We ran a subscriber drive with 34 publishers. Here’s how it went.

In partnership with: Outpost for Ghost publishers

It’s tough out there for a creator journalist. Yes, you have the freedom to choose your own stories and set your own hours, but when it comes to being your own marketing department, there’s no advantage to being small.

We’ve been running the Project C community as a supportive space for creator journalists to launch and grow their projects since April. Repeatedly, we’ve heard from our members how hard it is for journalists to get their media venture out there in front of the right audience and to secure the funding they need to work on it, even half time.

An idea emerged out of this challenge: what if we ran a paid subscriber drive together?

The premise for this drive was that it might be easier to boost something bigger than your work as a way to also promote your own project. We hear all the time from journalists who are concerned about asking for money too often and this drive would give them permission to be a little louder than they normally would, because it didn’t just benefit them.

The idea caught on with our community – 34 publishers got on board and we launched the Back Indie Media Drive on September 1.

We provided some structure but it was really on the shoulders of these individual publishers to capitalize on the momentum of this group project to achieve their own goals.

The only requirement was that all participants had to mention the community drive at least once during the month of September. We created a landing page with all the publishers listed by topic. We supplied them with assets like images they could use on social media and some starter messaging.

A few mentions of a landing page wasn’t going to bring in many paid subscribers though so we also recommended they each run a subscriber drive of their own alongside this effort. We taught them how to do that too, for those newly in business.

Throughout the month, we ran a couple training sessions on how to put together a subscriber drive and members like Anna Pujol-Mazzini from good story and Bryan Vance from Stumptown Savings stepped up to host co-working and review sessions. We also had a dedicated and surprisingly active Slack channel where participants shared winning promos and challenges throughout the month.

🪐 This newsletter is presented in partnership with Outpost 🪐

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Outpost is not a platform. It’s a set of monetization and growth tools beloved by Ghost publishers like The 51st, Hell Gate, 404 Media, Tangle, and The Lever.

What can you do with Outpost? For one thing: promote your paid subscription across your website! Simply load your message into the Auto Display tool one time and show it inside every story with a flick of the big on/off button. Try it out on your Ghost blog when you start a free trial today.

At first, panic. Not quite *zombies are chasing me* panic, but the kind of panic you have when you don’t think something you really want will actually happen. 

Morale in journalism is low after years of declines in mainstream media's business model and multiple years of layoffs. Add to that the fact that most journalists have traditionally been isolated from the business side of media, so our crew didn't know yet how their actions would lead to results. The fear of alienating or exhausting your audience hovers in the back of everyone’s mind.

But many of our publishers need this funding soon to not shut down and that need has to outweigh the fear.

Lucky for us, that changed as soon as we began seeing some wins. Once the first few dedicated promotions went out, our drive participants started seeing paid subscribers join them. In Slack, members shared which messaging angles seemed to resonate the most (often vulnerable appeals!) so others could cut+paste those tactics and many publishers did some targeted or 1:1 outreach to win over paid subscribers too.

We did a check-in every week and some of the challenges participants surfaced included not knowing why their message wasn’t landing with their audience or feeling like the marketing workload was too heavy on top of reporting, writing and editing.

The highs were high and the lows were low and that’s why we started this community – because it’s pretty easy to quit if you’re zoomed in on today, but having other journalist entrepreneurs offer a little perspective, maybe even offer a high five when you tried something, can keep you in the game for another round.

One thing we loved to see was how many publishers promoted each other in substantial ways. Rick Ellis of Too Much TV highlighted one publisher a day in his newsletter. Kaitlyn Arford of Freelance Opportunities! invited her readers to check out a few of the drive publishers too. Several members mentioned or amplified other participants’ work. Anna Pujol-Mazzini of good story and Rey Katz of Amplify Respect were commenting and reposting everyone’s work on social media like it was their job.

For some, promoting others also benefitted their paid subscriber count and for the rest, it was just community goodwill they can hopefully cash in some day.

By the back half of September, we began to see good momentum and many publishers reported that they were close to their goal for the month. The median goal for our group was to add 15 new paid subscribers (not accounting for churn) and the highest goal was 1,000.

Out of the 34 publishers we began with, only 20 participated actively in the drive. 

Some members decided later it wasn’t a great time for them or they weren’t prepared to promote their own subscription yet. A good lesson we’re taking away for next time is to get a stronger commitment up front, as it does active participants a disservice if it’s not a mutually beneficial promotion.

For our 20 active publishers, they set out to add a total of 1,644 new paying subscribers. They ended up adding a collective 762 paid subscribers. 

To put this number in context for a second: I covered Aftermath’s big subscriber drive which brought them 150 paid subscribers in 2025 in the course of one week and Hell Gate, according to their recent annual report, added 3675 net new paid subscribers in the last full year (or an average of 306 a month.)

We did have a couple larger indie publishers participating in this drive so both their existing audience and their paid subscriber goals are higher than the median 15. But, for a ragtag bunch of solo journalists and a couple heavyweights, 762 new paid subscribers is pretty damn good for a one month drive.

How did that play out for individual publishers?

The feedback we got from publishers included the sweet relief that the month was over and an acknowledgement of how much work it takes to pull off a successful subscriber drive, especially when you’re on your own and you don’t have a sizable established audience.

Participant Hanna Raskin, who founded The Food Section, wrote in her recap that they hit their goal quickly which was “evidence of how many readers stand with us, and confirmation that we can’t be complacent when it comes to the fate of independent media.”

Stumptown Savings founder Bryan Vance, who exceeded his paid subscriber goal by 12, shared on LinkedIn that “While the end result was a huge win, the process was a masterclass in navigating the highs and lows of building a business.”

We also heard that the drive positioning didn’t work for everyone. One participant outside the United States felt the publisher set was too US-centric. Another participant who has a journalism background but isn’t covering news found that the message of “backing indie media” didn’t resonate much with their audience.

Overall, we’re calling this drive a success. We learned a lot. Our publishers learned a lot. And they brought in more than 700 new paid subscribers together. 

I know you’re wondering when the next one is. We don’t have any plans yet but Chortle publisher and drive participant Greg Nix suggested we do a free subscriber drive and that sounds like the perfect thing to kick off the new year. 

Make sure you join us in the Project C community before then.

—Lex

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the 10 winning promo emails that won over paid subscribers during the drive (Project C members only!)