The Makings of a Newsletter

How writers create, grow, and monetize

Welcome to the 1,164 new world builders who have joined over the last seven days! If you aren’t subscribed, join 7,677 others to level up your own storytelling and see business strategy through a new lens.

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Hi friends 🤝,

This newsletter’s been around for 6 weeks and just hit 7,500 readers with a 50% open rate. For context, my previous newsletter took 8 months to hit that mark. So, thanks for being here!

Enough people asked what my process was that I decided to write a whole post on how I think about personal newsletters.

First, 7,500 readers isn’t big. But, we’re adding an average of 163 readers per day since the first newsletter came out on April 2nd.

This newsletter has a real chance to hit 50,000 subscribers by the end of 2022, which could put it well into the 6-figures income by sending 1 or 2 times per week. Let’s dig in…

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There are three pillars to any media business, and a personal newsletter is no exception.

  1. Content

  2. Growth

  3. Monetization

Content

There are three things to think about when it comes to content:

  • What you care to write about

  • What people want to read and learn

  • What niche can make money

I find the Zone of Genius idea super helpful to pick your content lane. Notice how I don’t say niche, I prefer to look at it as the intersection of your interests and areas of expertise. This gives you more flexibility in what you write about.

Here’s my Zone of Genius:

  • I’m Nathan, I’ve written a book, worked in tech consulting, and grown my Twitter to 103,000 followers. I’ll be writing about storytelling from a business / tech lens.

You can use the same formula to create your own. Figure out your unique proposition and test that over and over until you nail it.

But my first time creating a newsletter I focused far too much on content. I thought growth and monetization would come as a by-product of producing great content. This is simply not true…

Growth

99% of newsletter pieces are not viral (unless your name is Packy McCormick). That means you need a top-of-funnel to grow your readership at a significant pace.

For me, Twitter is that top-of-funnel. For you, it could be TikTok or YouTube. Right now those are the three channels where building an audience is the most doable (LinkedIn too, but I can’t handle the cringe just yet).

On Twitter, there are three ways to grow a newsletter:

  1. Include it at the end of a thread

  2. Include it in your profile (shoutout Beehiiv for the integration)

  3. Tweet the link directly

Each spike in newsletter readers is from a Twitter thread. Looks like Twitter wants me to post more than 1x per week...

And here’s how the Beehiiv integration with Twitter looks. It’s a nice and consistent source of readers:

Off of Twitter, newsletter writers should do regular cross-promotions. You’ll notice I do this each send with another newsletter. Here’s the rub – I’m quite picky about who I work with. I’ve turned down 3x as many as I’ve agreed to do.

Why? Because I only want to recommend great content to people who trust me with their time and attention.

Cross-promotions don’t drive a ton of readers, but the readers are highly engaged.

Referral programs: Another growth mechanism you’ll hear about is a referral program. Once you have ~5,000 subscribers it may be worth looking into. I’m building one out now and expect it to account for about 10% of growth.

The key to a referral program – make the referral rewards so valuable your readers actually want them. My first reward will be a deep-dive guide to brand storytelling.

Don’t forget the most important metric: Reader engagement is way more important than top-line subscriber numbers.

I’d rather have 10,000 readers and a 50% open rate than 20,000 readers and a 25% open rate. Importantly, future advertisers will pay far more to get in front of an engaged audience than a larger, non-engaged audience.

(With Apple's recent update, open rates are less dependable than they used to be. I assume actual opens are ~10% less than what is shown. This also makes click-through rates more important.)

Monetization

Making money directly from a newsletter is done in two ways:

  • Subscriptions

  • Ads

There are tradeoffs to both.

Subscriptions

Generally, if you’re going to run a subscription model there must be a good reason people will pay for your content. The answer “to support me in my hobby” is not sufficient and will lead to frustrations.

The best newsletters see a 5% conversion from free to paid subscribers. 2% is more common, and moving to a paid model often throttles growth (ain’t nobody wanna see that paywall).

However, if you nail the value prop and have a great top-of-funnel then the paid subscription model can be amazing. No dealing with advertisers and a highly predictable income stream.

If you’re going paid, come up with your price and then double it. Almost everyone prices too low.

A few paid newsletters that crush:

Lenny and Ben aren’t public with their monetization numbers, but I’d be surprised if these newsletters aren’t worth a few million each (or more). The Bear Cave does a few hundred thousand per year and Edwin just graduated college.

Ad-based

The biggest newsletter brands use an ad-based model – Axios and Morning Brew. Essentially, they have multiple placements throughout their newsletters and charge on a CPM-basis ($$$ per thousand impressions). With engaged readers, you can do quite well.

Let’s use a conservative $50 CPM and 2x weekly send with an average of 25,000 opens per newsletter:

  • $50 per thousand opens * 25 thousand opens * 2 sends per week * 52 weeks = $130,000 / year

Depending on what you write about, the makeup of your audience, and your engagement, you could charge wayyyy more than $50 CPM. But you get the idea.

The World Builders newsletter will be forever free and, at some point, supported by ads.

Tip of the iceberg

Take a look at this flywheel put together by Mario Gabriele who writes The Generalist newsletter:

On top of the newsletter, Mario has a:

  • Fund to invest in startups

  • Job board

  • NFTs

  • Paid community

Many newsletter creators also monetize through courses, events, and podcasts. If done right, it creates a massive flywheel for what can be as small as a one-person business. Not to mention the incredible people and opportunities that will find you through writing a newsletter.

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QOTW

Have you considered starting a newsletter? What's been your biggest challenge?

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A message from... Me!

The interest in this tweet blew me away...

In my experience, there are two ways to get good at storytelling:

  1. Study the greats (what this newsletter is for)

  2. Practice, practice, practice

I do a lot of practice through StoryWork.

And so many of you liked, commented, and sent me DMs about the practice I decided to turn it into a guided course for you.

Check it out:

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Up Your Game

A few resources I found helpful this week, which you may too:

  • Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks is a fantastic read

  • A podcast on the power of nostalgia in storytelling and brand

  • If you're concerned by the macro shifts in the markets, this presentation by David Sacks is must-watch

-- Nathan

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