Without a big list or by selling ads. — Don’t kid yourself. Monetization is the point of a newsletter — either indirectly or directly. Your newsletter’s goal is to drive you revenue. Some newsletters drive users to a SaaS (Software as a Service) website, or product page on Amazon or Gumroad (indirectly). Others drive revenue right inside their newsletter…

I love Twitter. Why? I saw someone tweet about starting a blog and thought, “why don’t they start a newsletter instead?” So I tweeted it out. The tweet went mini-viral with some excellent engagement (take a scroll through the replies). Lots of support — but also a lot of…

3 key factors to consider before diving into paid newsletter growth. — I recently wrote about the rise of newsletter recommendations. But something I didn’t cover in depth was the paid growth opportunity. When that article was published, SparkLoop’s Partner Program was the only method available to indie newsletter publishers to pay for newsletter recommendations in the sign-up flow. Since, beehiiv has…

My Growth Currency⚡ newsletter just added ~1000 subscribers in March. I went from 3k subscribers to 4k. And nearly 100% of those subscribers were all thanks to one growth strategy: Recommendations. Friends, I have not encountered a stronger growth strategy — free OR paid — than the latest Recommendations feature…

Make your newsletter work for you — not against you. — On a podcast recently, the host asked me an often-overlooked question about newsletters: What are some of the basic strategic errors that newsletter writers commit at early stages? I came up with a few mistakes I’ve made — and a few I’ve seen others make: Your newsletter is too hard…

The path to money is quicker than you think… — The goal for 99% of newsletters is to make money. And some want to make it BIG. They see 7-figure revenues from The Hustle or Morning Brew and think: “Why not me?” But not everyone wants to build the next Morning Brew. So what’s the best, easiest, and…

My open rates were suffering — until I made 2 changes. — My newsletter open rates have been consistently hitting over 55% recently. But it wasn’t always like this.

Here’s how one newsletter is getting readers hooked. — I used to be addicted to Starbucks. And it wasn’t for the coffee or food — it was their rewards program. I needed those rewards. So I stopped at Starbucks every morning on my way to work. I saved up those precious rewards to get the free drink or meal…

Goal overwhelm is real — so make it simple. — Whether it’s the beginning of a new year (like… right now) or the beginning of a new project, most of us have set lofty, ambitious — even audacious — goals. Guilty? Me too. But how often do we actually hit those goals? If you’re anything like me, the answer is…