The Curious Bunch

About this time last year - around October 2020 - I decided to start a newsletter.

Last week I was updating my personal Revenue page on Notion and noticed some interesting stats:

• I earned around $1400 dollars through my newsletter.
• That's ~₹1,05,000 in Indian Rupees.
• For less than 7 hours per week of effort on average.
• That's ~1 hour per day.

Read all about it here

EmailOcotopus, the ESP I use, agreed to be my Sponsor for a whole month. Couldn't be more excited!

I love their Support Team and their blogs.

Getting to work with your favourite brands is the best feeling ever!

How did I do it?

• Sent an email to the only email address I knew (their support team). It was a Thank You note + Invitation to collaborate (rather than a plain sponsorship).
• Support team was kind enough to forward it to the concerned Manager.
• Manager asked me to send over more details.
• Listed down all the benefits of Sponsoring TCB, prices, available slots, etc.
• No reply from them. So I followed up after 3 days.

A simple follow-up goes a long way.

• Next email was a confirmation to sponsor for a whole month.
• Gave the available slots. Sent an invoice.

Looking forward to working with them!

🧘‍♂️

Before getting my first Classified Ad, I used Swapstack's Plug & Play feature to run the Ads and let other people know that TCB is now accepting them.

Morning Brew and Upside are pretty much known in the newsletter space so probably people did not take interest.

I'm expecting that will change with this Ad.

Suggestion:

• Keep in touch with your clients while running the Ads. Build actual relationships instead of just transactional ones.
• Providing Stats for Sponsors is a default, but providing stats for classified ads is a choice. If you can spare some time, help Classified Ads clients with those metrics.
• They're still in the testing phase and would love any helpful information they get regarding their Ad Performance.
• Offer them a discount if they're bulk booking. This way, they also get to understand the Ad Performance over time.

...and they booked 4 consecutive Sponsorship Slots! 🎉❤🚀

I've read many articles on monetizing newsletters. Almost every article suggests that you should at least reach 1,000 subscribers to attract Sponsors.

Lucky me, I didn't listen to them. 🙂

As you might have guessed by now, I LOVE EXPERIMENTING.

Also, I believe Newsletter Creators should experiment as much as they can when they have a smaller subscriber list. This gives room for correcting any mistakes and not going down the wrong path. Also, your readers are more forgiving when you're small and still trying to grow. So don't be lazy when it's about experimenting.

As soon as I hit 500 subs, I listed myself on all the platforms to let Sponsors know I'm available now. You absolutely need not wait until you hit 500 but this so far is the best lowest number to attract Sponsors if you have an engaged audience.

That's how I found Swapstack. Got my first introduction from a Sponsor and closed the deal in under an hour! :)

How did I convince them to book for 4 slots?

I'll be writing more about this in my Newsletter Guide which I'm planning to release by the end of month or early June. :)

Watch this space!

0 to 500 subscribers in 5 months!!

Honestly, I thought it would take me a whole year to reach 500 subs but with lots of support and love from Newsletter community, here I am!

I'm soon going to make an elaborate post on how I reached here, what worked for me, and what didn't work for me. :)

For now, take this suggestion:

• BE CONSISTENT. YOU'LL GET THERE. I PROMISE!

Never thought I'd reach this stage.

Once I got my first 2 coffees, I decided to lower the default number of coffees people can buy for me on BMC.

Default price for a coffee on BMC starts at $5 but you can reduce it to as low as 1$. I did this as a part of experimentation.

My observations:

• If you're a small newsletter or just started creating things and are looking for people to support you, it's best to start with a low default amount on BMC.
• Most of your readers might not be earning a US Salary. So, $5 is actually a huge amount of money!
• When lowered the amount and started giving shoutouts to supporters in my newsletter, it must have nudged other readers to support me as well. That's how I reached to 20 in just 2 months.

After Janel's shout-out and the readers she sent my way, I wanted to do something nice for them.

I decided I'll share my database of productivity and creativity tools with them.

I used Notion for this. People loved it! So glad I could engage them and offer them something for subscribing to my newsletter.

This was such a big surprise! It made my WHOLE MONTH!!

Got around 10 subscribers every minute. Almost 150+ subscribers in a day or two! Reached 300+ subscribers at this point.

I'll always be grateful to @Janel for giving me this shout-out. I had so many doubts regarding whether I'm going in the right direction or not with my newsletter. But this shout-out gave me all the hope in the world and pushed me to write better and be consistent!

Suggestion:

• Always give shout-outs to up and coming newsletters. They'll be forever indebted to you! Show them love. They deserve it for their efforts.

• I started taking cross-promotions seriously after this. You'll get the most dedicated readers through cross-promotions if you're careful with who you choose to promote with.

• Don't care about how big or small other newsletter is. Just make sure you both have at least one or two common topics.

• Don't be shy in reaching out to others for cross-promotions if you both talk about common topics. 99% of them are going to collaborate with you. Just be nice. If they say no, still BE NICE!

Felt so happy when I got this notification from Buy Me A Coffee.

Thanks to VJ Reddy and Santosh for making my day on New Year! ❤

Every Supporter on BMC is a validation for my Newsletter.

Suggestion:

• Don't add BMC/Donation link as an afterthought at the bottom of your newsletter. Put some thought into it and genuinely ask your readers for their support.

• Give shoutouts to each and every supporter in your newsletter. Preferrably at the beginning where other readers don't miss out on noticing them. This will remind other users that they can show their support to you as well. Also, your supporters ABSOLUTELY DESERVE ALL YOUR SHOUTOUTS!! Reach out to them, connect with them, and get to know their projects. Stay in touch with them! Put them in your 100 True Fans List!

Thanks to many of my early supporters, readers, and friends for helping me and giving me feedback to improve myself with every Newsletter Issue. 🙏

My acquisition channels so far were LinkedIn and Twitter.

I'm looking forward to participating actively in more communities and reach out to like-minded people.

Subscribe to The Curious Bunch and join the tribe! 💌

Let's learn and grow together!