Launch, Grow, Monetize: The Newsletter Lifecycle is BS
A few things people get wrong about newsletter lifecycles:
- Counting Subscribers as a Proxy
- Launch, then Grow, then Monetize
Subscribers as Proxy
Similar to social media accounts and influencers, we falsely believe that subscriber count is a proxy for lifecycle. We'll use phrases like "small" or "big".
I think this limits us because we're not comparing the size of the newsletter to the potential amount of people who could subscribe. Instead we compare to each other.
In reality, you could have 260 subscribers and have 10% of your entire industry if you're catering to Billionaires.
There are a few ways you can guesstimate how many total people should subscribe to your newsletter in the entire world. That's good to know.
What's stronger is to measure your effort and how many people you can connect with, contact, get in contact with, be seen by.
Launch, Grow, Monetize
You might want to build a lifecycle out of launching or creating the newsletter, then gaining subscribers. Maybe waiting for some magical number: "1,000 Subscribers" and then, and only then... Let's Monetize.
I think this is gross because then you're essentially a digital farmer, farming followers from all over. Collecting them as commodities. And then on day magically turn on the money faucet.
ALWAYS
You gotta do everything, all the time.
- Always be launching
- Always be growing
- Always be monetizing
2.5 years ago I had 0 subscribers. My first subscriber was my best friend. your first subscriber might be your Mom.
But that's not the last launch I had.
Every week I launch an edition.
There's an opportunity for me to ramp up to the edition launch, launch the edition and let people know I launched. If that was 3 tweets, I'd be able to write a simple tweet 3 times a week, 156 times a year. Less than 1 every other day.
Always Be Growing
Each edition offers me a chance to grow.
Tease people with a preview of your upcoming edition.
Tell people what they missed.
Directly reach out to anyone you included in your newsletter. Email them, tweet them, linkedIn connect. Make sure you figured out where they hang out and contacted them
Work That Monetize Muscle
And each edition offers me a chance to monetize.
Monetize might not be the most intuitive step. But you want to make sure you're working that muscle.
- Sell Previews of upcoming free work
- Sell curated archives.
- Sell High fidelity posters of infographics you share.
- Elicit Donations in your newsletter and blog posts.
“You gotta do everything, all the time.”
Entrepreneurship in one sentence.
Thank you for launching this post :)
And it's odd because if I do everything all the time, I end up doing nothing. It's quite an art.
Doing doesn't always lead to effective outcome so there's something to be weary of. Some of my more effective days felt totally effortless and well spaced out.... I don't even remember what's the outcome of hectic days haha
Thank you for the post, it builds off a lot of the conversation we had a few days ago :)
Thanks for another insightful post. That makes me thinking of how to do things with newsletter. Initially I thought of monetising it after reaching x number of subscribers.