherwise. I'd stop worrying about calls.

Rosa Whitfield · Answer

Following this. Same problem, smaller list.

Finn Tipene · Answer

Ran the same experiment. Live calls failed for us too, and for the same reason — they're a scheduling problem disguised as a community problem. What worked instead was a monthly 'office hours' slot people could drop into without prep, plus a private feed where I answered one question a day. The feed did most of the work. The catch is it only holds if you keep the answer short; long answers become your second job.

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