👋 Welcome

Today’s issue is all about core building blocks that you should consider to develop a more robust media business around your newsletter-driven venture.

It was inspired by my attendance at Jacob Donnelly’s AMO Summit earlier this month. Newsletters were at the core of many of the businesses that presented at AMO Summit, but those maturing media businesses have also blossomed to encompass other offerings that all newsletter operators should consider. These topics are so important that I will be dedicating two issues to this topic, and in this first issue we are going to highlight four specific approaches being used to develop multiple income stream media companies by:

1. Hosting events;

2. Running communities;

3. Selling products and subscriptions;

4. Acquiring other media properties.

Spark your imagination with this issue because we are going to take a deep dive into how world-class media operators are employing these same strategies in our next issue, which will be a special Newsletter Business Spotlight issue. I took last week off for my birthday, but have been working on a special gift for all of you in this next issue.

There are some great upcoming newsletter learning events this month:

• 10/29: beehiiv - Advancing With Analytics

• 11/01: beehiiv - Master Your Inbox

• 11/07: beehiiv - Zero To $100,000+ Meta Ads Playbook

If you are looking for bSK (beehiiv / Substack / Kit) resources, check out the beehiiv webinar page, the Substack resources page or the Kit training page.

I'm grateful to welcome returning sponsor HubSpot and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. Hubspot seamlessly connects your data, teams and customers on one AI-powered customer platform that grows with your business.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?

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Download the offer for actionable insights and tips on harnessing AI for a more efficient, impactful professional life. 

📰 Industry Roundup

Hubspot Acquires Mindstream Newsletter To Expand Media Network: Hubspot has acquired the daily AI newsletter Mindstream. This move continues the Hubspot Media Network’s strategy of acquisition, which includes its $27 million acquisition of The Hustle in 2021. If you think that Hubspot is the only SaaS platform exercising this strategy, then you might not have heard that SEMRush also bought Search Engine Land’s parent company this month, which adds to their recent string of content property acquisitions. Check out the details of the Mindstream deal, and also explore why it makes sense for SaaS companies to acquire media properties… Read \ Why SaaS Platforms Buy Media Companies

beehiiv Introduces CPM Deals & SEO Backlinks: The beehiiv Ad Network has introduced CPM ads to its array of advertising options, allowing newsletters to get paid per thousand ad views in an issue rather than on the basis of clicks (CPC). This is a move that can favor newsletters with large subscriber bases that have high unique open rates. In addition, beehiiv has made it easier to link to back issues in a publisher’s newsletter archive to increase internal content linking and boost SEO signals that can lead to higher search engine rankings for the publisher’s beehiiv site… Read

Substack Lands Author James Paterson’s Paid Subscription Venture: Media empires don’t get much more lucrative or prolific than James Paterson’s, and he has established his latest outpost on Substack. Paterson has launched a paid Substack subscription called “Hungry Dogs” which will offer filmed interviews with authors and celebrities in addition to written content three times per week. Paterson indicates that he has been seeking an unfiltered outlet such as Substack to share opinionated views he can’t express in his other endeavors… Read

Kit App Lex Trains AI On Your Newsletter: AI writing platform Lex has launched a Kit integration which trains its LLM using your Kit newsletters, all with the intention of analyzing your style and building custom prompts to create drafts and subject lines in your voice.… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

CASE STUDY - $6K/Month Multiple Income Stream Media Company: Jaime Northrop, founder of daily newsletter Minimalist Hustler, shares how his newsletter-driven business encompasses Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP), community and print-on-demand offerings to drive over $6,000 in monthly revenue. In this interview on the Niche Pursuits podcast, Jamie also shares his strategies for traffic generation using Medium and why he is considering moving to Substack from Kit… Read / Listen

CASE STUDY - AMO’s Media Company Evolution & Revenue Breakdown: Jacob Donnelly recently used the fifth anniversary of A Media Operator to not only share the evolution of his media company from founding to present, but also to share a detailed breakdown of his 2023 and 2024 revenue. It’s a model blueprint for a solo media entrepreneur to study… Read

CASE STUDY - How Oprah Daily Manages An Actual Online Community: Oprah Daily is a new paid community offering from everyone’s favorite Oprah. Given the complementary role that community can play in expanding any newsletter or media company’s offerings, this article and podcast interview provides useful insights into paywall strategies, how to engage members as moderators, and more… Read / Listen

A Guide To Throwing An Event For Your Newsletter Readers: One of the clear messages at this year’s AMO Summit was the importance of diversifying revenue streams using events, which can be quite engaging and lucrative. I personally run a 7-figure annual event in Las Vegas for thousands of healthcare professional subscribers of our healthcare newsletters, and I highly recommend the strategy as long as you are thoughtful about your commitments and the value you provide. Dan Oshinsky’s Inbox Collective recently shared a useful guide outlining the event options to consider… Read

🧠 Get Smart

It’s rumored that life is more than newsletters (gasp), and so we need to seek inspiration from a variety of sources to breathe new life into our newsletter offerings…here’s what I’m reading:

• Newsletter Circle: After a brief hiatus, this newsletter is back and once again sharing detailed interviews with newsletter operators and creators.

• Marketing Machine: Twice weekly marketing deep dives and roundups to maximize your marketing channel strategies.

• The Affiliate Wire: Weekly tips illustrating how to leverage affiliate marketing in a variety of channels from social to email.

• Monetization Monthly - The Online Business Memo: Weekly insights from an expert affiliate marketer and coach that is using all of the marketing and tech tools at their disposal.

• AI Daybreak: Daily AI highlights to stay on top of the fastest moving technology arena.

🎉 Just For Fun

He Became King Of All Media Without A Newsletter, So Your Empire Has A Shot…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

They say charity begins at home, and apparently so does building a lucrative newsletter operation.

Local newsletters - some might call them hyper-local - can make for compelling businesses and so this issue focuses on three related case studies: two are killing it by focusing on one specific city, and the other is building a regional rollup through acquisition to dominate a prominent Northeast market.

There are certainly many ways to build a newsletter business and media company, and I’m looking forward to basking in all of them at the AMO Summit in NYC later today. This issue is a few hours later than it should be thanks to a great opening night cocktail party hosted by Matt McGarry of GrowLetter / Newsletter Operator. It was wonderful meeting with other newsletter operators and industry players at the party (including our Featured Partner Megahit) and I look forward to meeting more at the AMO Summit.

Speaking of events, there are some great upcoming bSK (beehiiv/Substack/Kit) learning events this month:

• 10/15: beehiiv - Growth On Autopilot

• 10/17: beehiiv - Newsletter Advertising 360

• 10/22: beehiiv - Social Media Leverage

• 10/29: beehiiv - Advancing With Analytics

For additional bSK resources, check out the beehiiv webinar page, the Substack resources page or the Kit training page.

I'm grateful to welcome new sponsor Rewardful and thank them for their support of the many hours it takes to produce this free newsletter. Rewardful is an affiliate marketing software platform built for digital creators and marketers to manage their affiliate programs seamlessly. As I’ve written before, affiliate e-commerce is a powerful monetization lever for newsletter operators and creators.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

3 Reasons To Redesign A Winning Newsletter: The Hustle has millions of subscribers and its acquisition by Hubspot represents one of the largest newsletter M&A deals to date. It seems clear that they have no intention of slowing down, which is why they redesigned the newsletter with three key drivers in mind… Read

A Giant Is Born: Zeta Global’s acquisition of LiveIntent has created one of the largest email/identity ad targeting platforms on the planet, falling just shy of the Big Tech platforms. Newsletter operators need to take notice, as this will be a platform used to serve ads in their newsletters… Read

beehiiv Introduces Custom Paywalls: Paid subscriptions are a key newsletter monetization strategy, but how the subscriptions are implemented and what they offer is as much art as it is science. beehiiv has introduced new custom paywall capabilities that allow for as permissive or restrictive an experience as the operator wants… Read

Kit Reveals Its App Store: Kit has unveiled an app store and corresponding new API to empower third-party developers to unleash their creativity in adding value to the Kit ecosystem. The intention is to facilitate the development of apps that do more than just import subscribers from third-party platforms, and they have some examples… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

CASE STUDY - How Naptown Scoop Makes $250K: When we think of successful local newsletters, Naptown Scoop readily comes to mind. Here’s how founder Ryan Sneddon’s ad strategy generates $250,000 per year… Read

CASE STUDY - The Secret To Selling Local Ads at BoiseDev: As the name suggests, the newsletter BoiseDev is focused on serving the Boise, Idaho area and is generating sixty percent of its revenue following a digital ad model worthy of its local focus… Read

CASE STUDY - Building The Boardwalk Empire Of Local News: Access Global is acquiring a portfolio of local news sites and newsletters to dominate the Philadelphia and Jersey Shore market. Check out the acquisition strategy building this portfolio … Read

Happy Birthday Trust Fun!: Cael Schwartz was laid off on October 14, 2023. Exactly one year later, he has built his irreverent entrepreneurial newsletter Trust Fun to 16,000 subscribers and is just getting started… Read

🧠 Get Smart

It’s rumored that life is more than newsletters (gasp), and so we need to seek inspiration from a variety of sources to breathe new life into our newsletter offerings…here’s what I’m reading:

• SkipBlast: Daily newsletter chronicling the victories and struggles of a local newsletter operator and online marketer.

• Marketing Machine: Twice weekly marketing deep dives and roundups to maximize your marketing channel strategies.

• The Affiliate Wire: Weekly tips illustrating how to leverage affiliate marketing in a variety of channels from social to email.

• Monetization Monthly - The Online Business Memo: Weekly insights from an expert affiliate marketer and coach that is using all of the marketing and tech tools at their disposal.

• AI Daybreak: Daily AI highlights to stay on top of the fastest moving technology arena.

🎉 Just For Fun

Fear Will Keep The Local Systems In Line…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Big Tech has FANG: Facebook / Amazon / Netflix / Google. Newsletter operators have BSK.

BSK is not a new K-pop group…it stands for beehiiv / Substack / Kit.

There are certainly many other respectable platforms that one can operate a newsletter on, like HubSpot, Ghost, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Iterable, and the list goes on for quite a while. I have and do run newsletters on several of them.

That said, beehiiv, Substack and Kit (BSK) are the platforms at the heart of the evolving newsletter ecosystem as I currently see it.

And with that in mind, B & K have come out swinging at each other over the past week.

The newsletter platform war has clearly been quietly percolating for anyone paying attention, and we’ve just witnessed the most public evidence of that last week. This issue’s Industry Roundup section recaps the opening rounds of what is sure to be a long and heated contest. Our Letter Ops section shows that there is still room for everyone in the sandbox by profiling successful newsletters operating on each of the beehiiv, Substack and Kit (BSK) platforms.

With that in mind, there are some great upcoming BSK learning events this month:

• 10/8: beehiiv - Q3 Roadmap Webinar

• 10/9: Kit - Roadmap Webinar

• 10/15: beehiiv - Growth On Autopilot

• 10/17: beehiiv - Newsletter Advertising 360

• 10/22: beehiiv - Social Media Leverage

• 10/29: beehiiv - Advancing With Analytics

For additional BSK resources, check out the beehiiv webinar page, the Substack resources page or the Kit training page.

My goal is to provide as unbiased a perspective as I can on any topics covered in this newsletter. I endorse both the beehiiv and ConvertKit platforms as an affiliate, and I do feel obligated to once again note that I am an investor in beehiiv.

I'm pleased to welcome returning sponsor 1440 and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. 1440 is the newsletter that brings you the most impactful stories of the day, distilled to deepen your understanding of the world and save you time with knowledge curated by humans and read by over 3.9 million subscribers.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

Round 1 - 3 Unethical Ways (Not) To Grow Your List: On 9/25, Louis Nicholls, co-founder of Sparkloop (now owned by Kit), shared an article about how unscrupulous newsletter operators can (but should not) use certain tactics to grow their newsletter. The article was inspired by the social media posts of 2 prominent Kit creators and investors, all of whom suggest that these nefarious tactics are being used mainly by beehiiv-based newsletters. Despite being an interesting read, it’s also a provocative one given that it was released the week before Kit’s big rebranding announcement… Read

Round 2 - ConvertKit Completes Kit Rebrand: On 10/1, ConvertKit completed its months-long public rebrand process to embrace its new name of Kit. In addition to a new name and logo, the Kit website and user experience received upgrades. Kit is positioning itself as the email-first operating system for creators, and here’s what that means… Read

Round 3 - Kit Launches New Affiliate Program: On 10/1, Kit also launched a new affiliate program along with its rebrand which matched beehiiv’s affiliate program (50% commission for 12 months) and also introduced a recurring component of an extra 10-20% beyond 12 months depending on affiliate tier status. Existing affiliates can also opt out of the new program, presumably to stay on the previous 30% commission for 24 months plan. Check out the full details of what is currently the most potentially lucrative BSK affiliate program, especially since Substack does not have an affiliate program… Read

Round 4 - The Convert To beehiiv Kit: On 10/1, beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk wasted no time announcing its “Convert To beehiiv Kit” with a cheeky video contrasting the merits of rebranding efforts vs. building useful new features. The “Convert To beehiiv Kit” offers free VIP migration to beehiiv, 6 months free platform use, Boost credits and more… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

beehiiv CASE STUDY - How Last Money In Is Generating $500K+ ARR: Newsletter operators Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis have capitalized on a lucrative investing niche (special purpose vehicles, or SPVs) and an existing audience of investors to monetize two beehiiv-based newsletter offerings: 1) Last Money In, a free newsletter that covers SPV topics in detail and generates six-figure sponsorships, and 2) Deal Sheet, a paid newsletter that offers a curated list of available SPV deals and generates over $500K in annual subscriptions. Another great example of riches in the niches… Read

SUBSTACK CASE STUDY - No Code Exits Sells For $35K: Katt Risen sold her Substack-based newsletter No Code Exits for $35K in August 2024. She provides a thorough retelling of her journey, detailing what inspired her to start a newsletter in the growing “no code” movement, how she monetized the newsletter, and why she decided to sell the newsletter and for how much. As it turns out, her no code journey isn’t over… Read

KIT CASE STUDY - Mother Of Five Makes $480K Working 20 Hours/Week: Gillian Perkins leverages Kit’s automation and tagging capabilities to target her product validation newsletter subscribers at the right point in the buying cycle. She has used these capabilities to monetize her newsletter via courses, memberships, ads and affiliate sales, and this is how she does it… Read

9 Newsletter Platforms To Consider: As mentioned in the Welcome section, there are many email platforms to consider for launching and operating your newsletter. While beehiiv / Substack / Kit (BSK) likely have the most newsletter-centric features, email platforms are very versatile and your needs can be met by other options. One of the challenges is that the features and pricing change frequently in this space; this recent roundup by BigMailer gives a fairly thorough roundup of options to consider… Read

🧠 Get Smart

It’s rumored that life is more than newsletters (gasp), and so we need to seek inspiration from a variety of sources to breathe new life into our newsletter offerings…here’s what I’m reading:

• Marketing Machine: Twice weekly marketing deep dives and roundups to maximize your marketing channel strategies.

• The Affiliate Wire: Weekly tips illustrating how to leverage affiliate marketing in a variety of channels from social to email.

• Monetization Monthly - The Online Business Memo: Weekly insights from an expert affiliate marketer and coach that is using all of the marketing and tech tools at their disposal.

• AI Daybreak: Daily AI highlights to stay on top of the fastest moving technology arena.

🎉 Just For Fun

Rumble In The Newsletter Platform Ring

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

The US ad market is having a very good year by any measure, with spending forecast to approach almost $400B and digital ad spending representing almost two-thirds of that amount as the chart below demonstrates. This spells incredible opportunity for newsletter operators and creators, and that’s what today’s issue is all about.

This issue has ad sales strategies and tactics for newsletter creators at all ends of the spectrum, from designing ads that get noticed to the secrets of ad pricing in niche audiences and embracing the wisdom of crafting customized ad programs and high performing ad sales teams.

I'm pleased to welcome returning sponsor HubSpot and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. HubSpot seamlessly connects your data, teams, and customers on one AI-powered customer platform that grows with your business.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?

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Download the offer for actionable insights and tips on harnessing AI for a more efficient, impactful professional life. 

📰 Industry Roundup

7 Step Plan To Stop The Ad Scroll: Ads need to perform, whether they are placed by sponsors or by you for products that you want to endorse in your newsletter. In order to perform, they need to be noticed and not scrolled past. These 7 tips will help… Read

The One-Person Billion-Dollar Company: OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has teased the notion of a one person billion dollar company becoming possible via massive AI enablement. This article explores the implications of what types of businesses might prosper as the cost of creation goes to zero. Of course, newsletter creators are among those that technically might be replaced in this disruption - or might find their skills at building audiences and identifying niche customer needs just the ticket for building 7-9 figure businesses… Read

Email vs. Search/Social Shiny Objects: Despite the empirical evidence that email converts better than any other marketing channel (as noted last issue) and is the preferred contact method among consumers, one email thought leader thinks that brands are losing focus on email in favor of shinier objects… Read

Bad Things Happen When Your Newsletter’s Front Man Leaves: Southbank Investment Research publishes a portfolio of free and paid newsletters and podcasts, including the Fleet Street Letter. The Fleet Street Letter was fronted by Nigel Farage, a provocative UK financier and politician who promised insights from within the corridors of power. The problem is that Farage hasn’t written an article since November 2023… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

Naptown Scoop’s Secret Ad Sales Formula: Naptown Scoop has built a thriving 6-figure newsletter based on solid ad sales while serving the Annapolis, MD region. Their simple secret: make sure the client makes more than the ad costs, using this approach… Read

CASE STUDY - Axios Boosted Pre-Booked Ad Revenues With Niche Audiences: Axios has focused their audience development on decision-making subject matter experts in lucrative market segments. As a result, they have 3x more ad revenue pre-booked for 2025 as they did at the same point in 2024. If you believe newsletter riches are in the niches, here’s your proof… Read

CASE STUDY - Maximizing Ad Sales And Audience Monetization at BenefitHub: Newsletter Business distills the key ad sales and monetization lessons shared on A Media Operator’s September 26th webinar with BusinessHub… Read

CASE STUDY - Business Insider’s AI Paywall Increased Conversions 75%: Business Insider has adopted a “smart paywall” strategy whereby AI dynamically determines which content appears outside their paywall to best incent conversion on a per subscriber basis. This approach has yielded up to 75% higher conversion rates for their subscriptions than their prior model of using paid content curated by editors. Here’s how they did it… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Someone Always Has It Worse…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

There are many opportunities and distractions for newsletter creators. This issue is dedicated to why it’s important that our newsletters remain central to our focus and business plans as a foundation for our growth. This week’s content focuses on why now is the best time to start your newsletter and new evidence as to why email remains the undisputed champion of customer conversion. There is also some interesting inspiration for how your newsletter can influence other media formats for your audience, such as video and books.

This is a message I take to heart this month, as I’ve only published 2 issues of Newsletter Business this month after six straight months without missing a weekly issue. I took the Labor Day holiday off and last week was preparing to host the world’s largest healthcare travel conference in Las Vegas this week, which complements 3 of the newsletters that I am responsible for publishing. This event brings in seven figures of revenue and so deserves that focus, but I am happy to be back to publishing Newsletter Business for my fellow creators and operators this week.

I'm pleased to welcome new sponsor Growth School and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. Growth School wants to make you part of the top 1% in your field by exposing you to the experts who are already there, and they are presently offering a great free AI bootcamp for founders as you will see below!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

Now Is The Best Time To Start Your Newsletter Business: Inc. Magazine highlights why the current generation of newsletters are valuable media properties… Read

Email Is King of Conversion: Landing page platform Unbounce has released it’s Conversion Benchmark Report, and newsletter creators should all rejoice but not be surprised that email tops all channels with a conversion rate of 19.3%. Check out just how badly email beats all other paid channels like search, social and display… Read

Substack Introduces Live Video In Its App: Substack has introduced a meaningful complement to newsletter content for its creators, allowing them to now livestream along with collaborators in their iOS and Android app. The capability is currently only available to Substack “best sellers” (those with 100+ paid subscriptions), but is intended for more creators in the future. There are many questions from Substack creators about what this move signals in the comments, including concern from core newsletter creators… Read

Ghost Puts Sales Tax On Autopilot: In our last issue we announced that Ghost has made it easier to get paid, and now it’s getting serious about collecting sales taxes on digital subscriptions and products via an integration with Stripe Tax. It may surprise some newsletter operators to know that paid newsletter subscriptions can be subject to sales tax, depending on where you live. We will write more about that in a future issue, but in the interim have included a handy reference link… Read | US Digital Product Sales Tax

⚒️ Letter Ops

18 Reasons Why Your Newsletter Is Not Only Viable, But Critical: Marketers and entrepreneurs have many channels to use to gain traction in their market, and every few years we are told that the email channel is dead. I’ve literally heard this for 25 years, and here’s why it’s still wrong… Read

CASE STUDY - How Can State House News Charge $4K / Year?: Do you know what a government affairs professional is? State House News does, particularly those in the state of Massachusetts who are paid subscribers to this 160-year-old news service that is the epitome of serving a niche market. As Newsletter Business has often stated, there are riches in the niches, and this niche also yielded an M&A transaction… Read

What If Your Newsletter Was Also A Book?: Your newsletter content can be compelling across many media formats, including book form. The Rabbit Holes newsletter put this to the test by producing a beautiful coffee table book curated from 50 issues of their newsletter. Check it out… Read

Subscriber Management For Daily vs. Weekly Newsletters: Every newsletter wants engaged subscribers, but the tactics for tracking and acting on that engagement can vary based on publishing cycle. Newsletter creator Daniel Roman defines engagement for his daily newsletter as anyone who doesn’t open within a 30 day period. That’s 30 chances to engage for a daily newsletter subscriber, but would be only 4 chances to engage for a weekly newsletter subscriber and so tactics might be different for a weekly newsletter. Here’s how he does it with automation… Read

P.S.> If you like Daniel’s approach and want to know how to do the same on your newsletter platform, simply reply to this email and tell me which newsletter platform you are using.

🎉 Just For Fun

When Your Events and Newsletters Need To Be Executed The Same Week

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Last Monday was the Labor Day holiday in the U.S., and even though this newsletter is a labor of love it's still labor so we took a week off after 26 weeks of publishing.

We're back this week with a look at playing the newsletter game at a high level. That includes a look at U.S. digital ad spending that continues to grow, as well as the latest in newsletter platform enhancements and tactics. For inspiration, the profiles of 3 newsletter operators who have leveraged their newsletters to create 6, 7 and 9-figure assets are featured.

I'm pleased to welcome returning sponsor 1440 back and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. 1440 publishes fact-driven news for the intellectually curious every day on topics such as culture, business, politics, science and sports. 3.8 million subscribers can't be wrong!

There are also some great free newsletter educational opportunities available this month:

• 9/10: Content That Kills: Tactics That Drive Huge Engagement (beehiiv)

• 9/10: How To Start & Grow A Newsletter To 10K Subs & $10K Monthly Revenue (Newsletter Operator)

• 9/12: How To Start & Grow A Newsletter To 10K Subs & $10K Monthly Revenue (Newsletter Operator)

• 9/17: List Building Masterclass: Proven Tactics To Grow Your Subscriber List (beehiiv)

• 9/24: Master The Inbox: Optimizing Email Deliverability and Open Rates (beehiiv)

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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If you're frustrated by one-sided reporting, our 5-minute newsletter is the missing piece. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you comprehensive, unbiased news—free from political agendas. Stay informed with factual coverage on the topics that matter.

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📰 Industry Roundup

Get Your Slice Of $397 Billion In Ad Spend: U.S. advertising continues to experience growth, and the good news is that digital advertising accounts for up to 67% of that spend in 2024. Newsletters as a category are still fighting for their share of that spend, but you need to first understand the trend to benefit… Read

Somebody Loves You On ConvertKit: It’s not always easy to identify fans of your work as a creator, but ConvertKit is making that a little easier by notifying you when someone starts recommending your newsletter… Read

Sneak Peek At beehiiv’s New Editor: beehiiv is making sweeping changes to the newsletter publishing process on its platform, introducing a multi-step post builder, inline comments and replies for collaboration on drafts, public drafts to share, and version history. These new features are in early access for Max and Enterprise plan customers, but get a sneak peek here… Read

Ghost Makes It Easier to Get Paid: One time payments have been possible on the Ghost platform for a while, if you got creative. The platform has now introduced support for a direct payment link that is usable by all publishers with a Stripe account. Here’s how Ghost publishers can make it easy for their subscribers to support them beyond subscriptions… Read

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With Content at Scale, in just 5 minutes, you can generate high-quality, engaging, research-backed 2,500-word-plus articles. Their AI immediately crawls Google and parses all the top-ranking content to generate 100% original articles from a single keyword, existing YouTube video, podcast episode, or URL.

This content can accelerate your newsletter and website initiatives dramatically.

Using Content at Scale’s innovative AI technology, an experienced writer can now generate and edit up to 10 long-form pieces of content in just one day. 🤯😍

Get started using Content at Scale now with our exclusive Newsletter Business offer for 20% more post credits for FREE on any plan you purchase!

SCALE YOUR CONTENT CREATION NOW!

⚒️ Letter Ops

Why I Shut Down My LinkedIn Newsletter In Favor Of Email: The founder of The Science Marketer shares the pluses and minuses of his experiences publishing on LinkedIn, as well as the metrics that led him to stop… Read

CASE STUDY - Ben Settle’s 6-Figure Print Newsletter Empire: Ben Settle is an expert copywriter who has been at the newsletter game a long time: print newsletters, that is. Ben has perfected the game of using a daily email to sell a monthly print newsletter that in turn sells other information products, generating at least $500K annually. Here’s a great breakdown of how he does it… Read

CASE STUDY - Tangle Has Hit $1M In Revenue, But What’s Next?: The political newsletter Tangle has achieved 6-figures in subscribers and 7-figures in revenues, which is success by any definition. Success brings its own challenges, and now Tangle’s founder is contemplating what comes next in terms of staffing, subscriber acquisition and unlocking his newsletter’s valuation… Read

The Daily Newsletter That Spawned Billions In Assets: Ray Dalio’s daily newsletter formed the foundation of what would become the world’s largest hedge fund, with over $100B in assets under management. A great example of how a newsletter can generate trust for its operator in any market… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

That Feeling When You Publish Your Newsletter After A Week Off…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Whatever your goals for your newsletter might be, serving the right niche audience will be the foundation for them. That’s why this issue is dedicated to finding your niche inspiration, whether that means identifying the right niche for you or refining the niche that you are already serving to reach its maximum potential.

This issue also highlights 2 educational opportunities available to all newsletter operators in September:

• The Newsletter Seminar, which will focus on how to effectively monetize your newsletter; and

• beehiiv’s September series of free webinars on growth, content, list building, and email deliverability

I’m pleased to welcome new sponsor Inbox Hacking and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. Inbox Hacking delivers power-packed marketing news, tools, & tactics — minus the yawns!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Marketing News, Insights, & Tactics (no yawns, guaranteed)

How ‘bout a super-useful marketing newsletter minus the weak takes and nap-inducing insights?

Inbox Hacking is your huckleberry. Marketing news, tactics, and strategies you can take action on.

Also, we highlight tools that lighten your workload and help boost revenue.

Subscribe to Inbox Hacking and you’ll get a free Test Drive of one such tool that can 10x your lead gen (Fortune 500 Companies use similar tech, so why shouldn’t you?).

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📰 Industry Roundup

Substack Has Been Busy Minting Millionaires In 2024: The number of Substack newsletter creators in the news and political arenas that are generating more than $1 million dollars has doubled in the past year, along with a doubling of subscribers in these categories. To put this in perspective, the total number of millionaire creators referenced is in the “double digits”, however each of those represents a six-figure commission check to Substack with their 10% commission policy. Check out which creators are making the cut and how… Read

Kit (ConvertKit) Offers A/B Testing On Your Schedule: Are you A/B testing your subject lines? Hopefully the answer is yes, and if you are operating on Kit then you now have the chance to conduct longer tests from 30 minutes to 4 hours to dial in the winning copy that will be shared with your audience… Read

beehiiv’s Newsletter Webinar Series: beehiiv is hosting a series of free webinars in September on topics of interest to all newsletter operators:

• 9/3: Growth Secrets: How to Scale Your Newsletter Quickly

• 9/10: Content That Kills: Tactics That Drive Huge Engagement

• 9/17: List Building Masterclass: Proven Tactics To Grow Your Subscriber List

• 9/24: Master The Inbox: Optimizing Email Deliverability and Open Rates

beehiiv’s New Subscriber Preference Center: beehiiv has addressed a gap in its feature set with the release of a powerful new subscriber preference center that allows a newsletter creator to define the preferences available to subscribers. This preference center can be used to manage contact information, subscriptions to multiple newsletters, and publishing frequency when coupled with beehiiv’s segmentation features… Read

Featured Partner

🎓 The Newsletter Seminar: September 2024

$999 EARLY BIRD PRICE EXTENDED - ENDS WEDNESDAY

LEARN EXPERT NEWSLETTER MONETIZATION TACTICS LIVE FROM:

You will also learn from a roster of other experts including:

• Brad Wolverton - Executive Director, Hubspot Media

• Dan Barry - Founder, Ad Sales As A Service

• Katy Huff - Cofounder, MadRev

The Newsletter Seminar takes place online and includes:

• 6 Live, Hour-long Sessions (Tuesday/Thursday Afternoons)

• Lifetime Session Recordings & Detailed Transcripts

• Community Access To Network With Newsletter Creators

• Detailed Guides Covering Top Newsletter Challenges

  • Email list growth

  • Sponsor prospecting

  • Advertiser outreach

  • Ad sales

  • Launching successful subscription/membership programs

    Learn More About the Speakers and Agenda

If you read this newsletter, then you don’t want to miss this online event!

REGISTER NOW!

⚒️ Letter Ops

3 Key Factors To Monetize Weird-Ass Niches: Is your niche really, really narrow? If so, you will enjoy this step by step example of how to think about monetizing the most specific of niches… Read

7 Top Newsletter Niche Ideas: Get inspired by this list of top newsletter niche ideas, along with guidance for how to select one or refine your own… Read

How To Create Your Niche Of One: Selecting the right niche for your newsletter, or for any creative pursuit, can be stressful and elusive. The right answer lies with you; here’s why creating an offering that serves your interests - and that you would use - can be the shortest path to your niche… Read

6 Questions To Help You Find Your Niche: This simple list, crafted for Substack publishers but applicable to all, will help clarify the niche you want to focus on or dial in the niche you have already started to serve… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Find Your Tribe

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome - Don’t Miss The Newsletter Seminar!

Newsletter Business exists to introduce newsletter creators and operators like you to the resources you need to thrive, and so I’m sending this special edition regarding a time-sensitive opportunity for you to do just that tonight!

The Newsletter Seminar is an online event taking place throughout September for newsletter operators just like you and me who want to be newsletter monetization experts and run lucrative newsletters.

Over 6 hours, a faculty of expert instructors will share what monetization strategies and tactics are working in today’s market and answer your questions!

Early Bird pricing ($999) ends tonight at 11PM ET.

You can learn more below, or check out The Newsletter Seminar site.

Prices increase to $1500 tomorrow, so check it out now!

I’m already registered and will see you at The Newsletter Seminar!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Featured Partner

🎓 The Newsletter Seminar: September 2024

EARLY BIRD PRICE OF $999 ENDS TONIGHT

LEARN EXPERT NEWSLETTER MONETIZATION TACTICS LIVE FROM:

You will also learn from a roster of other experts including:

• Brad Wolverton - Executive Director, Hubspot Media

• Dan Barry - Founder, Ad Sales As A Service

• Katy Huff - Cofounder, MadRev

The Newsletter Seminar takes place online and includes:

• 6 Live, Hour-long Sessions (Tuesday/Thursday Afternoons)

• Lifetime Session Recordings & Detailed Transcripts

• Community Access To Network With Newsletter Creators

• Detailed Guides Covering Top Newsletter Challenges

  • Email list growth

  • Sponsor prospecting

  • Advertiser outreach

  • Ad sales

  • Launching successful subscription/membership programs

    Learn More About the Speakers and Agenda

If you read this newsletter, then you don’t want to miss this online event!

REGISTER NOW!

🎉 Just For Fun

If You Know, You Know…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Building a successful newsletter takes time, often requiring years of investment of time, treasure and talent to reach its potential. It’s an endurance game during which life intervenes with job demands, vacations, illness and family needs…like moving a child to college as I did this weekend.

Next week will mark 26 straight weeks of publishing this newsletter every Monday since acquiring it (well, twice it wasn’t Monday in my time zone, but it was still Monday somewhere in the US). With that in mind this issue is dedicated to honing the mindset and dedication that will carry your newsletter over the long haul, with over 16 tips to help you avoid burnout and thrive happily on that journey!

I’m pleased to welcome new sponsor 1440 and thank them for their support in keeping this newsletter free. 1440 publishes fact-driven news for the intellectually curious every day on topics such as culture, business, politics, science and sports. 3.8 million subscribers can’t be wrong!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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All your news. None of the bias.

Be the smartest person in the room by reading 1440! Dive into 1440, where 3.5 million readers find their daily, fact-based news fix. We navigate through 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive roundup from every corner of the internet – politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a quick, 5-minute newsletter. It's completely free and devoid of bias or political influence, ensuring you get the facts straight.

Subscribe to 1440 today.

📰 Industry Roundup

5 Tiers of Influencer Marketing - Did You Know You’re A Pundit?: The global influencer market is expected to reach $24B this year, which is good news for newsletter operators and creators since we’re considered influencers in Digiday’s segmentation of the market. Specifically, we’re in the commentators/pundits category, although I can also see us in their B2B/SME segment. With $24B at stake, it’s a good time to understand where you fit in… Read

The Mixed Bag Reality of LinkedIn Newsletters: LinkedIn newsletters have grown in popularity and continue to evolve with respect to features, but newsletter operators leveraging them today have some specific tradeoffs to make in terms of resources devoted to them. The promise of expanded reach vs. the reality of limited engagement and lack of owned audience gives publishers pause, as this roundup of newsletter publishers indicates… Read

You Can Now Publish On Substack Without A Publication: Substack has made it possible to publish posts on the web or mobile version of your profile, in addition to gaining subscribers and collecting free/paid subscribers, without first setting up a publication. This latest platform update could mark a pivotal expansion, but is also sparking controversy for making Substack too much like a social network as evidenced in the comments… Read

Kit / ConvertKit - First Party Data Integration: We’re in year 4 of the mad scramble among advertising platforms to establish reliable tracking in the wake of Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies (which Google has officially backed off of now, for the moment at least). The smart money is on leveraging first party data that publishers collect from their subscribers; Kit just released an update to make that easier with the MediaVine & Raptive ad platforms.… Read

Featured Partner

🌟 Unlock the Power of AI-Driven Content Creation: Save Time, Money & Skyrocket Your Success

Newsletter Operators Need Scalable Newsletter & SEO Content

AI has already completely revolutionized how we all create content.

But in all honesty, ChatGPT is not good at long-form content.

With Content at Scale, in just 5 minutes, you can generate high-quality, engaging, research-backed 2,500-word-plus articles. Their AI immediately crawls Google and parses all the top-ranking content to generate 100% original articles from a single keyword, existing YouTube video, podcast episode, or URL.

This content can accelerate your newsletter and website initiatives dramatically.

Using Content at Scale’s innovative AI technology, an experienced writer can now generate and edit up to 10 long-form pieces of content in just one day. 🤯😍

Get started using Content at Scale now with our exclusive Newsletter Business offer for 20% more post credits for FREE on any plan you purchase!

SCALE YOUR CONTENT CREATION NOW!

⚒️ Letter Ops

10 Steps To Being A Happy Newsletter Writer: The founder of Weekly Filet shares tips for avoiding newsletter burnout after a decade of publishing… Read

6 Perspective Hacks To Drive Your Momentum: Traction can be slow for any online creator, and intimidating to boot while operating in the public eye. Dickie Bush will keep you moving forward with these mindset hacks… Read

CASE STUDY - A Media Operator Turns Five: Jacob Donnelly’s A Media Operator (AMO) celebrated its fifth birthday earlier this month, a great milestone for any independent media venture. Jacob shares why and how he started AMO, where AMO is at today including revenue breakdown, and where it’s going as the journey continues … Read

The Secret To A Successful Newsletter Is Consistency: The simple things can often be the hardest over the long haul, and publishing consistently is one of those things. The founder of For The Interested shares the many benefits that consistency offers your newsletter… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

The Highs & Lows of Newsletter Metrics

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

We’re all busy, especially given that many newsletter operators and creators are building their newsletter empires as a side hustle. As a result, the more we can follow proven, time-saving steps to advance our agenda, the happier we will be.

With that in mind, this issue contains 5 proven blueprints that have built up to 7 figure newsletter businesses. Study them, copy what will work for you, and take action!

It’s also time to announce the 3 winners of our greatest newsletter challenge contest, so be sure to check out the Just For Fun section.

I’m pleased to once again thank our sponsor AdQuick for their support in keeping this newsletter free. AdQuick seamlessly connects advertisers to out-of-home (OOH) media owners anywhere in the U.S. and abroad, making it easy to plan, buy, and measure every kind of outdoor advertising (such as billboards). 

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Run IRL ads as easily as PPC

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can plan, deploy and measure campaigns as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

You can learn more at AdQuick.com

📰 Industry Roundup

5 Best Newsletters Named By Content Marketing Awards: The Content Marketing Institute held its annual awards last week and named 1 winner and 4 finalists in the category of Best E-Newsletter, which are listed below. IMHO, given the state of the art in newsletters these days, these selections are quite curious:

• WINNER: THE EDIT (Published by Vattenfall)

• FINALISTS:

  • AKSHA (Published by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

  • Paramount Loglines (Published by Paramount)

  • Leveraging Industry Insights To Influence Inboxes (Published by Brilliant Content Agency)

  • The Exchange (Published by University of British Columbia)

You can learn more about the award criteria and other categories… Read

How Substack Fumbled A Billion Dollar Opportunity: Platforms follow their own blueprints and roadmaps for success; the founder of Houck’s Newsletter recently shared his perspective on the different paths taken by Substack and beehiiv. Given Substack’s 4 year head start, it’s an interesting perspective on the interplay between first-mover advantage and opinionated product development that in Houck’s opinion has ultimately given beehiiv the edge. Note: beehiiv’s Scale plan is used as the based of cost comparisons… Read

The Ladders of Wealth Creation Blueprint: Nathan Barry, founder of Kit/ConvertKit, breaks down the framework that he and many other creators have used to make millions… Read

LinkedIn Introduces Sponsorship of User Newsletters: Continuing its newsletter focus that has seen 184,000 LinkedIn newsletters emerge to date, LinkedIn has expanded the concept of newsletter sponsorship from just company pages to those newsletters created by individual users. Brands can now sponsor thought leaders in their niche, unlocking real potential.… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

The 10-Step Complete & Simple 5-Figure Newsletter Blueprint: Jamie Northrup, founder of Minimalist Hustler, shares the 10-step blueprint that he uses for his newsletter business… Read

CASE STUDY - $1,000,000 Newsletter Business Blueprint: Tim Stoddart, founder of The Census newsletter, details how this addition to his newsletter mini-empire will be leveraged to generate 7 figures in revenue… Read

CASE STUDY - $40K MRR Newsletter Creator Blueprint: Michael Saruggia, founder of the Clay Wizards newsletter, offers his step by step process for building and monetizing an audience around the Clay AI data enrichment platform used for sales outbounding… Read

10-Step Blueprint for Subscriber Acquisition and Retention: Joe Forrest, founder of the Niche of One newsletter, shares his 10-step blueprint for growing and engaging with his subscribers… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Congratulations to Our Three Newsletter Challenge Winners!

Thank you to everyone who took a moment to share their greatest newsletter challenge with me as part of our first Newsletter Business contest. That feedback will help to inform useful content in future issues, and I’m always happy to get to know Newsletter Business subscribers better and share advice where I can.

Without further ado, the lucky winners of the newsletter challenge contest are:

• Daniel Szczesniak

• Chris Schroder

• Dale Dubilowski

Daniel, Chris and Dale will each receive a $50 Amazon gift card as their prize - congratulations!

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the Olympics coverage at all times of the day and night, and that viewing led to an inspiration for this very issue.

While watching the mixed triathlon event, I was astounded that the difference between winning the gold medal vs. the silver and bronze medals (which were tied) was merely one hundredth of a second for a race that took 85 minutes overall. That’s a great reminder that with so many things, including newsletters, victory can be determined by the slightest and simplest of factors.

With that in mind, this issue is filled with simple tips, new platform features, avoidable pitfalls and easy to understand lessons from other newsletter creators that can be brought to bear for the success of your newsletter. Your mileage may vary, but success with these tactics is easily within your grasp.

I’m pleased to once again thank our sponsor HubSpot for their support in keeping this newsletter free. HubSpot has creatively integrated AI capabilities into its suite of marketing tools that are worth a look by all newsletter creators.

There are 2 ways for you to win in this very issue:

• Hit reply and tell me your greatest newsletter challenge to be entered into our current contest for a chance to win one of three $50 Amazon gift cards. Check out the Just For Fun section for more details.

• Use your referral link at the bottom of this issue to refer subscribers to this newsletter and qualify to win these rewards:

  • Newsletter Shoutout (3 entries)

  • Copy of The Newsletter Is The Business (25 entries)

  • Newsletter Business T-Shirt (50 entries)

  • 60 Minute Coaching Session (100 entries)

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Use AI as Your Personal Assistant

Ready to embrace a new era of task delegation?

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Learn how to integrate AI technology into your processes, allowing you to optimize resource allocation and maximize output with precision and ease.

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📰 Industry Roundup

Does An AI-Powered Newsletter Have Any Moat?: Trending Now has crafted a network of newsletters that deliver aggregated news to an audience of 1 million subscribers. That’s impressive by any means, but they have achieved that without a single journalist or editor, relying entirely on AI. This use of AI is a tactic that many newsletters would like to copy, but is it actually a dead end… Read

Kit / ConvertKit - Editing A Scheduled Post: We’ve all done this - scheduled a post and then realized we wanted to make a last minute change before publication. Depending on what platform you are on, this simple need can require some hoop jumping at best or cursing the inability to do so at worst. Even Kit required you to unschedule that post before editing, until now… Read

Substack - Prediction Market Embeds: Substack has introduced the ability to embed Polymarket’s prediction markets as a widget. These widgets predict the probability of a certain outcome and allow users to bet on them. While this can be alluring content, the more interesting point is why engineering resources are being used on a feature like this as the newsletter platform wars heat up. The comments of Substack users on this post suggest this wasn’t their #1 requested feature… Read

Sample Polymarket Widget

beehiiv - Audio Newsletters: Hot on the heels of its newsletter mobile app release, beehiiv has now introduced the ability to have an audio version of your newsletter. An audio player will be displayed atop the web and mobile app versions of those newsletters that publish after enabling the feature. Newsletter Business has enabled this feature starting with this issue.… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

5 Simple Tweaks To Optimize Your Newsletter: Victory comes from little things that stack up over the long haul, and these 5 tweaks are a good reminder of the simple optimizations relevant for every newsletter. When’s the last time you checked your welcome email… Read

CASE STUDY: 10 Lessons Learned Building Lenny’s Newsletter: Lenny Rachitsky shared 10 lessons that he learned on his path to 500,000 newsletter subscribers, and he has since grown to over 700,000 subscribers using the same tactics. You don’t need to be a newsletter Olympian to apply these simple lessons, but that which is simple is not always easy… Read

What You Need To Know About Email Deliverability: Great email deliverability is a foundation for success in 2024, and not something you can just delegate to a platform. This simple guide will explain this topic in a way that makes sense to even non-technical newsletter creators… Read

8 Proven Subject Lines At a Glance: Assuming that your email gets delivered, the next major obstacle is getting it opened. Having a great subject line is your key to achieving that, and this simple reference card for subject lines will make it easier than ever before… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Final Week: Share Your Greatest Newsletter Challenge For A Chance To Win One Of Three $50 Amazon Gift Cards

The Newsletter Challenge Contest continues, but only for 1 more week: Simply hit reply and tell me your most pressing newsletter challenge. 

There’s no right answer, just the one challenge that concerns you most - and that challenge may earn you $50!

3 Lucky Respondents Will Be Randomly Selected To Each Win A $50 Amazon Gift Card!

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

What do you wish you knew before starting your newsletter?

This issue is organized to explore the key themes that would be helpful to explore if you were starting your newsletter today, and certainly it’s never too late to apply the 69+ actionable insights that span the newsletter lifecycle of knowing your why, selecting your niche, planning and launching your newsletter, growing and monetizing it, and then contemplating an exit.

I’m pleased to once again thank our sponsor AdQuick for their support in keeping this newsletter free. AdQuick seamlessly connects advertisers to out-of-home (OOH) media owners anywhere in the U.S. and abroad, making it easy to plan, buy, and measure every kind of outdoor advertising (such as billboards).

There are 2 ways for you to win in this very issue:

• Hit reply and tell me your greatest newsletter challenge to be entered into our current contest for a chance to win one of three $50 Amazon gift cards. Check out the Just For Fun section for more details.

• Use your referral link at the bottom of this issue to refer subscribers to this newsletter and qualify to win these rewards:

  • Newsletter Shoutout (3 entries)

  • Copy of The Newsletter Is The Business (25 entries)

  • Newsletter Business T-Shirt (50 entries)

  • 60 Minute Coaching Session (100 entries)

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Modernize your marketing with AdQuick

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

Learn more now.

📰 Industry Roundup

WHY - Case(y) Study - Why Casey Newton Started Platformer: Your motivation for starting your newsletter is one of your best weapons for fighting the main killer of newsletters: lack of commitment. Casey Newton had a strong motivation for starting tech newsletter Platformer, which is sent several times per week to 170k+ subscribers and generates 6 figures in revenue… Read

CHOOSE YOUR NICHE - 7 Best Newsletter Niches In 2024: Selecting the wrong niche to serve can sow the seeds of failure for your newsletter before it starts. The audience and niche you serve should reflect your personal interests and expertise, as well as commercial potential. This step-by-step guide will help you to select your niche, with a list of the 7 most profitable niches in 2024 to help lead the way… Read

PLAN & LAUNCH - 34 Tips For Starting a Newsletter in 2024: There are an overwhelming number of choices to consider when launching a newsletter, from email platform to newsletter design to content strategy and more. This concise checklist reviews 34 key considerations that will shape your launch plan… Read

JOB TO BE DONE - Case Study - What Makes The Flip Side Different?: Every newsletter needs a differentiating hook to stand out from the crowd, a unique job that it does that provides value to its audience. The Flip Side is a daily curated political newsletter with a mission to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives. Unlike many newsletters, they’ve raised almost one million dollars in capital (see pitch deck). Their approach and content strategy is working, with over 250,000 subscribers and 6 figures in revenue… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

MONETIZE - How Niche Newsletters Make Money: The best way to monetize a newsletter can be learned by studying what is working for other newsletters serving your niche, which is exactly what this operator did when he studied 500 newsletters serving his market… Read

GROWTH (ORGANIC) - 28 Ways To Grow Your Newsletter Organically: Most newsletter operators need to grow their newsletters with the resources at hand, which is usually comprised of their quick wit and elbow grease. These 28 tips for free organic growth will help you make the most of both… Read

GROWTH (PAID) - Ultimate Guide To Performance Marketing: Paid newsletter growth via Google and Meta ads can be fast if you have the budget for it and do it right, so learn from the head of performance marketing at Shopify how to start and scale your paid efforts wisely… Read

EXIT - Should I Sell My Newsletter For $100k?: Is your newsletter built to sell? Michael Parrish bought the newsletter BotEatBrain in April for $40k, paid off the acquisition earlier this month, and now has received an acquisition offer for $100k. While this is a high order problem to have, his public deliberation on whether to sell is a great insight into the mind of a newsletter operator contemplating the satisfaction of running his own show, the thrill of a great flip, and the simultaneous risk and promise of future potential… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Contest: Share Your Greatest Newsletter Challenge For A Chance To Win $50

The Newsletter Challenge Contest continues: Simply hit reply and tell me your most pressing newsletter challenge. 

There’s no right answer, just the one challenge that concerns you most - and that challenge may earn you $50!

3 Lucky Respondents Will Be Randomly Selected To Each Win A $50 Amazon Gift Card!

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Your newsletter fortunes depend on getting your email opened, so this issue will share the latest open rate optimization research and advice. In addition to a review of Q2 open rates, 18 strategies and tactics are shared for boosting your open rates. Your open rates will soar if you embrace the 14 tips for split testing subject lines and subscriber management best practices and case study.

If you’re looking to earn an easy $50, check out the Just For Fun section for our first Newsletter Business contest!

I’m pleased to welcome back sponsor AdQuick, which seamlessly connects advertisers to out-of-home (OOH) media owners anywhere in the U.S. and abroad, making it easy to plan, buy, and measure every kind of outdoor advertising (such as billboards). Complementing newsletters with offline media is a smart strategy for every marketer.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

Was this newsletter forwarded by a friend? Sign Up Here To Receive It Weekly

Run IRL ads as easily as PPC

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can plan, deploy and measure campaigns as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

You can learn more at AdQuick.com

📰 Industry Roundup

Q2 2024 Newsletter Open Rates: Omeda’s latest Email Engagement Report has been updated to provide Q2 email engagement rates. Based on their data sample of Omeda clients, the average unique newsletter open rate is 31.15%, representing a slight dip from Q1 which could be seasonal with the onset of summer. The average total newsletter open rate sits at 45.62%. A large historical spike in both metrics can be seen in Q3-Q4 2021, which is when Apple Mail Privacy Protection was launched and caused email tracking images to be auto-loaded.

The unique open metric counts the first open from a distinct subscriber and is helpful for deliverability and engagement, whereas total newsletter opens represents additional opens from that individual or those they forward the newsletter to and is useful to gauge recurring interest. Confirm which context your ESP platform’s open metric represents; for example, beehiiv’s open rate stat reflects unique open rate. Check out the rest of the report and play with the interactive engagement metrics… Read

10 Easy Tweaks To Boost Your Open Rate: Tracking your newsletter’s open rate is important, but you need to understand what it represents as well as how to improve it. Improving open rate is easier said than done, so these 10 tweaks will give you a great head start… Read

8 Strategies To Beat An Average Open Rate: There are more than 10 tricks to improve your open rate as noted above, and many perspectives on which strategies work best. Here are 8 more strategies to consider; the only right answers are those that resonate with your audience once you take action… Read

Newsletters Are Favored Channel Of Independent Publishers: It may not be a surprise to readers of this newsletter that the newsletter channel is the top dog with independent publishers, but the degree of dominance as well as which channel is #2 are important for newsletter operators to appreciate… Read

beehiiv Introduces Newsletter Mobile Apps: A new feature just launched this morning gives every newsletter on the platform its own branded iOS / Android mobile app for subscribers to install. The app comes fully equipped with real-time push notifications for subscribers to receive opt-in notifications for new published posts and replies to their comments. Subscribers who install your app will be automatically logged in, and all page views and clicks will be tracked as Web Engagement. The app must first be enabled in Design settings … Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

14 Subject Line Split Tests To Make Your Open Rate Skyrocket: Compelling subject lines get emails opened, but the best ones are the result of A/B split testing to see what works best with your audience. Here are 14 data-backed split tests to inspire your subject line experiments… Read

Do Newsletter Domain Names Impact Deliverability?: One of the best tactics to control your newsletter deliverability is to send it from a custom domain that has been properly warmed up with ISPs and your audience. While that’s a worthwhile effort, does the domain name itself matter in the equation? The answer is yes, particularly with lesser known domain extensions… Read

Prune Your List & Let Your Open Rate Bloom: A surefire method to improve your open rate is to remove those subscribers that don’t engage from your list. This process must be employed very intentionally however to not alienate legitimate subscribers, and so the creation of a Sunset Policy can help… Read

CASE STUDY - Automation Keeps Sunday Sales Delight’s List Fresh: A fresh list of active, engaged subscribers does wonders for deliverability, but most newsletter operators are not as aggressive or disciplined in pruning their lists as they should be. The newsletter Sunday Sales Delight has used 2 simple automations to identify subscribers who are not engaged and re-engage or prune them on auto-pilot. Using this process, they have reduced their original list by 75% but are laser-focused on the engaged remainder… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Contest: What’s Your Greatest Newsletter Challenge?

We newsletter operators deal with a lot of challenges, so I won’t make this contest one of them: Simply hit reply and tell me your most pressing newsletter challenge. 

There’s no right answer, just the one challenge that concerns you most - and that challenge may earn you $50!

3 Lucky Respondents Will Be Randomly Selected To Each Win A $50 Amazon Gift Card!

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

The events of this weekend demonstrate that the times we live in can be scary. As newsletter operators, the content and fortune of our newsletters can reflect both the mood of the markets we serve as well as our own personal sentiments. Which is why in this challenging time, I choose optimism; optimism for the country I live in and for the newsletter I write, because as a citizen and operator I have a role to play in manifesting that optimism for both.

Given that spirit of optimism, the theme of today's issue is newsletter acquisition. Acquiring any asset is done with a spirit of optimism and hope for the potential that new asset brings to the buyer; that certainly was the case when I acquired this newsletter in March and remains so. For the seller, the sale marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, which is inherently an optimistic time given proceeds from a sale.

This issue is full of newsletter valuation factors, a review of acquisition types, 3 acquisition case studies, and at least one solicitation to buy your newsletter.

I’m pleased to welcome back sponsor TheRundown, which gives its subscribers a daily edge in keeping ahead of the latest AI developments.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

20 Newsletter Valuation Factors: Newsletters are valuable digital assets, and digital asset marketplaces like Micron are well-positioned to observe the factors that drive deal flow and valuation. Here are 20 factors to consider… Read

2 Types of Newsletter Acquisitions: Newsletter acquisitions are never black and white, but they do tend to fall into two broad categories: List acquisitions or brand acquisitions. Use this outline to make sure you’re clear on which category your deal represents and what the benchmarks are for that type of deal… Read

NY Times Tests AI-Written Headlines: Just as flagship publishers including the NY Times battle AI learning models that are being trained on their content without consent, evidence suggests that these same publishers are experimenting with AI to drive publishing efficiencies just as newsletter operators of all sizes are… Read

Boost Email Opens By 18% With This Simple Tactic: After overcoming deliverability hurdles, your newsletter’s performance depends on the email being actually opened. The subject line is often the make or break catalyst for that open, and a little curiosity can help boost those open rates… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

CASE STUDY - 13 Lessons From 2 Newsletter Exits: Matt Merrick started, grew and sold 2 newsletters in an 8 month period. Here are the lucky 13 lessons he learned on his journey… Read

CASE STUDY - The Slice Gets Acquired Via X Post: Jared Bauman saw a “Newsletter For Sale” post on X from The Slice’s founder Sean Markey and the rest was history. Jared shares details of his diligence and negotiation process, as well as his plans to warm up this inactive newsletter for solopreneurs and make it thrive… Read

CASE STUDY - The Other Side Of A $40K Newsletter Acquisition: Newsletter acquisitions are a rollercoaster ride filled with thrills, expected and otherwise. Michael Parrish bought the daily AI newsletter BotEatBrain back in April for $40,000. A few short weeks later, he found his emails being labeled as unsafe and facing a mass of unsubscribes. He battled back and generated enough revenue over 3 months to cover the acquisition price and has captured his journey in a series of posts… Challenge / Victory

Looking to Sell Your Newsletter?: A number of established Internet marketers are offering to buy newsletters in a few categories. It can be a great signal of confidence when industry veterans are investing in the channel. A boom in newsletter exits has been expected for a while, although at the lower end of the market as less-experienced operators move on to new ventures. Opportunities like these abound, though bear in mind responses count as seller-initiated inquiries… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

There Was A Time When Unsubscribes Were Even More Painful Than Today…

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Last week’s issue celebrated the freedom that newsletters can afford, and we continue that vibe this week by highlighting 40 revenue-generating newsletters of different sizes that are enjoying varying degrees of financial success, from generating thousands to many millions of dollars in revenue per year.

I’m pleased to welcome new sponsor AdQuick, which seamlessly connects advertisers to out-of-home (OOH) media owners anywhere in the U.S. and abroad, making it easy to plan, buy, and measure every kind of outdoor advertising (such as billboards). With so much focus on online advertising in the newsletter arena, offline channels can serve as uncontested sources of new subscribers.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Modernize your marketing with AdQuick

AdQuick unlocks the benefits of Out Of Home (OOH) advertising in a way no one else has. Approaching the problem with eyes to performance, created for marketers with the engineering excellence you’ve come to expect for the internet.

Marketers agree OOH is one of the best ways for building brand awareness, reaching new customers, and reinforcing your brand message. It’s just been difficult to scale. But with AdQuick, you can easily plan, deploy and measure campaigns just as easily as digital ads, making them a no-brainer to add to your team’s toolbox.

Learn more now.

📰 Industry Roundup

37 Newsletters Making Bank: This collection of 37 revenue-generating newsletters demonstrates there is a spectrum of newsletter revenue opportunities, from those making $1,200 per year to $49,000,000. Take inspiration from these successful operators at different points on their revenue journey and then chart your own… Read

Apple Mail App Picks Up The Tab, But Is It Stiffing Operators?: Apple’s Mail app will adopt a tabbed interface similar to Gmail’s with iOS 18 this Fall, with its own AI algorithm and configuration options that will determine which tab your newsletter appears in. The 4 tabs will be Primary, Transactional, Updates and Promotions. Newsletter operators will likely need to update their deliverability guidance that is provided to subscribers based upon these changes… Read

Newsletter Coverage So Good It Warrants a Cease & Desist: Fintech newsletter Fintech Business Weekly has covered the unfolding Evolve Bank data breach so well that it earned itself a cease & desist letter from the bank… Read

beehiiv - Pay What You Want & Premium Gifts: beehiiv has made it possible to offer premium content on a “name your price” basis for subscribers. This could be helpful for operators experimenting with paid subscriptions to gather price research from their subscribers; it can also function as a tip jar for free newsletters. In addition, premium referral awards are now available that offer free, trial or discounted premium content access… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

Need The Right Newsletter Sponsors? Ask Your Audience: Marketing Max demonstrates the quick and easy method for using his audience to determine which newsletter advertisers would be of interest to them… Read

CASE STUDY - One Man’s $20M+ Newsletter Empire: The Van Trump Report has taken on iconic status among those in the know in the newsletter industry. This daily newsletter is written by one man, Kevin Van Trump, who has leveraged his experience as a trader and his agriculture industry connections to translate investment-speak into highly valuable, highly unique insights for farmers and those trading commodities. His newsletter has 30,000-40,000 paying subscribers ($60 monthly / $600 annually - up from $40/$400 originally), and he has parlayed that into an industry conference called FarmCon as well as an agri-brand merch business called AgSwag. Here’s how he did it in 2 formats; a brief written summary and associated video interview… Read / Watch

CASE STUDY - The Mill’s Growth Roadmap: The Mill is a Substack-based local UK newsletter that initially produced original news reporting for Manchester on a bootstrapped funding basis. and then gradually expanded to cover other cities as it took on outside funding. Its subscriber base has more than doubled from 2022 to 2024, and it now enjoys over 5,000 paying subscribers. The multi-year roadmap for that growth and geographical expansion is covered in these 2 articles… Roadmap / Expansion

CASE STUDY - The Daily Upside Has Millions in Revenue And Subs: The Daily Upside is a Campaign Monitor-based newsletter published 6 times per week that covers business, financial, and economic news. With over 1 million subscribers and expected annual revenues exceeding $3 million, the newsletter’s growth has been fueled by savvy distribution partnerships with partners such as The Motley Fool and a focus on original content. Here’s how they’ve built a very large and profitable newsletter… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Sonic The Hedgehog Takes Newsletter Subs Personally:

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

This is a big week in the United States as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, so thank you to all who celebrate for your attention as visions of barbecued meats dance in our heads. This is a holiday that celebrates freedom, and the freedom that our newsletters afford us is the topic of today’s issue.

Financial and creative freedom are incredibly important to newsletter operators, and so I’m pleased to share 3 case studies that explore newsletter journeys for operators at the 5, 6 and 7-figure levels of newsletter business value. In addition, freeing time via the use of newsletter writers is one of our features today, and I’ve also saved you time by summarizing a 31 minute ConvertKit platform presentation into a 3 minute read for you.  

I’m pleased to welcome new sponsor Smart Recognition, which allows newsletter operators to identify and monetize anonymous traffic to their websites.

School’s out for the summer, not only for the graduate innovation classes that I teach at NYU but also for Matt McGarry’s latest Newsletter Growth System cohort that ended last week. It was my pleasure to serve as a coach for this second cohort program and I congratulate all of the newsletter operators that invested in themselves and their businesses by upping their operator game!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

10 Great Sources Of Newsletter Writing Experts: A newsletter operator’s most valuable asset is time. Researching, writing and publishing an issue can be incredibly time consuming on a continual, recurring basis. Getting help with content writing can unlock tremendous time freedom, and here are 10 resources to consider that can help lighten your content load… Read

Hubspot - Investigating Second Breach In 3 Months: Hubspot has proactively reported that it is currently investigating unauthorized access to customer accounts. In March, Hubspot reported another incident involving fewer than 30 cryptocurrency customer accounts that had been compromised in a targeted effort to acquire their subscriber contact information. Available details of both breaches can be reviewed here… Current / March

beehiiv - Expands Website Builder Via TypeDream Acquisition: beehiiv continues its focus on its website builder platform capabilities with the acquisition of TypeDream, an AI-based drag and drop website builder currently supporting tens of thousands of websites. Native integration of the platform’s templates, AI tools and analytics are expected in several months… Read

ConvertKit - The Next 10 Years In 3 Minutes: Earlier this month, ConvertKit CEO Nathan Barry conducted a session at the Craft & Commerce conference sharing his thoughts on the evolution of the ConvertKit platform. I’ve condensed the 31 minute session into the top 8 takeaways you can quickly scan in 3 minutes… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

7-Figure Newsletter Roadmap: If you are dreaming of financial freedom, there are many examples of newsletter operators that are operating or who have sold newsletter businesses worth millions of dollars. Very few would describe the process as easy, but there are established steps you can take to put you on that path and they are outlined here… Read

CASE STUDY - Play Ball! $200K+ Newsletter Moves To New Platform: Cup of Coffee is a daily baseball and culture newsletter started 4 years ago when its founder Craig Calcaterra was laid off from his job at NBC Sports. He has since built the newsletter into a free and paid offering which generates over $200k per year. He migrated the newsletter from Substack to beehiiv earlier this year in response to creative and commercial concerns, and shares his motivations and process for doing so; the comments are also a helpful read for the feedback that subscribers share post-migration… Read

CASE STUDY - Evolution Of A Newsletter Business Model: Simon Owens shares his decade-long newsletter business model journey, from free newsletter to sponsor-driven to paid subscription. His media newsletter has over 10,000 subscribers, and he has re-tooled his business model this year to focus on a paid subscription offering that is clearly defined and aligns with the way he wants to spend his time to unlock financial and creative freedom… Read

CASE STUDY - Cord Cutter Weekly, A Tale Of 2 Newsletters: Jared Newman has built 2 related newsletters in the TV streaming business: Cord Cutter Weekly, which is free with 32,000 subscribers, and The Advisorator, a spinoff tech advice newsletter with 1200 paying subscribers generating over $60,000 per year. Here’s how he did it… Watch

🎉 Just For Fun

Somebody Wants Your Attention: As a newsletter operator you should be flattered - there is a war for your attention going on! In case you’ve missed our Industry Roundup section each week, there is no shortage of new announcements between rival newsletter platforms regarding new features, acquisitions or subscription plan changes. Specifically, the tug of war between beehiiv and newly re-branded Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is starting to resemble this:

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Summer is in full effect for many of us and hopefully that means lots of sun and fun spent with family and friends. While enjoying some well-earned R&R during these summer months, we can’t let all of that sunshine cast a shadow on the other meaning of R&R - Readers & Revenue - and that’s what today’s issue is all about!

New affiliate and ad revenue opportunities that you need to be aware of are being made available by Amazon and Google this summer and outlined in the Industry Roundup section. In addition, Letter Ops contains 17 newsletter content ideas that will hopefully get you out of the office sooner while keeping your readers engaged. While you are using that extra time to lay on a beach, take a moment to ponder the broader topics of context over content as well as the lessons being learned by successful niche publishers.

I’m pleased to welcome back returning sponsor beehiiv, and thank them for supporting this newsletter not only as a sponsor but also as the innovative newsletter platform upon which this newsletter operates and thrives.

There is also a very time-sensitive learning opportunity for you to be aware of:

• CommaCon kicks off today with a free 4 day series through June 27 featuring top newsletter creators who will cover topics such as newsletter strategy, content, growth and monetization.

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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Why are all your favorite newsletters switching to beehiiv?

It’s because the founding beehiiv team were all early Morning Brew employees who helped scale that newsletter to over 4 million daily subscribers.

Years of trial and error went into building the precise tools, dashboards, and analytics needed to accomplish that. And now every newsletter on beehiiv has access to the same winning formula.

So what exactly does beehiiv offer?

• World-class growth tools like the referral program and recommendation network

• Monetization via the beehiiv Ad Network and premium subscriptions (i.e. beehiiv helps you get paid)

• Seamless content creation with a sleek collaborative editor

• Best-in-class inbox deliverability of 99%

• Oh and it’s the most affordable by a mile…

Take your newsletter to the next level — get started for free.

📰 Industry Roundup

3 Ways To Boost Your Prime Day Revenue This July: Amazon Prime Day 2024 will take place on a yet to be announced date in July (it was July 11-12 in 2023). Prime Day 2023 was the best ever for many publishers due to higher discounts that led to triple digit increases in YoY sales. Since affiliate programs can print money for newsletter creators, and you hopefully know your audience’s targeted tastes, don’t sit this one out. Top publishers are taking specific steps to set new records this Prime Day… Read

Google Ads Come To Newsletters: A beta program has launched offering a Google Ads Manager advertising tag for newsletters. This is in direct response to the impending loss of cookie-based targeting mechanisms, as newsletters are an inherently targeted media channel. If successful, this can make placing Google Ads as easy and ubiquitous as they have been on websites, which can drive meaningful revenue if you are prepared… Read

What Does This Print Revival Mean For Your Newsletter?: There is a mini-resurgence of high quality, super-niche print publications occurring. Publications such as Surfer’s Journal are making almost $3 million annually serving fewer than 30,000 subscribers. While these publications are billed as an anti-digital experience, that doesn’t mean newsletter operators can’t learn from the content and advertising strategies fueling their growth as there are many similarities to newsletters, and they are your new competition for attention… Read

Creator Platform M&A - Should Patreon Buy Substack?: Social media platforms are a tremendous engine for user attention aggregation. While creators provide the content to feed that attention, the social platforms derive the benefit. This article lays out an intriguing business plan for what a combined Patreon / Substack platform could offer creators and the industry… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

10 Summer Content Ideas to Make Your Newsletter Sizzle: Who doesn’t need a little inspiration during a season when our minds are as often on having fun as they are on newsletter deadlines? These 10 tips will hopefully inspire and accelerate your content production to get you out on the beach sooner… Read

CASE STUDY - 7 Best Content Curation Tactics From The Hustle: With hundreds of thousands of subscribers and a $20+ million exit, The Hustle stands as a shining example of newsletter success. Here are their best content curation practices that helped get them there… Read

CASE STUDY - Vacation Sunscreen’s 50% Open Rate Greases Sales: Seasonal products suffer from infrequent purchase cycles, so Vacation uses stylish and engaging newsletter content in addition to more conventional offers to smooth out annual sales and to also inform other marketing channels… Read

Can Your Newsletter Win The Battle Of Context Over Content?: Done properly, your newsletter should be a trusted context for your subscribers. They have opted in to receive your content and given you an opportunity to earn their trust and build a relationship. Content that is consumed in a trusted context will get more attention than other channels, which is a tremendous asset for your newsletter and a fascinating experiment proves why… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Our First Shoutout!: Our new referral program has been running for a few weeks and it’s time to recognize our first shoutout, which is to Jamie Northrup’s Minimalist Hustler:

• Minimalist Hustler: This short daily newsletter will help you make more money online without wasting your time. Start your minimalist newsletter in 5 days for free. 

Your newsletter can be featured here just like Minimalist Hustler if you refer 3 subscribers to Newsletter Business! Your current referral reward status is below.

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

Sponsored by

👋 Welcome

Happy belated Father’s Day to all of the fathers that hopefully got to celebrate yesterday!

It’s a time of year where it’s natural to kick back a bit and enjoy life, however the demands of producing a newsletter with great content on a specific schedule can often feel contrary to relaxation or even addressing sudden life events as I myself encountered this week and share in Just For Fun.

In this issue, you’ll find inspiration from over 50+ content ideas to keep your newsletter engaging and stress-free, while also exploring minimalist newsletter designs and alternate views on publishing cadences. You’ll also learn from those who decided to take a break when they needed one and yet continue to build thriving newsletters.

I am grateful to welcome Newsletter Agency as a first time sponsor! Their done-for-you newsletter services are just the ticket for this week’s theme of producing a high quality newsletter without burning yourself out. 

There is also a time-sensitive learning opportunity for you to be aware of:

• A Media Operator is hosting a webinar this week entitled Unlocking The Value Of Your Audience on Thursday, 6/20. Sign up now before all the spots are gone!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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We Help Founders, Creators, & Coaches Own Their Audience!

Building a loyal audience on a platform you own is one of the most valuable assets you can have to produce short and long-term business growth.

Your newsletter can build a loyal audience while reducing stress levels because your connection to your audience - and revenue - are not threatened by ad or social accounts that can be turned off or shadow banned. 

Rather than renting an audience on someone else’s platform, own your audience via a newsletter that creates an unfair advantage over competitors who aren’t using newsletters at all. 

That’s exactly why we launched the Newsletter Agency, a done-for-you email newsletter service - we’ll take care of all newsletter design, content, growth and monetization so that all you have to do is reap the benefits! 

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📰 Industry Roundup

5 Newsletters That Took A Break From The Newsletter Grind: Let’s face it, producing quality newsletter content on a regular schedule can be demanding, particularly when life events intrude. Inbox Collective profiled 5 newsletters that dared to buck the conventional wisdom and took some publishing time off, whether that was for a summer month or maternity leave; in fact, Inbox Collective is on its own June siesta. Here’s how and why they all did it… Read

Workweek Raises $12.5 Million To Disrupt Trade Associations: B2B newsletter powerhouse Workweek has amassed 500k subscribers for their portfolio of profession-focused newsletters, and now has a war chest to expand their offerings into online communities and an app marketplace… Read

LinkedIn’s New Newsletter Tools For Enhanced Engagement: LinkedIn offers new features to serve members publishing newsletters, which has increased 59% with a corresponding 47% increase in engagement. New features include cover image design, improved article/comment reading design, email/in-app subscriber notifications, and more… Read

Now It’s A Party - Crafting An All-Party Data Strategy: Google has postponed its deprecation of Chrome cookies until early 2025, but it’s coming and will transform your data collection and targeting tactics to leverage multiple forms of content and data. If you are still figuring out your zero from your first or third party data, this article will help… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

30+ Brilliant Newsletter Content Ideas To Engage Your Subscribers: We all need some inspiration from time to time regarding content, and these evergreen ideas will serve you well no matter what time of the year it is… Read

CASE STUDY- Less Is More For Minimalist Newsletter with 300K Subs: Popbitch is a weekly satire newsletter that has enjoyed success for 22 years with over 300,000 subscribers using a spartan text-only format. This case study breaks down one of their issues to highlight the design, editorial and engagement strategies behind their lasting success… Read

CASE STUDY - Cadence & Consequences of Publishing Inconsistently: Alice Lemee publishes Internetly on a schedule that befits her creative cycle rather than a set publishing schedule, which she feels is at the discretion of every creator. There have been impacts to growth and monetization, but Alice also employs mitigating practices to let her subscribers hear from her and to keep the sponsors rolling in… Read

20 Newsletter Content Ideas For When You Need Them: The more frequently that you publish, the more likely you will face a deadline that causes you stress regarding how to fill an issue. These go-to content ideas have your back… Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Every Newsletter Needs A Furry Overseer

Hunter, Benevolent Canine Overlord

In the spirit of thinking about how to run our newsletters while also making time for the better things in our lives while we have the chance, I thought it appropriate to share a photo of my dog Hunter, who we have lovingly called our benevolent canine overlord these past 9.5 years. From his perch atop the leather couch he has conditioned to his liking, he has let us know quite clearly when it was time for a tribute of chicken or that he wished to dominate our personal space with a snuggle. If he wanted to go out, he would quite simply stand on his hind legs and open the paddle-handled doors himself. He has exerted influence in some form, whether “co-working” at my feet or making me laugh as I curated content, for every issue of this newsletter since I have published it. He decided yesterday that he had taught us quite enough and that it was time for us to run our lives and this newsletter without his guidance; while that will decidedly not be as fun, I will forever be grateful for his contributions.

Your Referral Rewards Are Waiting!: Don’t forget that you are eligible to earn the following referral awards just by sharing this newsletter with a friend and recommending that they subscribe:

• Newsletter Shoutout (3 entries): This reward will entitle you to be featured in a new Shoutout section that will periodically appear in Newsletter Business. Your newsletter’s name, URL, and a one sentence description will be featured.

• Copy of The Newsletter Is The Business (25 entries): You will receive a complimentary copy of Newsletter Business’s ebook The Newsletter Is The Business, which is a $147 value and shares expert insights from myself and newsletter operators like Richard Patey who originally wrote the book. This book will be updated as tactics and strategies evolve and you will also receive those updates.

• Newsletter Business T-Shirt (50 entries): You will receive an exclusive Newsletter Business t-shirt in the size of your choice. Right now only 2 of these exist in the world!

• 60 Minute Coaching Session (100 entries): The current top reward is a 60 minute private coaching session with me, where we will discuss your newsletter challenges, opportunities or any topic that you wish. I don’t currently offer individual coaching outside of this reward and a few special programs, so this is rare; when I do, the hourly rate has been $350 per hour.

Thank you again for being a loyal subscriber of this newsletter - your current referral reward status is below.

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

It’s another evening edition of Newsletter Business following a week of travel as I visited Austin, Texas for the annual NamesCon conference. NamesCon brings together the global domain investment community with domain developers and cloud platforms. Every newsletter operator needs a great domain and a great newsletter platform.

In this issue, you’ll find the latest information on newsletter platform changes, a short list of newsletter platform options that you should consider, and recent platform migration case studies reflecting the experiences of a variety of newsletter operators. The key thing to remember is that no newsletter platform is perfect, and your platform choice should be influenced by your starting point, financial resources and newsletter business goals.

It’s a pleasure to welcome back the Bay Area Times as a returning sponsor! The Bay Area times is a visual newsletter that summarizes business and tech news with one visual per story, and we could all use some time-saving simplification. 

There is also a time-sensitive learning opportunity for you to be aware of:

• Louis Nicholls of Sparkloop is running a free live masterclass on newsletter monetization on Tuesday, 6/11. Sign up now before all the spots are gone!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Check out the Just For Fun section for some meme-based fun - enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

Goodbye ConvertKit, Hello Kit: ConvertKit has announced that the company will be re-branding as Kit this year. In addition to a platform expansion that will include an app store for third-party developers and a data/reporting hub, the re-branding will be covered via a public docuseries. For anyone thinking this is easy, this will be ConvertKit’s second re-branding attempt after 2018’s attempt to re-brand as Seva… Features / Docuseries / Seva Rebrand

Is Your Newsletter Eroding Your Personal Boundaries & Do You Care?: Sonia Weiser, who sold her 10,000 subscriber newsletter Opportunities of the Week to Study Hall, reflects on the obligation of serving subscribers and how newsletters encourage a familiarity with the audience that can at times be odd… Read

Now Hear This - beehiiv Supports Audio & Lifetime Subs: beehiiv has added to its monthly & annual paid subscription options with the introduction of a lifetime (one-time payment) option. In a move that will delight podcasters, it is also now possible to embed and play audio content from newsletters on the platform… Read

14,000 Exposed Google SEO Secrets: In early May, 14,000+ ranking features utilized by Google’s search engine were inadvertently disclosed in public and have been scrutinized by many SEO experts. If you operate a website, as most newsletter operators do, you need to be aware of some of the findings and here’s a user-friendly summary as your starting point… Read

⚒️ Letter Ops

6 Newsletter Platforms For Your Indie Newsletter: The platform you choose to run your newsletter on can influence its success and the amount of sleep you get as an operator. There are many choices in the space, so here’s a curated short list from Inbox Collective sharing their perspective on the available choices… Read

ConvertKit (Kit) vs. beehiiv: Increasingly, the most common comparison between newsletter platforms involves these 2 platforms. For better or worse, these platforms are changing so rapidly (even their platform name!) that an apples to apples comparison is usually rendered inaccurate shortly after being published. Here’s a brief, several day old comparison reflecting ConvertKit’s latest name and pricing changes, so read it while it’s current… Read

CASE STUDY - Moving From Patreon To Substack: Aisling Keenan writes The Outfluencer, an independent newsletter with over 2,000 subscribers that is trying to recreate the glossy magazine experience. She migrated the newsletter from Patreon to Substack in Fall 2023 and details why… Read

CASE STUDY - Why Platformer Left Substack for Ghost: Platformer, a popular 2x per week newsletter with 170,000+ subscribers covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and public policy, made a very public migration announcement in January that it was migrating from Substack. Reasons included concerns about business strategy, revenue sharing with the platform, editorial policies and the conversion rate of plentiful free subscribers. Check out the announcement and interview with the founder… Announcement / Interview

🎉 Just For Fun

The Question All Newsletter Operators Ask Themselves Eventually When Confronted With A Spam Report

Your Referral Rewards Are Waiting!: Don’t forget that you are eligible to earn the following referral awards just by sharing this newsletter with a friend and recommending that they subscribe:

• Newsletter Shoutout (3 entries): This reward will entitle you to be featured in a new Shoutout section that will periodically appear in Newsletter Business. Your newsletter’s name, URL, and a one sentence description will be featured.

• Copy of The Newsletter Is The Business (25 entries): You will receive a complimentary copy of Newsletter Business’s ebook The Newsletter Is The Business, which is a $147 value and shares expert insights from myself and newsletter operators like Richard Patey who originally wrote the book. This book will be updated as tactics and strategies evolve and you will also receive those updates.

• Newsletter Business T-Shirt (50 entries): You will receive an exclusive Newsletter Business t-shirt in the size of your choice. Right now only 2 of these exist in the world!

• 60 Minute Coaching Session (100 entries): The current top reward is a 60 minute private coaching session with me, where we will discuss your newsletter challenges, opportunities or any topic that you wish. I don’t currently offer individual coaching outside of this reward and a few special programs, so this is rare; when I do, the hourly rate has been $350 per hour.

Thank you again for being a loyal subscriber of this newsletter - your current referral reward status is below.

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.

👋 Welcome

Today’s issue addresses that little detail that makes the newsletter business world go round: getting paid! 

As our issue covering the 2024 creator economy showed, many newsletter operators struggle with monetization and so this issue provides insights into the latest publisher revenue strategies, case studies on paid subscriptions, paywall tactics, and non-newsletter revenue streams like products and events.

Our sponsor for this issue is Monday.com, the project and workflow management platform that any busy newsletter operator could use to streamline their many production and communication tasks. Newsletter deadlines and productivity are no joke!

The Newsletter Business Referral Reward Program is now in full effect, and you’ll find a reminder of those great rewards in the Just For Fun section at the bottom of this issue.

Finally, I’ll be traveling in Austin, TX this week and would love to meet any Newsletter Business readers in the area - feel free to drop me a DM and let’s say hello!

Please reply with thoughts on this week’s issue or reach out to @NewsletterBus on X/Twitter or connect/follow on LinkedIn.

Enjoy and see you next issue!

Fred (Connect With Me At: LinkedIn | X/Twitter )

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📰 Industry Roundup

INSIGHTS: 7 Publisher Strategies For Optimizing Revenue: This special Newsletter Business Insights article distills Digiday+’s exclusive members-only research on publisher revenue strategies into 7 actionable highlights you can put to use… Read

4 Ladders Of Wealth Creation: Nathan Barry, founder of ConvertKit, shares how he’s leveraged the Ladders of Wealth Creation framework to generate millions of dollars and how you can do the same… Thread / Essay 

Paid Newsletters & The Age Of The Sovereign Creator: Substack co-founder Hamish Mckenzie reflects on the inspiration for Substack as an enabler of sovereign creators who can harness the distribution & scale capabilities of the Internet coupled with a model for ownership & revenue via paid subscriptions. This is a piece where the comments are as interesting as the article… Read

beehiiv Updates Referral Program & App Navigation: beehiiv has refreshed its referral program with a fresh look and expanded its reward types, adding Digital as a type and a dropshipping option for Physical. Platform navigation was also the subject of a refresh, so your eyes are not playing tricks on you; if you can’t find that menu option, here’s a cheat sheet… Referral / Navigation 

⚒️ Letter Ops

12+ Boring Newsletters That Make Millions: The ability to monetize a newsletter is often heavily influenced by the market and audience it serves, but these examples prove that cash doesn’t always need flash… Read

CASE STUDY - The Guardian Don’t Need No Stinking Paywalls: The Guardian is heralded as a bastion of independent journalism; equally impressive is its commitment to free content without paywalls. Leveraging a very intentional strategy, the power of great content, and a portfolio of 54 newsletters, they are generating $112 million from reader subscriptions. Here’s how… Read

CASE STUDY - We Have Liftoff…$500k+ Generated Outside The Inbox: Payload is a newsletter focused on the commercial space industry, but they are not focused on growing their 20,000 subscribers. They’d rather have the right subscribers than more subscribers, and are intensely focused on increasing SLV (subscriber lifetime value), which increasingly means producing revenue outside the inbox via events, content and podcast advertising. Here’s how they’ve generated 53% of their 2023 revenue outside of the inbox:... Read

How To Use Your Newsletter To Sell Products: Product sales represent a great opportunity for newsletter monetization, whether you are selling your own products or recommending those of others for an affiliate commission or pay per lead fee. Learn how to position your newsletter for optimal product sales from someone who has done just that to generate $100k … Read

🎉 Just For Fun

Get Your Referral Rewards!: I opened the doors on the Newsletter Business referral rewards program last week. Like all new things, it requires time to gain awareness and traction, so I’m taking this opportunity to remind you that these great referral rewards are yours for the taking when you refer subscribers to your favorite newsletter (yes, I mean this one):

• Newsletter Shoutout (3 entries): This reward will entitle you to be featured in a new Shoutout section that will periodically appear in Newsletter Business. Your newsletter’s name, URL, and a one sentence description will be featured.

• Copy of The Newsletter Is The Business (25 entries): You will receive a complimentary copy of Newsletter Business’s ebook The Newsletter Is The Business, which is a $147 value and shares expert insights from myself and newsletter operators like Richard Patey who originally wrote the book. This book will be updated as tactics and strategies evolve and you will also receive those updates.

• Newsletter Business T-Shirt (50 entries): You will receive an exclusive Newsletter Business t-shirt in the size of your choice. Right now only 2 of these exist in the world!

• 60 Minute Coaching Session (100 entries): The current top reward is a 60 minute private coaching session with me, where we will discuss your newsletter challenges, opportunities or any topic that you wish. I don’t currently offer individual coaching outside of this reward and a few special programs, so this is rare; when I do, the hourly rate has been $350 per hour.

Every time I receive one of your referrals, rest assured I’ll be doing a little dance number that looks something like this - and there’s a good chance one of my kids will capture the video for you!

Looking to reach 4500+ newsletter operators?

Disclaimer: Not financial or business advice. This newsletter is strictly for information and education purposes and may contain affiliate links or sponsored content from a variety of partners to keep this newsletter free of charge.

Newsletter Business is published by Digiventures Media Group LLC.