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Winno - Substack for text messages

Winno is a free and easy way for creators to make money by charging subscriptions for text messages. Create and customize a landing page, connect your Stripe account, and start sending texts, images, links, and paywalled posts to subscribers in minutes.

3yr ago

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Nick Rubin

Winno

Maker

Hello all 👋 We’re Nick and Daniel, the co-founders of Winno (YC W22). TLDR: Winno lets people make money by charging subscriptions for text messages. Texts are intimate, easy to write, and have a 4x higher open rate and 8x higher click-through rate than email, letting creators connect directly with top fans outside of noisy channels like social media and email inboxes. 💰 We built Winno because we realized we weren’t reading the email newsletters we were subscribed to – even the paid ones. They'd get lost in our inbox and pushed down our to-do list. And after digging deep, we discovered there are tons of creators, coaches, and experts who aren't served well by current tools: 1) Email newsletter tools like Substack, Ghost, and Revue serve a small sliver of creators and consumers: they work for journalists and others who are comfortable writing 1,000-word articles, but don’t work for those without the skill or time to write long posts. 2) Patreon, Ko-fi, Super Follows, and other tools work well as limited “tip jars” to support creators that have a stream of content and followers somewhere else (YouTube, podcast, etc), but they don’t work for distributing and monetizing content itself. 3) Information overload is getting worse – email inboxes and social media feeds are filling up with noise. SMS is the best way to send messages directly to a group of subscribers in a channel that’s free of clutter and used by everyone. 💬 We’re making texting cool again. It’s easy to create, easy to consume, and way more flexible and engaging than email. We built Winno to be the easiest way for creators, coaches, and experts to engage with their biggest supporters and get paid for it. How does it work? Create a Broadcast – Customize a landing page and pick a photo and we’ll generate a contact card that’s sent to readers when they subscribe. Share your link – You’ll get a link to share where people can subscribe in a few taps. We’ll ask for a two-factor code to prevent unsolicited signups. Start sending texts – Use our pretty dashboard to send links, images, paywalled posts and more to your subscribers. We’ll track link opens. Get replies – See all replies from your readers and easily respond on the dashboard. Get paid – Set subscription prices and enable an optional free trial. We'll take a 15% cut of transactions. Easy payouts through Stripe! 🇺🇸🇨🇦 Right now Winno works for U.S. and Canada numbers only but we're working to add international support and a WhatsApp integration. 🎉 Please share all feedback, suggestions and questions!