This is like what newsletters originally are, right? The number of subscribers I generated is over 10 million now. How do you go from zero to a thousand subscribers? Yeah. I'll tell you, like, that is the hardest part.
So first of all, like, how do you grow an audience? As a newsletter operator, you have three roles: write, grow, sell. Before I create something, I always have a way to monetize it first.
Actually, for most creators, you just might not be able to monetize. It's way harder than people think to get people to commit to a subscription. The best growth hack is to just make something that's really good.
I'm someone who believes, like, I have the best products and services in the world, and the best way I can help you is to get you to join one of those things. [upbeat music] Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast.
Today, we are speaking with Matt McGarry, who calls himself The Newsletter Guy, which is an app name. He's a real expert in the space.
Uh, he has a agency called Growletter that helps creators and media companies grow their subscriber lists and bring in new customers.
He also has a newsletter and podcast series called Newsletter Operator, which is easily one of the best, more tactically focused content series about the business and craft of newslettering that there is.
Matt, thanks for coming on. Cool. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Um, so just to situate the listener and myself first, um, I wanna give, like, a quick overview of your business. So your business is basically four things.
I'm gonna read it off. Let me know if I have it right. So there's... This is kind of, like, from, like, most publicly facing, top of funnel, as you would say, to, like, most kind of, like, productized, um, specialty.
So there's the content and the newsletter and the podcast, which is free for anyone, useful for entry-level newsletterists and above, but, um, is accessible to anybody.
Then there's the Write, Grow, Sell course, which is new. I think you launched that this past year. Um, uh, which I... Also, I should say the newsletter is, like, two years old, podcast about a year and a half old.
Write, Grow, Sell course, relatively affordable, more hands-on, cohort-based thing, education on the same topics. You launched that this year. That's right.
And then there's events, the Newsletter Marketing Summit coming up next year, uh, which is kind of the cro- like, um, almost a stepping stone between the Write, Grow, Sell and then the main, the core of your business, which is the Growletter agency, which is white glove, more expensive growth services.
Yeah. That's right. And, um, it kind of works in that pyramid where, you know, the content's gonna help the most amount of people, but probably at a more surface level.
Because, I mean, for a lot of people the, the newsletter, the podcast is helped a ton, but for a lot of people, they just read a couple issues and maybe get some value from it, maybe don't.
Um, and then hopefully they're ascending to work with us in the, the live training program, which is kind of like a cohort-based course but with a lot more coaching and community inside of it.
We created that in January 2024 because we had so many people who wanted to work with the agency, but we could only take on a couple clients a month, and it's was not accessible for 95% of the leads that were reaching out to us.
Yeah.
And then Growletter, which is a traditional marketing agency that's focused on media and education companies, and we do things like, um, helping them grow with paid advertising, email marketing, conversion rate optimization, stuff like that.
Well, wait, real quick, a question about Growletter. Uh, I was listening to... I forget if this was a podcast you were on or your own podcast, but, um, you say how you hate when people call it a newsletter agency.
It's a marketing agency, but that it did maybe start as a newsletter agency. Can you tell me, like, what that distinction is and how that evolution happened? Yeah.
Well, I think of newsletters are a strategy, not a business model. Mm-hmm. And so the businesses we help are media and education companies.
And so if people know what that means, a, a media company's usually monetizing through advertising, subscription, events.
Education company might have a course, coaching program, um, membership, something like that, and sometimes people are a hybrid of the two. Yeah. Right?
Um, and so those are the types of businesses we work with, and we don't provide, like, newsletter services for them. We provide different types of marketing services, and that's so...
I- it's kind of, um, a way to reposition it- Yeah... 'cause also you don't wanna be just another newsletter growth agency. Not that there's a lot out there.
There's only a few out there, but when I started, it really was more like a newsletter growth agency because that's all we did. Um, but it's evolved as we've grown.
And also now there's more newsletter growth agencies, so I don't wanna be put in that bucket. Um, I always try and create...
Any, anything I do, I try and create a category that where I'm the only person in that space, or I'm the leading person in that space, so that's why we've, we've changed it. Yeah. And I still have to...
The problem is, um, I haven't done a great job changing it because I haven't updated, like, the website and all the branding. I just refer to it as that when I talk to people.
Well, and you're, you're- So I understand that people might categorize it... literally called The Newsletter Guy, so it's like- Yeah. That's kind of-... oh, it's gotta be a newsletter agency. Yeah. And it's...
Yeah, it's, it's... I really don't mind. [laughs] But it's just, that's just how I'm changing up.
And I think there's just, um, as an agency, you, if you just do, kind of do one thing, you wanna do one thing really, really well. Mm-hmm.
Um, but we wanna do a little bit more than that at the, at the stage that we're at. Yeah. So that's how I feel about it. So with this, there, there's a few things in there.
Uh, we- we're gonna get, we're not gonna get to all this at once, but, like- Yeah... you said that the newsletters are not a business model, they're a strategy. Um, I, I wanna push you on that a little later.
But first, uh, can you define what a newsletter is to me? Yeah. I should probably have a great answer for this, but I, I don't know if I do. But I'll give, I'll give it my best.
So a newsletter is a email that you send to a group of subscribers that agree to receive this email on a regular cadence, whether that's weekly, daily, monthly, even annually.
And that email is mostly editorial, meaning it's at least 80% or 90% value-based, whether that's education, information, entertainment, and it's probably 20% or 10% or even less, um, call to action or sales-based.
And so that makes it different than a marketing email because as you can imagine, a marketing email is 90% sales, maybe 10% content or none, and a newsletter is the opposite. That's a, that's a perfect definition.
Uh, yeah, I, I fully agree with you. It's, it's, it is the product. It is the editorial thing. Maybe it leads to other things, but, like, it is a regularly sent newsletter.
It's a broadcast newsletter to a group of people. Um, but one more pedantic term question. You use the term newsletter operator as opposed to newsletter creator or writer or, as I like to sometimes say, newsletterist.
Um, I, I, I thought of this because I was talking to somebody recentlyLike, uh, I think the last person I interviewed actually, uh, Lindsay Stanberry, she has a newsletter called The Purse. Um, it's, it's on Substack.
I think she has like 12,000 subscribers. It's kind of a thing that she's really growing into this business, and she didn't think of herself as a creator. She's like an external.
She, she worked for Fortune, um, Money Diaries for Refinery29 is kind of one of her claims to fame. Um, so she kind of comes from this journalist background.
Doesn't, didn't identify with the term creator, um, and then also didn't identify with the term newsletter operator when I was using it.
And I think this is a classic thing with like people who come into this world from a journalism background, there's kind of this ickiness around the business side. Uh- Yeah...
I'm starting to answer the question myself almost, but- [laughs]... I'll stop there. Tell me why you use the term newsletter operator as opposed to newsletter creator, writer.
Hey, if you're enjoying this episode with Matt, make sure you follow the podcast so you don't miss next week's episode. We release a new creator interview every Thursday. Yeah.
When, when I- I think I first heard it used by the... I forget who I heard it used by. It's, it's been quite a while.
And the domain was available, so that's kind of one [laughs] of the reasons why I started using the term, because the dotcom was available.
But I want it to be a catch-all term for people who write, grow, operate, monetize newsletters, and I want it to be as catch-all as possible.
And in doing that, some people won't identify with it, which, which is fine with me. Um, it does a decent job describing what you're gonna get out of the content, so that's why I'm fine keeping it.
Some people identify, at least people that, that read my stuff, they... Most people identify as founders or entrepreneurs.
There's a subsection of journalists, there's a subsection of creators, and there's a subsection of people that are just like, "I'm just figuring things out. I don't totally know yet."
And, um, I thought operator could kind of fit all those into it. Um, and there's also some people who are, who are kind of more t- like, in operators.
They're employees, they're marketers, they're writers at companies who wanna get better at newsletters.
And so that's why I chose it, and it just, it's the best catch-all term I could just, I could pick for people who do stuff around newsletters. It's not perfect.
Sometimes I hate it, but I feel like everybody hates their brand name, so it's okay. Yeah. As, you know, we're always just a couple years away from a rebrand. Um, so the main...
Uh, I don't know if this is the main ser- my impression is that the main service you offer through Grow Letter, your agency, is helping, is helping people acquire newsletter subscribers, right?
Um, is that true, that's the main service? It has changed. Okay. So originally it started like that, and now it's helping people acquire newsletter subscribers and customers with paid acquisition. Mm-hmm.
And so paid acquisition means ads, usually on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera. So, okay, wait. So, um, the, the...
It's been like two and a half years that Grow Letter has existed, right? Yeah. Two and a half years, okay. How much money would you estimate you've spent buying ads on behalf of clients in that time?
Oh, we don't track... We've tracked the number of subscribers who generated. Ballpark. Ballpark. So the, the number of subscribers who generated is, is over 10 million now. Wow.
And we've spent between 10 and 20 million as, as a ballpark. Which, so it sounds like there's kind of an average CPA of one to two million there. I mean, one to two- One to $2, yeah. [laughs] One to two million versus...
[laughs] Never. Wow. Um- That's right... the LTV on that subscriber. Um, anyways, uh, so I, uh, my, my next question was gonna be like what are... I don't know.
So a CPA, right, cost per acquisition, um, I understand that the good one is around $2. I know that for your own newsletter, uh, you recently wrote that you are around $3 CPA there, which makes...
It's, you know, relatively fine. It's a... These are high-value subscribers, high LTV, lifetime value there.
Um, for the listener who may not know so much about CPAs, tell me like what a good one is, what a bad one is, and why that number is good and/or bad. Yeah.
I'll tell you, but one thing to note is like ROI or what we call ROAS, return on ad spend, is way more important than CPA, which is cost per subscriber.
So for most of our clients, we're, we're getting subscribers for between one to $3, so one to $3 CPA. There's a lot of outliers where we're acquiring subscribers that are great quality for 40 cents or 50 cents or 60.
Um, and that's, that brings our average down a little bit. Um, and we, we're... That's one of the things that we do well is like we're able to, to make those outliers happen through really good ad creative.
Um, but so th- that's typically what you'll get an email address for. If you, if you're trying to get a lead of more things like full name, phone number, stuff like that, it becomes more expensive.
Um, but sometimes it's worth that trade-off because you can make more from that lead or subscriber if you do that.
So we have some clients where we literally have a target CPA of 40 cents, and they need that number to be profitable with their ad spend. What kind of client like would that be? What kind of business model is that? Yeah.
So more broad, I can't name names for that specific one, but, uh, more broad content, maybe it's around self-improvement or something like that, for example.
Um, and then we're selling a lower ticket product to that audience. So in this case we might be selling a digital product that's anywhere from $30 to $100.
And then the, the second, the secondary way we're monetizing that subscriber is through advertising, selling sponsorships in their, I, I believe this one is, is a weekly newsletter.
And so they might only make, you know, couple, um, dollars per subscriber.
Um, maybe their subscriber LTV is three to $6, so we have to acquire a subscriber f- for that little to get the, um, what we call CAC to LTV ratio that we want or to get the return on ad spend that we want for that client.
But we have some clients who are like, um, "My target CPA is $10, and we also need to collect more information like their phone number, um, name, things like that," and they're able to make a similar return on ad spend at a much different cost per subscriber.
And, and I'm imagining like that client probably isn't selling like... I- if it's advertising in the newsletter, it's like they're very niche B2B. Yeah, that's right. They are selling ad space for very high amount. Yeah.
That's what I'm thinking of is, is finance. But really finance or B2B is where you see those types of things.
But everybody's different, because we work with some B2B clients where we're acquiring subscribers for less than a dollar.And they just have different economics.
They're a little bit more of a broader B2B business, 'cause B2B is so, so big.
Yeah So wait, yeah, so speaking of, like, how you actually achieve these, I'm thinking of two people I interviewed this year, uh, who had really low, um, CPA.
One was Michael Kaufman, who has the Catskill Crew, which is a local newsletter for the Catskills in New York.
Um, he was recently acquiring subscribers at about 20 cents CPA, and then I talked to somebody earlier in the year, um, Kate Samuelson.
She runs this newsletter called Lon- uh, Cheapskate London, and it's, like, a weekly newsletter about free events around London.
And they'd started advertising shortly before, her and a friend, and then, like, a, a f- a friend of theirs who had some experience with ad buying, um, was helping them out. But they had no experience.
They'd been running one ad unit for, like, over a year, and they were at, uh, 0.17 pounds or how- however you say it there. Yeah. Uh, r- really low.
Again, so, like, to me, it's like, it seems like those would be really low because it's such a clear purpose. Local newsletter for the Catskills. Free events in London, right? Like, the value prop is very clear.
So I guess my question is, like, as...
For anybody listening who's trying to, like, m- you know, run newsletter ads and wants to achieve a really low CPA or has been thinking about it but can't really afford a high CPA, how do you actually achieve those low numbers?
Yeah. Well, there's a couple categories that can get lower CPAs, which are probably worth mentioning. So, like, really broad, uh, things that can appeal to a lot of people, so you have a broad addressable market.
So, like, personal development, religion, spirituality, general news, the list goes on. So things that have a, a TAM, total addressable market, of tens or hundreds of millions of people.
Another way, which I don't recommend, is just targeting outside of where you want subscribers from. So instead of targeting North America, you target, you know, India and all of Asia and Africa. You...
That's just a way to kind of cheat the system. But those subscribers are gonna be really hard to monetize, so you can go and get subscribers for five cents from there, but that doesn't really make sense. Um,
and then another way is being hyper-relevant. So an example of hyper-relevant is a local newsletter, especially if they can show their value proposition clearly in the ad.
W- uh, we've seen really low CPAs there, less than a dollar, or, like, the examples that you mentioned. You can also be hyper-relevant even if you're not a local newsletter.
You just have a really interesting offer or content that you're offering, especially if you create a category where you're the most helpful person or the leading person or the only person in that category, and it's a category of content that people really care about.
That works. Like, we have this one newsletter that's about, um... It's called Anti Citizen, and it, I don't think it's for everybody, but it's basically about, like, getting a second passport, lowering your tax burden.
It's kind of for, like, the digital nomad, um, type of person, and I don't really see a lot of content about that.
I'm not really in the market for it either, but because the offer's so unique and relevant to a lot of people that see it, we get crazy low CPAs, right?
We have a lot of other examples in, in different niches that get the same type of thing. Um, so that's step number one is, like, having a great offer. That even becomes...
That comes before the tactical things of, like, how you set up your ads or what creative do you do. Like, that's really important, and that, that's really the foundation of all of that, because if you...
You can make, like, great ads for a shitty product and it's not gonna work. Um, the, the second part is the platform, so we almost exclusively use meta ads. That provides the lowest CPA.
Then we have the ad creative, um, which is probably the most important tactical part. This is what people are seeing on Facebook or Instagram, so your image, video, copy. That is, like...
A- as far as the ad strategy itself, that's, like, 90% of the work is making great ad creative, because setting up a Facebook ad campaign nowadays is pretty straightforward, and managing is pretty straightforward, especially if you have some experience doing it.
Um, so that's more, that's more secondary stuff is the actual setting up, the actual management or, or media buying, as we call it. Well, it's like...
So, I m- I mean, the way I'm taking it is there's basically two products. The newsletter itself or whatever you're advertising has to be really good itself.
So, like, once somebody goes through an ad, you know, you're delivering on a promise.
But then the ad itself is a product that's, like, going to market that itself has to be competitive in the market of, like, not just other ads, right, but, like, anything you're scrolling by on Instagram and Facebook.
Yeah. Well, for the first part, I would call that, like, the, the offer or the job to be done that the newsletter has. Like, what's its value proposition? What's its offer to the subscribers that are gonna sign up?
And if clients don't have a good offer, we'll work with them on changing that, and the content might stay the same.
We might just be highlighting a different benefit of the newsletter or a different part of the content or just positioning it in a different way. So that's step number one. Then the actual ad creative is number two.
And so I can give some pro tips for this. Um, but it, it all has to be benefit based. I see a lot of people talk about, like, this is a newsletter on X, Y, Z topic, um, or even this newsletter's read by this many people.
But it really has to be, like, show me what problem this newsletter's gonna solve for me. Show me what- Yeah... how this newsletter's gonna help me, you know, reach my goals, achieve my desires, whatever it might be.
Um, and then basically br- back that up with some type of social proof. Mm-hmm.
And that could be X amount of people read it, or it's read by, it's read by these prestigious organizations or readers at these companies subscribe to it, or it's a testimonial- Yeah...
and it's, it's social proof from one person. But basically making some type of promise and then backing that up through proof, that is what most ads look like,
and often before that, I'm kind of going out of order, but we'll have, like, a hook that draws in the attention of the, the ad viewer, right? So- Yeah...
hook, promise, proof, and then a call to action, which is just, like, click the link to sign up for free. Yeah. And obviously we emphasi- we emphasize that it's free if it is free. So that's kind of what we do.
What works well is a lot of, um, what I call motion graphics, where it's like there's a text on screen, there's a video in the background, and the video could be anything. It could be a guy walking across a street.
Stock photo, whatever. Yeah. It could be a cityscape- Stock video... a landscape, stock video. You want it... You don't want it to... It can be a stock video, but you don't want it to look stock. You don't want to be...
Like, it shouldn't look generic or like an ad. Yeah. It should look like something filmed organically that you would see on social. Mm-hmm.
And really, the copy's doing most of the selling, 'cause you have copy that's, you know, between10 to 30 words that's doing kind of what I just described.
Um, and then, you know, you see, like, TikTok or Instagram Reel style videos, those work too.
So, you know, a 15 to 30-second video of you talking about the newsletter in that same format that I described earlier, that works great. And images still work, but really these are video-based platforms now- Yeah...
Facebook and Instagram, and so you have to have great video creative now to do, to, to do well.
Um, something that kind of precedes all this talk about ads is, like, the type of newsletter, the type of business that you sell to, right?
So, uh, I think on your most recent Newsletter Operator episode pod- your podcast, you described your clients as needing to fit two criteria.
They need to have a minimum of $30,000 per month in revenue, which should come from sponsorship, a mix of sponsorships or information product sales or just one or the other, really good.
Uh, and then they also need to have at least 20 to 30,000 active, highly engaged newsletter subscribers. So also on this same episode, um, you wrote that, uh...
Or you, you, you said, "We're bearish on newsletter-only businesses, but we're bullish on newsletter-focused businesses that use that as their main channel to build an audience and sell to that audience."
So I guess what I'm getting at here is, like, it makes sense that you would be bearish on, uh, newsletter-focused businesses.
I mean, you'd be bearish on newsletter-only businesses, but bullish on newsletter-focused businesses that use the newsletter as the main channel, because you only work with very, with...
You only work with those kind of businesses, right? And you only work with these businesses that are making that scale of money, which there's only a few, um, newsletter-only businesses.
I would say something like Lenny's newsletter, Lenny's podcast. You know, he does other things now, but, like, he's making millions on subscriptions. There aren't that many- Yeah... of them.
Um, so to put a point [chuckles] on this, I guess I...
In, get, within all that context, I'm curious to hear you talk more about your being bearish on newsletter-only businesses and bullish on newsletter-focused businesses. Yeah.
I should probably give more context on what a newsletter-only business is, because I don't, I don't know if Lenny is a great example.
I almost describe a newsletter-only business as someone who's, like, amateur and just thinks, "If I have a newsletter, if I send a newsletter, and if I get subscribers, I will therefore have a business."
It's kind of like a creator who's just like, "If I just post on social media, or I create good YouTube content, and I get an audience, I'll have a business."
And they kind of just think, like, the brand deals will come to them, or the partnerships will come to them, and, or maybe they'll be able to sell something to their audience later, and they don't think out their, their whole business model.
And so that's, that's a newsletter-only business. Um, and it, it's, it's not, it's something I see a lot of beginners do, but not a lot of advanced people do.
I would describe Lenny as someone who's built, like, a, a bonafide media company where he has a free newsletter, he has a, um, subscription, which includes, like, a community and premium content.
He has a podcast, and I think he might even have some events too. Well, what about... Okay, like, another one then, maybe a more accurate one might be Tangle, right?
Isaac Saul's newsletter, which is like a almost daily newsletter. I think he makes over a million in revenue. It's him and a couple other people writing it. That one, I'm pretty sure that's just a newsletter, right?
Yeah. And I think that's a good... Tangle and even something like Morning Brew or 1440 is a good example of, of what we used to traditionally call, like, a newsletter-first media business.
So they grow a large newsletter audience, they're sending daily or even seven day a week, um, newsletters, and then they're monetizing that through sponsorships almost exclusively.
And Fort- Morning Brew was like that for a long time. It was just newsletter sponsorships. The Hustle was for a long time, and I think Tangle is, um, s- along those lines now.
I don't know, I don't know as much about their business as the other ones I mentioned. But yeah, that would, that would be a newsletter-first media company, and we've had a lot of success with those types of clients.
Um, and those can work.
I am less bullish on those, because I think advertising is such a tough business model, and I think the idea of, like, having an audience and never selling them a product or service is pretty crazy.
Um, and I think that's equally as crazy as having an audience and only monetizing a, a small percentage of them through your product or service and not monetizing through sponsorships.
I think modern media companies have to have both. You have to have a product or service you sell them. Could be anything, um, that's a fit for them and a fit for you.
And you have to have sponsorships or advertising so you can monetize your entire audience and not just a small fraction of them. And so th- that's kind of how I see, um...
Our clients that are most successful have both of those things, and our clients that are least successful, you know, usually just have only advertising in the newsletter, and, um, that's really just how it is right now.
So another thing- Yeah... on this topic is, uh, you wrote in your newsletter, now this wasn't the podcast, um, but you wrote in your newsletter, "Don't start a paid newsletter or content subscription for consumers.
Putting your best content behind a paywall is a bad idea." So I read that shortly after hearing you on the podcast say that, um, newsletter-only businesses are a bad idea.
And then with this too, it's like this, I think when people think of newsletters, your average person, maybe somebody coming from, like, a writer background, this is what they think of, a paid newsletter content subscription, right?
Like, that's the model that Substack popularized. Um, say more about this being a bad idea. Yeah.
It's, it's funny 'cause we just mentioned Lenny, and he's, like, the best example of this working, but I'm also saying it's a bad idea, and I, I do think it's a bad idea.
I think Lenny is one of the examples that proves the rule that this is such a awful idea. Um, so first of all, like, how do you grow an audience, especially a newsletter audience?
You have to grow that audience through posting, publishing content. And if all your best content is behind a paywall, you never really have the audience.
So you have this chicken and egg problem that just never gets solved.
And then if you don't have an audience, you have to grow with paid acquisition, and most people, especially if they're, like, a, a, a writer, they don't know how to do paid acquisition profitably.
And it's, it's really hard to make the economics of that work with that type of business model. Um, and so I think a lot of people really trap themselves into this.
Um, I think it's an advanced business model that's good for some people that really have had success in media before and really know what they're doing.
Well, you have to be a really good writer or have really differentiated knowledge. It's like those are the only- Yes...
two ways you have success with that, right?But you can also be a really good marketer, because if you look at the financial publishing industry, like all they do is sell these, um, basically newsletter subscriptions that are basically stock picking or investing advice.
And their, their content isn't as great, but their marketing is really good, and they're great at paid ads and funnels and email marketing and all that stuff. And so it's one of the two.
You either have to be crazy differentiated content that's hyper valuable, or you have to be a marketing savant essentially. And most people are not either one of those, and that's totally okay.
Um, a couple more reasons are like, you know, m- most of the time, like, the...
If, if you're a beginner, you're not gonna have a lot of paid subscribers, but you're spending the majority of your time creating content for a small amount of people, which preve- prevents you from growing.
And I see a lot of people who have launched subscriptions who should have shut them down months ago, but they keep going because they committed to this for a month or for an annual plan with that subscriber, and it just ends up being a massive negative ROI on their time.
I mean, there, there's a lot of different reasons.
I just think it's a lot better for people, if I wanna sell some type of information to my audience, just sell them like one newsletter instead of trying to sell them 52 newsletters a year, and just see how that goes.
Like, dip your toe into it instead of doing this huge commitment. It might go great for you. But wait, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by sell them one news- sell them like one issue of the newsletter? Yeah.
So you wouldn't say, "This is one newsletter, just buy it." We would rebrand that into something else. That's a very good question.
So we would say, okay, instead of this, instead of calling it a newsletter, it's a report or something or it's an e-book or whatever you might call it that's the best fit for the thing that you wrote.
But you write that thing, you sell it, um, and you have some type of similar price.
And so if we're gonna charge, you know, $300 a year for a newsletter that's sent once a week, you know, we might send like, you know, divide that by 52 or something, right, to pick your pricing.
So we might charge, you know, 10, 20, 30 bucks, even $50 for one report or one e-book, and just like see how that goes first. I also think, um, if you've ever...
If someone never s- like sold products before, it's so much harder to sell a subscription versus a one-off purchase, even if the subscription is less than the one-off purchase.
It's like a psychology thing with the buyer. They're really afraid to commit to a subscription, but they'll spend more to buy something one time.
And so often it's better for people to sell like a lifetime subscription, um, than annual or monthly subscription, because they'll make more money and, and most people churn out of these subscriptions after six months to a year or less.
A lot of paid newsletters have really bad churn.
You know, like they'll keep a subscriber for three or four months, which is not great, especially when they commit- Like, I mean, personally, the way I consume paid newsletters is like I only, I only allow myself to be subscribed to, you know, these typical $5 per month paid subscriptions.
I, [laughs] I usually am only subscribed to two or three at a time, and then when I lapse reading one and I wanna read another, I'll just trade them out. Yeah. That's common behavior.
And like there's not a huge like budget for these types of things, just on the average consumer. Um, it's like if you look at your, your personal balance sheet, how many paid newsletters are you subscribed to? Not many.
Um, well, I- Yeah... one, one thing on that too, um, as once this comes out, the previous episode, uh, I talked with Daisy Alioto, uh, from Dirt, Mycoskie, and Tasteland.
Um, and we were talking about this, and I was like, you know, it... The copy is always like, you know, it's only like one beer a month, $5 is the cost of one beer. And it's like, well, but I'm gonna buy the beer anyways.
Like I'm not gonna- Yeah... that's not like, I'm not re- I'm not gonna forgo the one beer. I'm gonna buy the beer anyways, you know? It, yeah, it's just so...
It, it's way harder than people think to get people to commit to a subscription. I know I said that before, but it's worth emphasizing.
And, you know, if you just do something one time, you're probably gonna make more money than having that subscription only last a couple months anyways. And so we've seen some people where it's like, um, there's...
I, I've talked to a lot of big local newsletters, and one thing they'll do is like they'll just do like a, a, a donation drive to support their business or support local media or support whatever journalism that you're doing.
The classic public radio model. Yeah. Yeah. I, I haven't seen that as much because I [laughs] haven't followed public radio in years.
But it's, it's also good to go back and look at these things in the past and see what worked for them and apply that to, to us now. So- That's smart... yeah.
Um, and they'll, they'll do like 100K in donations, um, for their for-pro- for-profit business in one of these like 30-day or 14-day donation drives.
Um, and they make a lot more money that way than trying to put their content behind a paywall, right? So there, there's other ways to do it. We can talk about more ways to monetize too, but I would- Yeah. Well-...
just be really careful with it. But... Go ahead. Very... Also one thing, final thing I'll say is like if you're gonna sell...
It is, it can be a great business model because you have recurring revenue, all these great things, as people know. But like you need to sell to an audience that's actually buying
subscriptions for journalism information. If, if they're not actively buying these things, it's really gonna be hard to, to make money this way. Um, so- Yeah. You gotta think it out, talk it out... yeah.
You gotta play it out before you like make the assumptions.
Um, so when you're on the Passionfruit podcast, Creators on Air, like a year or so ago, you also said for most creators, paid advertising might not actually be the most lucrative way [laughs] to monetize.
So I, [laughs] when I was doing my research, I was like, "Okay, you're calling out subscriptions and paid advertising as both not the great way, not great ways for most creators to monetize," which I guess where I go with that is like, actually, for most creators, you just might not be able to monetize is where I get with that.
But so I guess on the topic of like other ways to monetize, the question there would be like, what do you think is the most effective way for most newsletters, whether they're small, medium size, to monetize? Yeah.
Everybody is different, right? So it depends on... I would almost put them in different categories.
I kind of have a framework for this where like if, if you're media, um, where you're covering some type of information or, or news, your, your counter effect is gonna be ads, subscriptions, or events.
If you're education, you're gonna have courses, coaching, and community. And if you're entertainment, which is pretty rare with the type of people that I work with, but you're gonna be more ads, donations, and affiliate.
Because if you're entertainment, you can have a much larger audience potentially, so the affiliate opportunities can be a lot bigger.
And so there's lots of different products within those categories.Um, but it really depends on what your audience needs. What I like to do when we're launching a new product with a client is try and pre-sell something.
So, like, a lot of people would just, like...
Either they just go and build something and don't even talk to their audience, which is an awful idea, or they try and do multiple surveys and maybe even calls with their audience and, like, ask them what they would want, but they never ask them for any money.
And so what I try and do is, okay, based off of what we know, what they're currently buying, you know, can we narrow it down to what would be a good fit?
Then can we do a survey that we've g- got a couple hundred responses and get more information, and then from that survey, can we go and have a phone call with, you know, three to five of those people that completed the survey and left some helpful feedback and get, get more information from them?
And then we go in... We don't go and build anything at this point. We go and say, "Hey, this is the one thing I'm gonna build," or even potentially, "This is the two or three things that I could build.
Um, if you would like it at 50% off, here's the link to pre-order it.
And if we get 10 pre-orders or 20 pre-orders or whatever it is for b- whatever it is based off of the revenue that you want, 50 pre-orders, 100 pre-orders, if I get this amount, I will build it.
And if we don't get this amount, I will refund everyone. And if we don't end up building the thing that you wanted, I'll, I'll refund you as well." And so you get people to vote with their wallets- It's like Kickstarter.
Yeah. It's, it's ex- yeah, the exact same thing, and that works.
And, uh, I've talked to so many people who have built a course or subscription or a book or whatever, they spent a year on it, and they launch it to crickets because they didn't go through a process like this, and they didn't, um, pre-sell before they built it.
So when it comes to any type of information-based product, you have to pre-sell it before you build it 'cause you don't truly know what people want, right? Um, and so you have to find out what's a fit for you.
Ult- like, I can just tell you what was a fit for me. Like, we found we had this agency. It works, but I don't wanna run a agency of 100 employees and 100 clients, right? It's not the type of business that I wanna build.
We saw that a lot of people who were joining our email list, um, were beginners. We surveyed them, and most people, I think 60%, said, "I don't have a email list or a newsletter now, but I wanna start one.
I'm interested in this. I wanna learn more." And so for that type of person, what's the best product for them? Which it's essentially a course or a training program.
And so we created basically a cohort-based course that has a community element and a group coaching element, 'cause I felt that was the best way to help them achieve their goal of starting their newsletter and making money from it.
And so that's what I picked based off of what I could deliver and based off of what my, I felt my audience needed, and that's been really successful for us.
Everybody's gonna be a little bit different though, based off of what they do and what their audience wants. And so you just have to figure that out.
And honestly, the creative solutions are gonna work a lot better than, like, cookie cutter solutions. Like, the whole Substack model is not gonna work for everyone.
The whole cohort-based course model isn't gonna work for everyone either. Um, definitely look out there in the world and see what other creators and media businesses are doing, but don't just follow that word for word.
Yeah. No, I agree. So the, the, the course we're talking about, your program, Write, Grow, Sell, um, I heard you talk about this on, again, on the Passion Fruit Podcast.
You gave credit to Austin Rief from Morning Brew for coming up with this idea that a new- as a newsletter operator, you have three roles: write, grow, sell. Which pretty self-explanatory.
You have to make the content, you have to build the audience, and then you have to sell whatever it is, the, whatever way you're making money, whether it's advertising or whether it's, like, converting people to paid subscriptions.
Um, I'm curious how many people you know who, like, as a newsle- newsletter operator, fulfill all those roles their own.
Like, I'm, I imagine the scale of people you work with, it's probably teams, but I'm curious if there's anybody you know who, like, actually does all those things solo really well, 'cause I think that's pretty rare.
A lot of people do, especially when they're in that stage of their business when they're, like, zero to seven figures. We've worked with a lot of clients who have done that. Um, so it's not super surprising.
Oftentimes there'll be, like, co- cofounders where one will focus more on content and one focus more on audience growth and, and sales.
But it's pretty common to get, you know, to your first- I've seen that, yeah, the two cofounder model a lot. Yeah. And that's great. Not everybody has to have a cofounder, though.
I think, you know, there's a lot more successful businesses without cofounders. Um, but that, that's, um, that's basically what I see.
B- but usually at the point where you're, where you get to 30, 40, 80 grand a month per, per revenue, then you start to hire for things, and
it's r- like, you're usually gonna hire for one of those three things, write, grow, sell. Like, you're, you're gonna pick your first hire for one of those. And it's, it could be your weakest thing.
It also just could be the thing that takes up the most time. Um, or it could be what's available to you. Like, if you know a great salesperson, maybe you go to that first. You know?
But it's harder to find a writer for you. Usually, I find that founders get out of the writing last, because that's the core of this write, grow, sell sandwich.
Like, the writing is the meat or whatever vegan option you prefer there, right? So you have to have that.
So, like, when I was talking to Tim at 1440, they have four million newsletter subscribers, eight figures in revenue. Up until a couple months ago, he was still writing a section every single daily newsletter.
Um, and you know, like Jason of The Pour Over is still editing every newsletter, and they have a little bit less than a million subscribers now.
And so, like, that is the product of a newsletter-focused business, and so usually the founder's always super close to that. But the, the growing part and the selling part get more outsourced over time.
So your background, uh, as I understand it, you are self-taught. You graduated high school 2016. You did one semester of college before dropping out, learned a bit about marketing, decided you wanted to do that.
You read a bunch of books, listened to podcasts, did Udemy courses, got clients on Upwork doing copywriting and Facebook ads, kind of faking it till you make it. I've been there.
Um, and then you build that up into these full-time jobs. You, you get this one job, and, and then I think you go to The Hustle. Um, abbreviated history of you.
And then, you know, two and a half years ago, you start this agency, so it's been like a-How, how long is it? Like six, seven years on this path before you start the agency.
Um, and then you're doing the agency for about a year, and then you start doing this newsletter, and then six months after that you start doing a podcast, which is a long-winded way of saying you now, I think, would identify as a creator in some extent inasmuch as you do the newsletter and the podcast, but you come to it from, like, not even necessarily being a media founder, from being, like, a specialist behind the scenes operator for media companies.
Um, long way of asking you, do you identify as a creator? Tell me about Matt as a creator. Um, I do and I don't. I'm a... I, I've never created for the sake of creating,
um, at least recently in the, in the past maybe two or three years. Um, you know, back in the day- You're creating for the sake of selling your various services. Yeah.
I'm, I'm creating as a, as a business owner and entrepreneur. I, I did have, like, a newsletter back in 2017, um, had a blog back then or before then.
It didn't really go anywhere because I didn't really know anything about business and, like, I wish I would've stuck with that in a more, uh, consistent way, but it didn't happen.
But, um, basically I have always, before I create something, I always have a way to monetize it first, which is I think the opposite of a lot of...
what, what a lot of creators do, and that's why I would describe myself as, like, a, a founder.
And so, like, before I started, um, you know, originally started p- posting content on, on Twitter or X, and so I, like, I had a... I kinda got the agency up and running before I did that.
Um, and, like, I had a way to monetize the newsletter before I started the newsletter. I always just start with the end in mind. Uh, and not... Most creators don't do that, but that's totally okay too.
Like, you can, you can win both ways. Well, I think that's funny, 'cause, like me, I'm, I'm better at the creative side, the writing side, whatever, right?
Like, I'm not as talented at the business side as somebody like you. And I h- like, a, a big core to what I do and, like, I think my talents is I've always been a decent writer.
I was good at writing essays in college, and now that's what I do for a living with Creator Spotlight, right? I write essays. And when you're writing an essay, you, you don't start with an end in mind.
You start with, like, things you wanna prod at.
You start with these ideas you wanna explore, and you write them out, and you fight it out, and you, like, you know, you edit, you go back, you revise until you arrive at the end and you say...
And, and, you know, that, and that's the work you did. You're kinda like polishing this thing until the shape emerges.
So I, I c- I think a lot about, like, the difference between people who come from the creative background and who come from the business background within this soup that is the internet, being a creator, newsletters, whatever.
Um, and I don't know, I think that sums it up in a neat way that I've haven't really got to before, that like you coming from a business side, you're starting with the end in mind, that you're trying to achieve that end, and then everything else is a means to an end.
And I don't think I'm representative of, like, every person coming from the creative side, but, like, I think that the idea of, like, how you write an, how I write an essay without the end, without knowing the end, is actually quite illustrative of, of that divide.
Yeah, it is, and also just depends on your motivations. Like, um, do you wanna just, like, get your message out there, reach people, help three people through fr- free content?
I'm someone bel- who believes, like, I have the best products and services in the world, and the best way I can help you is to get you to, to join one of those things, right?
And I really believe in those things, and so, like, I, I sell them very aggressively, um, because that's how I can help the most people.
And I think if more people give me money, I'm gonna have a much more successful brand, and they're gonna be much more successful too.
Kinda sounds, um, egotistical, but that's how you have to believe- Yeah, no, totally... in my opinion. Um, and so I don't mean it in the wrong way.
Um, and I'm also someone, like, I never had the desire to have a large audience. Just not a natural desire I've had. But I definitely am, like, financially motivated for financial security, things like that.
That's as you should be. Yeah. Yeah. And as, and some people are just... It's not that people don't care about financial security. Some people just might have... They care more about audience, and some people...
Or there's a balance. It really all depends on who you are. And there's- Yeah... nothing wrong with either direction as long as you're doing everything the right way. Yeah.
Well, I think, I mean, this makes me think of another thing you said on the, on the Passion Fruit podcast, um, where you said some people treat their newsletter like a place to write an essay, and it's just long blocks of posts, and there's no separators or sections, and that's a mistake.
Um, which, you know, it's again, like, an exceptions prove the rule thing. I think, like, a lot of people do just wanna write and be read, and they want that validation. They don't wanna make money, right?
Um, but it's just a, it's just different type of, types of newsletters. Um, I do wanna say, though, so the podca- Like, your newsletter is very tactical. It's very good.
It clearly, like, comes out of the core body of knowledge that you have and that your agency offers. It's like it clearly grows up out of that, and it's, like, a accessible form of that. It's top-of-funnel marketing.
Um, and it's very useful and good. I think it's one of the best tactical newsletter things out there. But it, like, it very clearly has a direct, very direct tie to what you sell.
Um, your podcast on the other hand still does, very much so, but I think that is more of, like, you putting yourself out there in a vulnerable way as a creator, right?
Where, like, you're having these conversations, you're interviewing people. Um, tell me about the podcast. You've been doing it for a year and a half. Highlights and lowlights of that.
Yeah, it's tough, um, but I love it. And I'm someone who, like, most of the media I consume, if you were just to measure it by time, podcast is by far the most.
I love podcasts, not just business podcasts, but, like, comedy, anything. But your, your three, top three. You don't have to say if you don't want. It's a personal thing.
Some of them people, like, wouldn't even love, but I, I, you know, I like Theo Von. Like, I like any... I don't think that's my top, in my top three, but it's just one that's kind of like a, a widely loved answer.
He's a great interviewer. Yeah. And he's, uh... I like conversational stuff. I like Joe Rogan. I don't li- listen to every episode, but if, especially if he has comedians on, I'm gonna listen to, to a Joe Rogan podcast.
And then business stuff, you know, All-In has a great conversational podcast. My First Million has a great conversational business podcast. So all those are awesome.
And so I, uh, I, it's, like, kind of like, "Oh, I like this. I wanna do this too." I constantly feel insecure about [chuckles] how well I'm doing it. Like, I feel I can do a...
E- even though I'm not a great writer, I can feel like I, I can do a much better newsletter, but that's all just through practice.
Like, I've published over 100 newslettersAnd we've only published, um, you know, like 50 podcasts or so, because we haven't always done it weekly. We've, we haven't been super consistent.
It's also, in my opinion, it's more work than a newsletter. I didn't realize that going in. I'm just like, oh, you record and then it, like you post it, but also you gotta set up your hosting, you gotta find an editor.
It's more work than people realize, even though it seems pretty simple. Um, harder to grow the audience for a podcast. Um, I won't get into all that now unless you wanna discuss it later.
Well, wait, actually, I do briefly just because I wanna say, you've been doing very good. You, you wrote in your most recent newsletter, um, what your numbers were this year.
You said you had sixty-seven point eight thousand downloads on the podcast platforms, fifty-three point five thousand views on YouTube. That's quite a bit.
And I know it's like some of them, uh, are weighted much heavier than the others. Like, I think on YouTube- Oh, yeah... one of your, one of your videos makes up half of those views. But those are really good numbers.
Uh, they're better than the numbers I'm at, I'll, I'll, [chuckles] I'll admit that, so I'm trying to get there. Um, but just to say, like you're doing... it's working. It is working.
It's just, um, the challenging thing with podcasts is it's not as measurable as newsletters, so I don't know where the subscribers are coming from.
I don't know which s- downloads or which, um, listeners are buying what, and so therefore it's harder to grow.
I got to see, when I worked at The Hustle, I kinda got to see, like, the behind-the-scenes of the My First Million growth, and that's like one of the biggest podcasts in the world.
And, like, there was no really growth strategy that was consistent or working. Like, it was all kinda just throwing shit at the wall and just, like hoping people kinda found it, almost through like word of mouth.
Oftentimes word of mouth is just a describer for, "I don't know how we got the growth." Yeah. We'll just say word of mouth.
Well, I, I, like, I've talked to people before, and I fully believe this as, again, a guy who comes more from the creative side, um, the best growth hack is to just make something that's really good, right?
Like, you still have to get it out there, but like, that's- It is... the best thing. The discoverability is challenging with podcasts. Yeah.
Like, I, I think My First Million would be like a fraction of what it is now if, if they didn't have The Hustle newsletter that they were promoting it in every single week, and they had one point five million subscribers when they published the podcast for the very first time.
Um, even though it's a very good podcast, and like it's retained a l- lot of listeners very, very well.
And so yeah, it really seems like podcasts grow either through YouTube, which is basically another social platform where you have discoverability, or they grow th- the sometimes the existing audience you have on another social platform or through an email or a, a newsletter, right?
Well, okay. Let, let's talk about YouTube for a second, 'cause you mentioned again in your, in your, um, [clicks tongue]
"How I Plan to Get 100,000 Subscribers in the Next 12 Months" newsletter the other week that, uh, you're gonna optimize for YouTube. It's not optimized right now, but you're gonna optimize for YouTube.
You're gonna bring on new types of guests, uh, and your, you know, uh, vamped up title and thumbnail strategy, all the optimizing for YouTube stuff. Can you talk me through a little bit how you're thinking about that?
Yeah, I actually kinda have a more updated plan, because I wrote that post up at least four or six months ago, and that's changed now, so I can tell you what we're doing now to get to 100K plus. Um, it's just two things.
So the first one is YouTube. And so, um, we're gonna optimize our podcast for YouTube.
We're not necessarily gonna have more guests, 'cause unless it's a guest that we can really, like, sell to YouTube that's gonna get clicks, that's kind of like somewhat well-known. Um,
so we're gonna have some guests, maybe one guest a month.
And then we're just gonna like, have, um, better topics, you know, more concise podcast with me and Ryan, my co-host, and we're gonna have, you know, better packaging too.
We don't have good titles and thumbnails for the YouTube at all right now. And so we're gonna do one podcast a week, and then I'm planning to just do one solo video a week on various topics that are more top of funnel.
So they might, they might not even have, like, newsletter in the title. It's gonna be more things about, like, growing your business.
And I'll talk about the strategy of newsletters or email or stuff that I can help with, but it won't all be about newsletters, um, to attract a broader audience. And then we'll have some...
Of course, like that's just how you attract the audience. In every video, there's gonna be some type of integration.
So it's like if I'm talking about how to grow a paid acquisition, I'll have a lead magnet for that or a post that's like email gated that I have a call to action for in the video, so people can click and go subscribe.
'Cause if you don't have a call to act- Like, it doesn't matter if you're growing your YouTube audience if you don't have a call to action to get people on your email list.
And the email list is the only way I sell the main thing that I sell. And so that's like hopefully gonna be 50% of those subscribers, and the other 50% is just gonna be Facebook ads. And we already do that pretty well.
And that's it. Like, that's all I'm focusing on. I'm gonna just repurpose content to Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and just schedule that and have my team do it.
But I'm just trying to go all in on those two things next year. Okay, wait. Actually, I wanna linger there for a second.
So I read that you i- in exactly that same newsletter we've been talking about, that you repurpose every issue of your newsletter into 10 plus social posts and one blog post.
Um, that's something that, like, I've, I've done a little bit before, and I'm, I, I sometimes, like, the, the chopping it down is rough to me, the repurposing. Um, I, I don't always have fun doing it.
I like to make the thing. I'm bad at repurposing it, and I know that's one of my, my biggest weaknesses. I imagine similar for a lot of listeners. How do you approach that conversion into social?
Are, is this again, like, you're starting from the end before you write the thing? You're, you're thinking about those 10 social posts? How are you [chuckles] converting every newsletter into all this content?
I'm trying to, I'm trying to more and more.
Um, eventually I wanna have it where I write a newsletter, that newsletter is the script that I turn into a YouTube video, and I also can turn that into a f- a Twitter thread, a LinkedIn carousel, and then multiple, like, one-off tweets or LinkedIn posts from that.
And of course, that newsletter is published as a blog post too, just pretty much as is. And so that's what I wanna do, and I'm, I'm basically there except for the YouTube script part.
Um, I have someone else do it, which helps with that, because repurposing isn't fun. I don't enjoy it either. Um, but I think it is necessary.
And by 10 posts on two s- uh, I'm talking about 10 posts on two social platforms, so it's really just five posts.
And basically, the posts are very similar on LinkedIn and Twitter, so it's not like 10 totally original posts.
Um, what I do is just like, okay, one post is just like s- kind of like a sh- slightly shorter version of the entire newsletter, and then I just try and pull four other snippets that are kinda like good one-off things from the newsletter that are, that are shorter, um, long tweets or just regular tweets or imagesI don't always get five or 10, um, from one newsletter, but we can get pretty close.
And yeah, not, not fun, but I think it's totally necessary. [laughs] Yeah. No, I agree with that.
Uh, so a lot of people when they sign up for Creator Spotlight, you know, replying to my welcome email or whatever, will be like, "I don't have an audience. How do I get... How do I build one?
How do I get to 1,000 subscribers?" Whatever. You've written an excellent newsletter blog about this. Um, I'll link to that in the description, but, uh, I'd love to hear you talk about this a little bit.
How do you go from zero to 1,000 if you have, you know, let's say you're on social media, but it's just your friends and family following, whatever. How do you go from zero to 1,000 subscribers? Yeah.
I'll tell you, like, that is the hardest part, 'cause after you get there, you have so much more momentum and you start to build a snowball effect or a flywheel, um, in your audience and your business.
So it is, it is the hardest part, but, like, I started there, everybody has to start there, right? Um, so what I could do, I can kind of break it down tactically if that's, uh, if that's helpful, right? Um- Yeah.
You, you don't have to get so deep into it. We'll share the thing, but, uh, yeah, like an abbreviated tactical breakdown would be great. Yeah. So I think we talked about a newsletter offer before.
I think that really helps to get there because, like, if your newsletter isn't valuable, people aren't gonna sign up for that.
So really figuring out what is a good offer for your newsletter and topic, that really helps you get the first 1,000 subscribers tactically. Um, and then I think about, like, what is my launch plan?
Um, and basically this consists of, like, sending email and a text message to everybody that you know, essentially. Um, don't add them to the newsletter. Just be like, "Hey, I started the newsletter on this topic.
Here's why you should subscribe. Here's the link to join." Maybe that's 100 or even 500 people, and maybe you get, uh, 50 to 100 subscribers from that, maybe less.
Do an announcement on social, even just your friends and family. Do an announcement on all the social posts you have. Add it to all your digital real estate. So do you have a website? Add it there.
Do you have a link in bio? Any digital real estate you have where people can sign up, add it there. Even physical real estate, if you have like business cards or, like, a physical business, add it there.
Um, and then after you get, like, hopefully before we publish our first newsletter, we have 50 or 100 subscribers, so we have someone to write to, and that gives us the motivation to keep doing it every single week.
Uh, so after we have that, we publish the first newsletter, then we kind of do the process that we just described where we, we repurpose that content onto social media, 'cause the best way to grow a newsletter is through content-led growth.
So we create valuable content, we publish that in places where it can be discovered and shared on social. Usually, just one social platform is the best way to start.
And then people like that content, so they subscribe to our newsletter for more content.
And we try and have, um, you know, thoughtful but not super aggressive call to actions in all the content that we post on social, and a well-optimized social bio that drives people to the newsletter landing page.
You can get to 1,000 subscribers just with that, and that's a great way to do it.
Um, some people also, just to, like, get more momentum, you can do paid ads, and you can spend $5 to $10 a day on paid ads, and I think that may be worth doing for some people. I wouldn't spend much more than that.
Another thing we see work well is a pre-newsletter CTA, um, so pre-newsletter call to action.
So before your newsletter is sent, let's say it's sent on a Friday, on Thursday, you basically post a teaser of what's gonna be inside of that newsletter, and you have a call to action to sign up.
Those work extremely well, and so if I was early on in my journey, I would do one of those every single week. Um, that's the majority of it.
Uh, early on, you can't do a lot of partnerships, um, because you don't really have an audience to do that to. But if you just do that consistently, um, that will work well.
One final, like, little tactical thing is, as you're getting new followers, just send them a DM and just let them know you have a newsletter and tell them why they should subscribe.
So it's, it's, it's a warm DM, not a cold DM, because they already followed you. They're way more likely to subscribe. If they don't follow you, don't, don't DM them. But that can work really well to- No...
convert a lot more of your followers into email subscribers. Yeah. Um, great breakdown. We'll share the, the full, uh, more long read in the description.
Can you give me a little idea of, like, when you do a newsletter audit for a client, so say a new client coming in, what is that process basically? Yeah, I love this.
Um, so most of our clients are a little bit more advanced, right? So we're gonna look at, um, first of all, like, how does your business make money? You know, what products or services do you have? What ad...
If you're doing advertising, what ad products do you offer? Um, and then I just want all the numbers so I can understand what your business actually does.
So revenue, how many units sold, like, what's in your pipeline, stuff like that. Um, then I wanna get an idea of your email strategy. So, like, what does your newsletter look like? How often do you send your newsletter?
How often do you send emails? Do you have any automated email sequences in place? And then what are the engagements of these? Like, what's the open rate and the click-through rate of these things? A lot of times, um,
immediately we can see there's, like, a red flag with, okay, like,
um, we're not selling this product to our existing audience the way that we should, or, like, our engagement's way lower than it should be based off of how good this content is. Um,
the next thing we look at is the, what we call the subscriber flow, which is someone's landing page, thank you page, and welcome email as they sign up for a l- newsletter or lead magnet.
A lot of times this is where they run into deliverability or engagement problems. We'll see, like, there's a newsletter landing page.
It's not well optimized for a conversion, so they probably have a very low conversion rate, and their thank you page is just like, "Hey, thanks for joining my newsletter. Bye." And it's just...
It's totally under optimized where we could, um, sell them on more reasons why they should read the newsletter, tell them why they should open it, or even sell them on a product or service or some type of
way to ascend to our product or service on that thank you page. And thank you page, pages are, are incredibly underutilized and overlooked. The second...
The third part of that signup flow is the welcome email, so the email they get immediately after they join the email list or newsletter.
Usually, that's overlooked too, and it's very generic and not good, and so we'll optimize that too.
So we want people to, um, first of all, kind of resell them on why they should open the newsletter, uh, tell them they signed up.
It kind of is somewhat repetitive to the thank you page, but some people skip past a thank you page.Um, but after that stuff in the welcome email, we want people to move the email to their primary inbox,
reply to that email, and click a link. And we have call to actions for all those three things. And if they do those three things, we're gonna stay in the primary inbox.
If they don't do any of those things, we're either gonna get moved to promotions or stay in promotions. And that's like half the battle when it comes to your newsletter engagement, is just being in the primary inbox.
Like, subject line, newsletter content, all that stuff, if you're not in the primary inbox, you're in a really bad position no matter how good the content is, right? So that's important. That's extremely important.
Um, there's other things too. Uh, like we'll audit their ad campaigns. Um, w- w- one thing to see with that, just like another common mistake, is just they're not testing enough ad creative.
Not everybody has to use paid ads to grow their business, but the people we work with usually do. If you are, you have to be iterating a lot. Yeah.
And so we'll see, like, either they or an agency they worked with, they tested like, you know, four or six creatives in the past three or six months, and, um, that's not enough.
We, at our agency, we test between 5 to 10 ad creatives every single week. And, um, it's just like growing on organic social or growing on YouTube.
Like, if you're just posting one video a year, you don't expect to grow on YouTube. You need to post videos weekly or, or more than that. And ad creative's the same.
You gotta feed the machine with new creative that they can show new people to get you a lower cost per subscriber and h- higher ROI.
So is there anything within broader newsletter world that you think is close to a saturation point? I think we're, you know, we're always early. Everything's always early. We're still early in this industry.
Um, but if there's like a style of advertising or a type of newsletter, uh, anything that you're very much sell on, it's saturated, that opportunity has dried up.
Well, the obvious one is, like, the e, this AI, like summarize what you need to know about the world of AI in five minutes a day.
That problem has been solved like a year or two ago by a couple really smart hardworking people, like The Rundown and Superhuman AI and a couple other ones, and they, like, really dominated that space super quick.
And, um- Clients of yours, I believe too, right? Yeah. We've worked with The Rundown and the Neuron, um, and one, one other. Sorry, I'm forgetting.
But one other great one that actually got acquired by HubSpot recently, um, MindStream. Sorry. Um, they're all, all those, all those folks are great, and we worked with them at different times. Um, but yeah.
I mean, so, like, not to say, like, those people have been super successful, but, like, the people who just kind of followed on because they thought somehow this was, like, the great, um, get rich quick opportunity, that's, that's definitely saturated.
I think, like, more like Morning Brew copycats where they're just, like, trying to do business news in, like, five minutes a day, that's pretty saturated. There's always room for doing things differently.
Like, one example of a great business, uh, newsletter for business is Charter. They kinda...
I think they started after Morning Brew, and some people would put them in the same category where they cover business news and finance and tech.
But instead of doing, like, Morning Brew style of newsletter content, they do infographics, and they have- They're so good. Yeah. It's almost more like, it's li- like, it's like business... I mean, they're infographics.
You can just say that, I guess. But it's like, it's almost like the business section of the newsletter meets the comics section, even though it's not comic, but there is that sense of humor in it too.
And they got acquired by, by- Robinhood. Robinhood, yeah. Yep, the stock trading, um, platform. And so yeah, th- they've crushed it, and what they do is very different than other people.
And there's, there's probably, like, Charter for X too. Um- Or Morning Brew for Portugal or whatever, you know. Like, it's just that one different area. Yeah. I've seen some of those. I've seen some.
We've worked with some Morning, like, literally a Morning Brew for Portugal, um, and Brazil. N- not just, uh, Portugal. Well, there's a lot of great Brazilian media companies out there. Morning Brew in Portuguese. Yeah.
Exactly. And I think that can work. Um,
that's -- I'm not as big on, like, it's kind of like loc- localizing the language 'cause it's just hard to, like, monetize those, like, outside of North America subscribers with advertising unless you know the local ad space really well.
Like, I don't know anything about the Brazilian ad market. But if you're someone who does, maybe that's a great opportunity for you. I just don't.
Um, I've also seen that done for, like, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and stuff like that, and maybe that's a more lucrative market. I don't totally know.
But really, those are the only ones that I think are, like, copying Morning Brew, um, and doing the same topic and copying, like, all the AI folks and doing the same topic.
That's the only stuff I really think is oversaturated. Um, I'm very bullish on, like, B2B creators, local newsletters, local media, um, finance, investing, even just, not just B2B creators, but B2B media companies.
There's a lot I'm very bullish on, and just anybody who has a unique perspective that can help people through their content. There's, there's room for you to succeed. Last thing.
So we're recording this on New Year's Eve. It'll be 2025 in about less than 10 hours from now. Uh, do you have any... We talked a little bit about the, you know, things that are saturated.
Do you have any predictions or trends for the newsletter space in 2025? Oh, yeah. We're actually gonna talk about this on my podcast, um, pretty soon, so I'll give you some of the stuff I was writing down.
Um, so I mentioned these, but, like, I, I'm big on B2B creators, um, B2B media creators. Shout out Adam Ryan. Yeah, Adam Ryan. They're doing that with Workweek. There, there's so many more that are just, like,
super successful, but you would never know because you're not in the waste management space, or you're not in, like, marketing for B2B SaaS. Well, this is, uh- Yeah...
this is, like, what newsletters originally are, right, too? Like, not ne- not just, like, you know, maybe there's, like, activist groups, protest groups, like, s- you know, that, like, were circulating newsletters.
But, like, when I think of newsletters, I think of, like, you know, uh, l- uh, uh, what is it? Ernie Smith, I interviewed him earlier this year.
He had this great piece on the history of newsletters and how, like, the, the, there was a high concentration in, like, the '70s and '80s of newsletters in DC because there's all these, like, um, you know, national industrial groups based in DC that are sent, they're circulating these newsletters about the industry in the pre-internet era.
So the, this, the idea of the B2B creator, right, is actually so evergreen.Yeah. And newsletters were never really for mass media.
And, but the examples that we think of are from mass media, 'cause those are the ones that are most well-known, like a Morning Brew, 1440, The Hustle, um, The Skimm. Which is, which those are just short newspapers.
That's more like a newspaper than a newsletter, right? Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah, and those aren't the best ones to model off of for everything. There's some really smart things that those folks did, though.
So I'm big on B2B creators and media companies, but I think being a B2B creator, like if you're starting a B2B media company now, it needs to be creator-led. You're gonna be more successful that way.
I'm big on local media and newsletters.
It just solves the obvious problem in local media, and there's so many, uh, local communities that just don't have good news, or it's like only TV news, which people don't watch, and like they cover topics that people don't care about, or the local newsletter's very out of date.
Uh, not, not local news, a local newspaper is very out of date. Um, I think we're gonna see a return to like traditional information products like courses, coaching, digital products.
Like, people have overlooked these 'cause there was like a big COVID spike in these things, and everybody like had a course or whatever.
And then they're like, "Oh, courses don't work anymore 'cause people aren't at home anymore." Like, they still work.
They're still an amazing super high profit, uh, high profit margin business model, and a lot of people are trying to like monetize their audience in ridiculous ways when they should've just made a course.
Like, they're overcomplicating it. They're trying to like partner with agencies or do like a D2C brand where they sell candy or chocolate bars. Like, um, they should just do a course.
Not, not that MrBeast should do a course. He shouldn't do a course. But like a lot of creators do, especially if they're more niche or B2B. Um, Beehive is building a, a newsletter ad network.
I'm very bullish on that just in general. I think Beehive will do well, but there's room for other people too, because the, the newsletter ad, uh, ecosystem is so decentralized, um, underdeveloped.
There's not a lot of players. There's not, um, really one place to go if you're an advertiser to go and buy.
It's very hard for advertisers to buy for reasons that we don't need to get into now, but it's hard to buy across dozens of different newsletters successfully. So there's room for ad networks and ad services.
Um, and that, those are the main things. I also, um- Perfect... o- one final thing is like live events. We're doing a live event in February, and, um, that's like one thing that can't be disrupted by AI.
Like, AI's, hopefully, unless there's robots, you know, doing live events and speaking at events. Hang- hanging out is eternal. That's the whole point of life- Yeah... in my opinion, hanging out. So like, yeah.
Is, for, so for n- media education, the one thing that's not gonna change, the one thing that AI's not gonna change is live events.
So I'm very bullish on live events, and we're, we're doing one, uh, called Newsletter Marketing Summit in February of this year, or February of, not this year, 2025. We're almost there. It'll be this year.
Well, this will be out mid-January, so [laughs] To the listener. Yeah, listener. Uh, cool. Let's... Thank you for coming out. That's it.
Um, anything else you wanna plug besides the live event before, uh, before we close it out? That's it. I mean, newsletteroperator.com is where the, the newsletter's at.
I think there's some helpful resources there for most people. And then if you wanna join the live event, I have a discount code. You can use, um, CS200 for $200 off a ticket, which is- CS...
the biggest discount we have right now out there. So CS200. Nice. Well, that's it. This has been the Creator Spotlight Podcast. Listener, I will see you next week. Thank you.
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