Started a newsletter - should I keep going?
I started a newsletter that shares listings of job opportunities.
The stats from the first 3 issues are:
- 133 subscribers
- 60% open rate
- 15 - 22% click rate
Before investing more time into that, I'm considering how to monetize this.
Subscribers are unlikely to pay for this right now, and I can't find a company willing to sponsor a small newsletter.
Do the stats look promising? How am I supposed to grow such a newsletter?
I'm curious how others would evaluate if that could be a viable business.
That's amazing stats for a new newsletter! Industry average from my research are ~40% open rates, and ~5% CTR. You're way above the curve!
What are the main channels you got your subscribers from? Did you use any paid methods like Facebook ads?
1000 subscribers (bonus if you can still keep your high open rate and CTR) are generally the checkpoint that you can start focus on getting sponsors. If you use beehiiv, they have an ad network that sometimes give advertising opportunities (I started getting them from my ~200 subscribers mark).
There has been a development in newsletter growth/monetization: Services like Sparkloop. How it works is you recommend other newsletters related to your niche through their platform, and they pay you per subscribers signed up to those newsletters.
For my solo founder newsletter, I use beehiiv and they have a similar feature called Boost. Essentially I'm getting somewhere between 0.5-1$ per new subscriber. It doesn't sounds like much, but it helps you grow super fast because you're getting some money back immediately on getting a new sub, which you can reinvest into getting more subs.
I used Reddit to launch a simple landing page- not sure how repeatable this process is.
The resources you shared look very interesting, I'll definitely take a look at beehiiv and sparkloop for growing the newsletter. Thanks!
Congrats, launching on Reddit and actually getting results are very impressive. Reddit users are typically very allergic to promotions, and 133 subscribers from just one post means that post had really good tractions!
Of course, it doesn't have a lot of repeatability. Long term you'll want to diversify your marketing channels. For newsletters, it's typically 1-2 social medias of choice, paid ads, and then any other creative ways you can think of.
Here's an article I read recently about tips of growing a newsletter to 1000 users, and
here's one about paid acquisition crash crouse. Stuff like Sparkloop has really boosted the viability of having an effective paid ads campaign for newsletters.
If you want to read more stuff like this, I collect (read: hoard) useful resources and share them for solopreneurs to read daily on my newsletter, so check that out if you're interested. I'm collecting a lot of marketing stuff for my ultimate marketing collection, which will probably be done before end of this month.
Oh and let me know if you want more stuff to read. I don't have all the answers, but I sure do have a lot of articles in my bank!
@PeterTSFN I've been checking out your newsletter & really love the approach! Would love to have you on my solopreneurship podcast about building a newsletter.
Would you be interested? If so, drop me an email at henry@breakfreepsprints.com
(The podcast is called Free Founders & shares actionable tips/tactics from high-level solopreneurs & small business owners)
Hello Henry. Thanks for your offer, I'm really flattered! It's probably not for me at the moment, unfortunately. I just don't feel like I have enough to share yet.
I'm banking your contact though, and I'll send you an email in the future if I feel the time is right and you'd still like to have me on :).
@PeterTSFN That's completely fine. Drop me an email in the meantime
The whole concept of the podcast is to look at companies as they are going from zero to 1, so I wouldn't say you are too early
Curious - How did you get your first 133 users? I've considered starting a newsletter several times but it seems like a daunting task getting subs because I dont have a substantial social following or organic audience.
I launched on Reddit without a following. The newsletter is solving a pain of a specific Subreddit, and it was well received until mods took it down 😅
Thanks, glad it worked for a little bit at least Reddit mods are brutal.
We publish a newsletter for goleko. At first it felt really uncomfortable, but now I release them without a second thought! It's a muscle, you'll get over it. Good luck!
Do you enjoy it? I have a couple of newsletters that bring in a bit of money... but I really enjoy them and the connections it has brought are completely invaluable.
If you enjoy it, then it'll be worthwhile IMO. And you'll find ways to monetize, either with the newsletter or outside of it (I've started two businesses with newsletter readers who reached out to me).
It's nearly effortless since I only need to curate the content, so there's probably not much downside to just keep going and see where it leads me.
How do you promote your newsletter if I may ask?
In the past, I used reddit. It worked well in the beginning the had diminishing returns so I stopped eventually. The only way that I promote now is via recommendations. Substack, beehiiv, etc. jave recommendation engines that are powerful and passive - highly recommend reaching out to similar newsletters and asking for a recommendation swap.
For any useful advice, I would be more clear on what you are optimising for, @felix_gerschau.
If it's to make millions, there may be better business ideas to pursue (consulting or bootcamps are a good way to get to high profit ($100k-500k quickly, for example).
If it's to enjoy more freedom of time, then continuing to build the newsletter slowly makes sense, as it could bring in a nice income for you, whilst not requiring 40-80hrs per week.
Your open rate is high & click-rate very high, so it seems you're adding value for them.
It's now likely a question of how patient - and resilient - you are going to be to carry on with it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts around this! I'm not trying to make millions, so that is fine.
However, I've started so many projects that I'm afraid of sinking too much time into something that isn't looking promising from the get go.
There definitely seems to be signal from the market here, @feeeelix. It seems worth pursuing on paper. The big question is whether this excites you. If not, it will be hard to stick with it