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Start Your Newsletter: A guide that’s better than a course

Why Newsletters?

  • Independence: Email is one of the few places where you own your audience. Facebook controls Facebook. Twitter controls Twitter. Facebook controls Instagram. Google controls search. With email, you click a button and reach your people.
  • Low cost: You can launch an email newsletter for free if you wanted to.
  • Direct relationship with your audience resulting in a deeper connection.
  • An audience is a cheat code. You can launch many new businesses to your audience.
  • An opportunity to monetize something you love. Really love surfing? Make a newsletter that curates the best surf resorts around the world.
  • No inventory, high margin. Ben Thompson’s Stratechery does 7 figures and maintains a 90% margin
  • Riches in Niches. You’ve heard it a million times, but it’s true. Just ask Nerdy Nuts, a peanut butter company that launched this year and has already hit $1mm+ in revenue.
Table of Contents
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    If the free guide is this good, imagine how good the paid guide is.

    Examples

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    Valuation
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    Valuation

    Other Examples

    🌱 Get 20+ more examples by unlocking the full guide.

    Build

    Finding your Niche

    Ask yourself:

    What are you deeply interested in?

    What niche do you want to become an expert at?

    What specific knowledge do you have that others don’t?

    What sets you apart?

    What is your value proposition?

    Do you have access to an interesting database?

    Get ideas from popular subreddits.

    Think of ideas where you can execute on these things:

    Domain Name

    • .com is the clear best
    • .co is fine
    • .io is fine, specifically for tech newsletters
    • Avoid hyphens
    • The shorter the better
    NameCheap is a high quality, low price option to purchase domains.

    Branding

    ZeBrand takes you through a really cool process to help you craft your brand.

    Keep your logo simple.

     Create your color palette and establish your brand identity with Coolors.

    Landing Pages

    The page where your subscribers opt-in

    Software

    Carrd

    WordPress

    Webflow

    Convert Kit

    Design & Examples

    🌱 Get design tips, examples, and a template to copy The Hustle's landing Page by unlocking the full guide.

    Choosing an Email Service Provider

    Active Campaign

    Convert Kit

    Ghost

    Mail Chimp

    Substack

    Curating Content

    • Make a Twitter for your newsletter and only follow people in your niche. Get notifications for the most important.
    • Find the important websites in your niche and sign up for their newsletters.
    • Search Google news.
    • Join related Facebook groups.

    🌱 Get unique tips to curate more content and stay organized by unlocking the full guide.

    🌱 Be the first to get all future guides, ideas, and databases.

    Pro Tip ➡️  Always send a test email to mail-tester before you send an email. It will do many checks to make sure your email is safe to send.

    Grow

    Every subscriber matters. 100 true fans can transform your life.

    Referral Programs

    You’re subscribers want to share your newsletter with their likeminded friends. Don’t make it difficult for them.

    Learn how to set up a custom referral program for your newsletter with this Twitter thread by Ryan Sneddon.

    Examples

    This is what their referral program looks like within their newsletter.

    Tools & Software

    🌱 Get more creative newsletter growth ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    Twitter

    Why Twitter?

    Twitter Threads

    Create a very concise version of every newsletter and tweet it as a thread.

    Hypefury is the best posting & scheduling software. Alternatively, you can use this free thread creator tool to create your threads.

    Example

    Make sure the final tweet is a call to action for the reader to subscribe to your newsletter just like Joe does.

    Learn More ➡️  Join Oliver Cantin’s free Twitter Growth, Influence, & Monetization course.

    🌱 Get more creative newsletter growth ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    Sub Reddits

    Use Redditlist to find popular subreddits in your niche.

    Growth Tools

    Create growth tools with Outgrow.

    Growth tools are similar to lead magnets, but they are more interactive.

    People are much more likely to give you their email address if you’re going to give them something in return like the results of the quiz they use took.

    Examples

    All of these templates are available to clone in Outgrow.

     

    🌱 Get more creative newsletter growth ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    🌱 3 extra learn more links by unlocking the full guide.

    🌱 Be the first to get all future guides, ideas, and databases.

    Monetization

    Sponsors

    Three key ways to get sponsors are cold email, marketplaces, and sponsors reaching out to you.

    Cold Email

    In the simplest form, it looks like this:

    1. Find leads with UpLead, IcyLeads, or simply searching for businesses in your niche.
    2. Find any email address with Anymail Finder.
    3. Send individually personalized emails with Mail Shake.

    How do you find potential sponsors? Check out this step by step guide for finding sponsors.

    Learn More ➡️  The best course to learn this process is Cold Email Mastery by Cold Email Wizard. This course is gold.

    Advertise Page

    Create a landing page for potential advertisers.

    Link it to a Google Form or Typeform, then reach out to them to close the sale or have them checkout directly on your site. It can work either way.

    Examples

    🌱 Get 6 landing page examples (3 include pricing) by unlocking the full guide

    Marketplaces

    Tools & Software

    Affiliate Sales

    If you’re not familiar, it’s promoting someone else’s product and receiving a commission on each sale.

    Making money as an affiliate is nice because it’s very easy to get started. All you have to do is plug in links.

    However it’s typically not the best main revenue source when you’re starting out, because the commission rates tend to be low.

    This means you need to make a ton of sales to make meaningful amounts of money.

    You’ll have to use affiliates other than Amazon since they don’t allow you to use their affiliate links in emails. There are some high paying affiliates though.

    Pro Tip ➡️ Only promote products that you truly use and enjoy. Don’t burn the trust your audience has in you.

    Examples

    Tools & Software

    Paid Newletters

    Don’t want to deal with sponsors? Create a paid version of your newsletter.

    Give your paid readers extra content like:

    • 1 free newsletter, 3 paid newsletters.
    • 1 free newsletter per month, 1-2 paid newsletters per week.
    • Access to a private community. More on that later.
    • Access to digital products. More on that later.

    Examples

    Tools & Software
    Learn More ➡️ Convert Kit has a featured that allows you to create a paid newsletter and Louis Nicholls walks you through step by step.

    🌱 Get more creative monetization ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    Digital Products

    Think of a specific idea or strategy that you would love to learn more about.

    Better yet, think of a couple and asks your audience which one they want to learn more about with this Free Newsletter Poll widget by Sparkloop.

    Create a guide, course, or database that they would love to buy.

    Examples

    Tools & Software

    🌱 Get more creative monetization ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    Job Boards

    Is your audience looking for a specific type of job?

    Is your audience looking to hire a specific type of person?

    Create a job board to facilitate these connections.

    Examples

    Tools & Software

    Creating a job board is much easier than you think.

    🌱 Get more creative monetization ideas by unlocking the full guide.

    🌱 Be the first to get all future guides, ideas, and databases.

    Exit

    Your newsletter is a desirable, sellable asset.​

    Newsletters are typically valued like most online businesses, at a multiple of the average monthly SDE for the trailing 12 months. SDE is very similar to net profit.

    A sale price anywhere between 20x – 40x average monthly SDE is normal.

    Example

     

    Continuously remind yourself that every extra reoccurring dollar of income you create is worth $20 to $40 when you sell.

    BUT that also means that every extra dollar you spend that doesn’t create more income is worth -$20 to -$40 when you sell.

    Play around with our valuation calculator to see how many sponsors you need to get to sell at a price that makes you happy.

    Marketplaces

    Examples

    🌱 Get an idea to give you a massive headstart on your newsletter by unlocking the full guide.

    🌱 Get 5 extra resource links by unlocking the full guide.

    Ideas & Strategies

    🌱 This is our signature section that gives you the ideas and strategies to execute on what you've learned. Get it by unlocking the full guide.

    Tips from newsletter creators

    We asked newsletter creators, “If you could give a newsletter creator one tip, what would it be?”

    Don’t Give Up

    Spend as much time promoting your newsletter as you spend writing it.
     Don’t be afraid to share your work with others.
    Have a hook, a thing that readers will remember you by
    Niche down and have a schedule.
    Make sure you are writing about a subject you really find interesting and there is enough depth for you to uncover.
    Write your newsletter like you’re only talking to one person. 

    Connect with people whose audiences are similar to yours—and ideally bigger!

    Share your newsletter biweekly instead of weekly to reduce overload and improve quality.
     
    Spend as much time promoting your newsletter as you spend writing it.
    Clearly define who it’s for. That’ll make it a hell of a lot easier to find subscribers.
    Don’t be afraid to add personality!

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