How to Build and Grow a Newsletter as a Business Model

[MJ DeMarco]

that do not require 16 email opens

This has become few and far between, and even if so, I've had partners change their terms as soon as I send out an email and start sending them traffic.

We pay $4 a subscriber!

Then I send out a newsletter to 100K people and they instantly change the terms to $2 and 5 opens.

F*cking scam artists.

 

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[woken]

This has become few and far between, and even if so, I've had partners change their terms as soon as I send out an email and start sending them traffic.

We pay $4 a subscriber!

Then I send out a newsletter to 100K people and they instantly change the terms to $2 and 5 opens.

F*cking scam artists.

I’m speechless.

So even if the terms only apply from the moment they’re updated, they still stand to gain something because not everyone opens the email as soon as they get it, clicks, etc.

That does take premeditation .

With boosts(on beehiiv) on the other hand, not many people allow you to promote them via email — because they haven’t the same control as on sparkloop. So if you were to send out that email, they’d have to pay for every click, as per the defined terms.

Surely you can reach out for a mutual recommendation either in email or via upscribe then?

This kinda scares me — the lengths some would go to.

 

[MTF]

This has become few and far between, and even if so, I've had partners change their terms as soon as I send out an email and start sending them traffic.

We pay $4 a subscriber!

Then I send out a newsletter to 100K people and they instantly change the terms to $2 and 5 opens.

F*cking scam artists.

That's such a simple fix.

Beehiiv only allows you to have one active offer. You can't edit it, only remove it and replace it with a new one. If a publisher sends the current deal, then it's treated as such. The advertiser can't scam the publisher. It's strange that SparkLoop still hasn't fixed it.

 

[woken]

That's such a simple fix.

Beehiiv only allows you to have one active offer. You can't edit it, only remove it and replace it with a new one. If a publisher sends the current deal, then it's treated as such. The advertiser can't scam the publisher. It's strange that SparkLoop still hasn't fixed it.

In my opinion they are quite aware of it — it is what keeps people subscribed and they want to keep it that way.

If i’m not mistaken you have to deposit the funds with them before you can advertise.

 

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[woken]

I’ve been looking for a while for someone to share ideas with & support but most people think that your success comes at their expense.

If by any chance you’re really passionate about building a newsletter and are in the 5-10k+ subs range, I’d love to talk ideas. Send me a PM!

 

[Andy Black]

I’ve been looking for a while for someone to share ideas with & support but most people think that your success comes at their expense.

If by any chance you’re really passionate about building a newsletter and are in the 5-10k+ subs range, I’d love to talk ideas. Send me a PM!

Let's talk as much as we can in this thread.
Obviously some conversations are better as PMs or Zoom calls.

I've not had a chance to look at newsletters as much as I'd like. I'd really like to setup Google Ads campaigns that grow newsletters on autopilot while breaking even on an intial offer (maybe the revenue coming from coregistrations?), but i'm working on other things at the moment.

Happy to give my thoughts on what I'd try, either in this thread or on a Zoom call.

 

[woken]

I'd really like to setup Google Ads campaigns that grow newsletters on autopilot while breaking even on an intial offer (maybe the revenue coming from coregistrations?)

That’s exactly the strategy most newsletters use for growth once around 10k subs. Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t you have a paid newsletter at one point in time?

Nevertheless, you can become the Google Ads guy.

As for what I’m doing :

• Same strategy that got me to 8000+ subs -> posting on linkedin & messaging every person interested.
• Currently exploring scalable ways too and have tried my hand at reddit, linkedin & tiktok ads with disappointing results.
• I know FB(meta) is where I should be doing that, however I still hold some grudges over them closing /limiting my ads manager accounts. That is my backup plan.
• Right now I’m grinding my way to 1000 followers on Tiktok so that I can have a link in bio.
  
  
• Linkedin is more of a hit or miss lately, and unless I’m overdelivering value — (which I cannot do every day, even with repurposing content), posts have a lower reach.
• I will be exploring giveaways soon ( which will be a iteration of the rewards currently offered for the referral system I already have in place).
  
  The issue I currently face is that I started another newsletter(#2)that does quite well. Some of you might know me for my shiny object syndrome, but I really like writing both. I can write both, however, I do not know how to clarify my message on my Linkedin profile.
  
  Currently only mentioning Newsletter #1. I want to post about #2 as well, but I cannot think of a clear structure that will not confuse people. It’s funny because I think I would do that all day long on Tiktok and would not care about confusing people. Any suggestions?

I’m here for any questions.

By the way: I really enjoy the process of working on this, the whole “figuring it out”. I have concluded that I enjoy problem solving, as cringe as that might sound.

 

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[Andy Black]

That’s exactly the strategy most newsletters use for growth once around 10k subs.

Why wait?

Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t you have a paid newsletter at one point in time?

I had one on Substack for a bit. It was interesting but I didn't want it to be me doing all the writing (it was called Andy's Newsletter so I wasn't going to outsource it).

Nevertheless, you can become the Google Ads guy.

I've no interest in becoming more well known as a Google Ads guy, or even becoming more well known. I find writing about Google Ads a bit boring. I'd rather use my shovel than sell shovels.

I'm interested in whether newsletters can be grown from scratch with Google Ads for various niches where I wouldn't do any writing.

Currently exploring scalable ways too and have tried my hand at reddit, linkedin & tiktok ads with disappointing results.

What about paid search?

I know FB(meta) is where I should be doing that, however I still hold some grudges over them closing /limiting my ads manager accounts. That is my backup plan.

It's just business. Why hold a grudge if you can leverage their platform to grow to a critical mass for instance?

I really like writing both. I can write both, however, I do not know how to clarify my message on my Linkedin profile.

I had/have that problem too. Do I write about Google Ads, or freelancing, or both? This week I decided to just copy/paste messages I send to clients. That way I'm just in and out of social media platforms and the cards can fall whatever way they fall.

I really enjoy the process of working on this, the whole “figuring it out”. I have concluded that I enjoy problem solving, as cringe as that might sound.

Me too. Hence all my "Figuring out XYZ" threads. It's good to enjoy problem solving. Just don't spread yourself thin like I have a habit of doing. Instead of figuring out new channels, it sounds like the next thing to figure out for you is how to automate your growth?

 

[woken]

i’ll be back to this with something more concrete once I have some more automated growth.

 

[Andy Black]

i’ll be back to this with something more concrete once I have some more automated growth.

What are you looking at to automate growth? PM me if you prefer.

 

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[MTF]

I'm in the process of cleaning my author list of 45k people. I'm removing about 25k people as they're inactive.

I've been busy building a new welcome sequence and a whole new product. The setup is done according to the process outlined in This Is Personal by Brennan Dunn.

I'll add some more practical stuff to this thread when I finish moving my list to Beehiiv.

Easier growth, lower costs (I'll save about $4k a year just by moving to Beehiiv), and more monetization options are the reasons why I'm moving to Beehiiv.

I'm curious how much I can make off recommending other newsletters (Beehiiv calculates up to $3k a month). I also plan to test boosts myself and see if I can scale through them.

If the move works well, I'll likely start another newsletter in a new niche as the author newsletter is a personal brand and I'd like to build something that doesn't depend on me that much.

 

[woken]

What are you looking at to automate growth? PM me if you prefer.

i’m looking into typeform with zapier & beehiiv integration.

Someone submits a form via typeform, zapier then automatically creates a new subscriber & beehiiv sends a personalised welcome email.

Yes, you can do the same via landing pages but I much prefer it this way due to customisation options on typeform.

At the moment, beehiiv can be customised but not as much as I’d like to with drag and drop.

@MTF
If you could outline the process in the book in a couple sentences that would be lovely(rough idea)

I'm curious how much I can make off recommending other newsletters (Beehiiv calculates up to $3k a month).

That is only boosts right? Sounds about right.

The whole ads system was incorporated a month ago; there isn’t a better time to move as this will likely be improved.

If the move works well, I'll likely start another newsletter in a new niche as the author newsletter is a personal brand and I'd like to build something that doesn't depend on me that much.

Looking forward to it.

In my second newsletter I summarise the lives of successful entrepreneurs and highlight an important lesson / principle derived. More recently I started creating visual timelines.

I then create a 3 sentence summary of what I wrote and that is post #1.
The lesson/principle is post #2.
The visual is post #3.

But as I said,

I can write both, however, I do not know how to clarify my message on my Linkedin profile.

Currently only mentioning Newsletter #1. I want to post about #2 as well, but I cannot think of a clear structure that will not confuse people.

 

[Andy Black]

i’m looking into typeform with zapier & beehiiv integration.

Someone submits a form via typeform, zapier then automatically creates a new subscriber & beehiiv sends a personalised welcome email.

Yes, you can do the same via landing pages but I much prefer it this way due to customisation options on typeform.

At the moment, beehiiv can be customised but not as much as I’d like to with drag and drop.

Interesting. I have a thread where I was running Google Ads to a Google Form to get people into a Google Sheet in the first instance.

We then switched to our own dynamic landing pages with leadforms that send people to Google Sheets. (That's what we do for clients anyway so I wanted to use our own tech. Plus the Google Forms aren't customisable enough.)

I then want to send people from Google Sheets to whatever email service provider we pick (or a client uses). I find all the landing pages builders by the ESPs to be poor.

EDIT: Found where I talk about it:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...aigns-for-fun-and-profit.107172/#post-1050748

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...for-fun-and-profit.107172/page-2#post-1055913

@MTF
If you could outline the process in the book in a couple sentences that would be lovely(rough idea)

+1. I was tempted to get it as I like Brennan Dunne but it's too damn long.

In my second newsletter I summarise the lives of successful entrepreneurs and highlight an important lesson / principle derived. More recently I started creating visual timelines.

I then create a 3 sentence summary of what I wrote and that is post #1.
The lesson/principle is post #2.
The visual is post #3.

So on LinkedIn it's like a short post, then a medium post, then a carousel?

I get feedback on my carousels (because they have a CTA to reply if interested in the lead magnet), and I could use that to improve the carousel and repost.

I also think a carousel is practically a short video so it could be a way of honing the content that will become a short video.

 

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[woken]

So on LinkedIn it's like a short post, then a medium post, then a carousel?

Yes, apart from the carousel. I recognise I’d be better for Linkedin but it’s just a photo. The reason I’m keeping it as a photo is because once I have 50 ( within a year) I can pack everything into a short book. “Lives of Business Tycoons” or something.

I’ve been trying carousels on Linkedin. Spent both money and time to design the best carousels I could and I got 20 likes. My best performing content (1m+ impressions) is just text.

 

[MTF]

@MTF
If you could outline the process in the book in a couple sentences that would be lovely(rough idea)

• Heavy use of personalization and segmentation to send better offers - you achieve this through surveys, including simple "Click one of the four options below" ("I signed up to get better x", "I want to do y") or "I identify as:" (and give options for the stage of growth of your client)
• Start with a free course for a few days, then do a "bridge week" where you summarize it and prepare the audience for a paid product. The free course can have worksheets that give you more ideas for products and problems your audience is dealing with.
• After the bridge week you start your one-week launch. Pretty standard stuff.
• A week after the launch you send an email to those who didn't buy and ask them why. Then segment and if possible, try to handle their objections and sell.
• Continuously segment your audience and personalize your emails.

 

[Andy Black]

I'm wondering about approaching this market from a different angle, the Scott's Cheap Flights model. While not quite a newsletter, SCF provides value to his email subscribers by finding flight deals from the subscribers list of preferred airports and sends out daily emails. His monetization strategy is offering a premium subscription which gets access to the amazing fares like price mistakes.

Just resurrecting this post. An email newsletter can be as simple as alerts.

 

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[MTF]

Just resurrecting this post. An email newsletter can be as simple as alerts.

I like this idea.

What kind of alerts could it be besides flight deals or stock alerts, though?

 

[woken]

I like this idea.

What kind of alerts could it be besides flight deals or stock alerts, though?

New houses up for sale. Think I saw this one with about 30k real estate investors subscribed. -> full list at $30/month or something . The good thing about is that anyone can replicate it in their area. Partner with all real estate agencies, get commissions, etc. A lot of potential upside.

This thread is turning platinum by the minute.

 

[Andy Black]

I like this idea.

What kind of alerts could it be besides flight deals or stock alerts, though?

Off the top of my head?

Job openings, houses for sale, cars for sale, courses starting, apprenticeships starting, interest rate changes, mortgage deals, loan deals, furniture deals, local events, national events, local sporting results, national sporting results, international sporting results, concert tickets, hotel deals, local deals (such as Groupon deals), leads of people looking for services, company formations, product launches, kickstarter campaigns, book launches, movie releases, game releases, etc.

 

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[Timmy C]

Off the top of my head?

Job openings, houses for sale, cars for sale, courses starting, apprenticeships starting, mortgage deals, loan deals, furniture deals, local events, national events, local sporting results, national sporting results, international sporting results, concert tickets, hotel deals, local deals (such as Groupon deals), leads of people looking for services, etc.

I guess you could also use alerts for your own product launches.

 

[Andy Black]

I guess you could also use alerts for your own product launches.

Lol. I was still editing and added product launches in there then read your reply.

 

[Andy Black]

I like to catch up on Newcastle United video blogs on YouTube every Sunday evening before I hit the hay. Some are from journalists who've just come from press briefings or chats with players at the training grounds. Some are by bloggers who travel with the fans and talk to opposition fans in pubs etc.

I haven't gone looking, but what if there was an email newsletter that summarised the overall theme for the week and linked to all the videos that were released that week?

I could probably do it as I watched them all, but could it be done programmatically? Could it be done for every football team? What about other sports?

What about other subjects with a news component that have videos uploaded every week?


EDIT: I'm tempted to do the one for Newcastle United since I seem to be subscribed to all the channels and watch everything anyway.

 

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[Timmy C]

I like to catch up on Newcastle United video blogs on YouTube every Sunday evening before I hit the hay. Some are from journalists who've just come from press briefings or chats with players at the training grounds. Some are by bloggers who travel with the fans and talk to opposition fans in pubs etc.

I haven't gone looking, but what if there was an email newsletter that summarised the overall theme for the week and linked to all the videos that were released that week?

I could probably do it as I watched them all, but could it be done programmatically? Could it be done for every football team? What about other sports?

What about other subjects with a news component that have videos uploaded every week?


EDIT: I'm tempted to do the one for Newcastle United since I seem to be subscribed to all the channels and watch everything anyway.

The programmatic approach to the news content is a good idea, especially for text style content.

 

[Andy Black]

The programmatic approach to the news content is a good idea, especially for text style content.

It's slightly harder for video and audio content, but there's AI tools out there that can summarise video and audio.

 

[MTF]

New houses up for sale. Think I saw this one with about 30k real estate investors subscribed. -> full list at $30/month or something . The good thing about is that anyone can replicate it in their area. Partner with all real estate agencies, get commissions, etc. A lot of potential upside.

This thread is turning platinum by the minute.

My thought was that it could maybe also work for new vacation rental listings for a specific location.

New Airbnb listings without any reviews are usually discounted. As far as I know there's no way to sort by recently added properties.

So imagine that you send weekly new vacation properties in, say, Hawaii. People who visit the islands often could be interested in learning about these new options to save money or try something new.

I'm tempted to build something like this myself lol.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I like this idea.

What kind of alerts could it be besides flight deals or stock alerts, though?

INSIDERS trades on stocks.

10K filings with certain details of importance extracted.

 

[Andy Black]

I'm reminded of the video linked to in this post:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ee-email-newsletters.83312/page-5#post-777119

 

[MartinG]

My thought was that it could maybe also work for new vacation rental listings for a specific location.

New Airbnb listings without any reviews are usually discounted. As far as I know there's no way to sort by recently added properties.

So imagine that you send weekly new vacation properties in, say, Hawaii. People who visit the islands often could be interested in learning about these new options to save money or try something new.

I'm tempted to build something like this myself lol.

New Airbnbs are often boosted to the top of certain listings to make it easier to get them initial bookings however. Having launched one in the summer past, I experienced this and found it pretty easy to get the first few bookings. That's also probably to do with the high season, high demand and lack of supply in the area as well.

 

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[MartinG]

I like this idea.

What kind of alerts could it be besides flight deals or stock alerts, though?

Use Google Trends to provide alerts to internet entrepreneurs about rising trends before their mainstream and hijacked by the make money online gurus and Youtube.

...which is demonstrated ironically in the last few pages about new and upcoming newsletter platforms.

 

[MartinG]

I like to catch up on Newcastle United video blogs on YouTube every Sunday evening before I hit the hay. Some are from journalists who've just come from press briefings or chats with players at the training grounds. Some are by bloggers who travel with the fans and talk to opposition fans in pubs etc.

I haven't gone looking, but what if there was an email newsletter that summarised the overall theme for the week and linked to all the videos that were released that week?

I could probably do it as I watched them all, but could it be done programmatically? Could it be done for every football team? What about other sports?

What about other subjects with a news component that have videos uploaded every week?


EDIT: I'm tempted to do the one for Newcastle United since I seem to be subscribed to all the channels and watch everything anyway.

Interesting. And would you use Sparkloop specifically for getting traffic and subs?