Newsletter Deep Dive: Creating, Growing, and Earning Money

Having a newsletter is a great way to build your community. In addition to delivering them valuable content on a regular basis, you can keep them up to date on your projects and any products or services you’re offering. Let’s dive in.

Contents

Newsletter Content

You can format and write your newsletter in a lots of different ways. NewsletterOperator has 10 examples of newsletter types and examples, for ideas.

But first, make sure you have a strong welcome email or series or emails.

Chenell Basilio recommends collaborating with a group of creators to create epic content (then everyone in the group can promote it, and help each other grow their lists).

Another option is to curate other people’s content.

What Makes a Great Newsletter?

Like with anything, you want to create high quality, engaging content.

InboxCollective recommends injecting a mix of personalization (which can be automated) and personality (you and your voice).

For more tips on how to make a good newsletter, check out this case study on the Morning Brew (some takeaways: use teasers effectively, gamify content, and have strong headlines and copywriting).

If you want to test your subject line, you can try this tool from CoSchedule.

Newsletter Platforms

There are a lot of options when it come to where to host your newsletter. You’ll want to consider features, price, and usability. Some platforms make it easy to refer your newsletter. Some make it easy to charge for your newsletter. What you decide to use will depend on your goals.

Here are a few platforms to choose from (not at all a comprehensive list):

Growing Your Newsletter

There are a number of ways you can grow your newsletter (there are also companies out there that can help, like GrowLetter—I haven’t used it, but it sounds promising). A few include:

A great lead magnet
Collaborating
Referral program

Lead Magnet

What can you offer (for free) that people will find valuable? For I Know Dino, I’ve created a number of lead magnets. One that worked especially well was our “30 Days of Dinosaurs” content. We launched it a few months before Jurassic World: Dominion came out.

Anyone who signs up gets an email from us every day for 30 days, and each email contains some fun facts about a dinosaur that’s appeared in the Jurassic Park franchise.

We used paid ads to boost our landing page, and got a few hundred people over a few months.

Another offer that enticed a lot of people was when we teamed up with one of our sponsors for a giveaway. The gist was people had to sign up for both our email lists to enter to win a really cool Triceratops brooch. To sweeten the deal, we also gave anyone who signed up a free PDF of our favorite dinosaur movies and documentaries (and where you can watch them).

Both offers were a great fit for our audience, and we got over 400 new subscribers over a few weeks. (It helped that we could promote this offer through our podcast and existing audience. And on the flip side, having a newsletter can help you grow your podcast as well and steer people to your older episodes, or you can give them a behind the scenes look on your show.)

Kconsult has more tips on how to create a strong lead magnet. It boils down to knowing your target audience, figuring out what they’d find useful/valuable (you can do this by browsing through forums or social media groups), and making it really easy for people to get your lead magnet.

Podia recommends making your lead magnet concise and action-oriented.

Collaborating

Partner with someone who has an overlapping audience as you. In our case, we teamed up with Jurassic Quest for International Dinosaur Day. We did a livestream session with them about 10 lesser known dinosaurs. We had a lot of fun and it was very successful! After the event, we were able to reach out to everyone who signed up for our session and we offered them our free PDF of our favorite dino movies in exchange for officially signing up for our email list. (Note: We only emailed them one time, and we never contacted them again if they didn’t sign up for our list. This ensures we’re not spamming anyone and don’t end up on a blocklist.)

Pro tip: SparkLoop recommends having a custom welcome email to people who subscribe to your list through recommendations/collaborations (because they don’t see your usual sign up or landing page and learn what you’re all about.)

If you want to work with other newsletter creators, here are a few places where you can find them:

InboxReads
Lettergrowth

Tink

Referral Program

A lot of people do well with referral programs. I haven’t tried one personally (yet) but I am strongly considering it.

Referral Rock has an in-depth article about referral programs for newsletters (with some great case studies). To be successful with this strategy, they recommend you know your audience well, have an engaging, valuable newsletter, and know what motivates people to sign up for your newsletter.

Next, they recommend having a cost-effective rewards structure (which you can gamify). Some examples of what you can offer at lower tiers include an ebook or something they can download, and then at higher tiers you can offer swag. Once that’s in place, promote your referral program prominently in your newsletter (some newsletters let you “unlock” more content within the newsletter after you’ve referred a certain number of people), and make your newsletter easy to share and sign up.

Then, you can automate the whole thing with referral software.

Earning Money From Your Newsletter

There are a few ways to earn money from your newsletter. But first, for fun, ConvertKit has a calculator to figure out your potential revenue. For figuring out potential revenue, it also helps to know your open and clickthrough rates.

Pricing Your Newsletter

Do you want your newsletter to be free or paid? There’s no wrong answer here.

A free newsletter with engaging content is a great way to build an audience. You can also sell ad space in your newsletter.

If you decide to go the paid route, consider how you’ll price your newsletter (and beware of “subscription fatigue“). It’ll probably be a subscription price. (Joe Procopio has an article that goes into detail about subscription pricing.)

Getting Sponsors For Your Newsletter

If you have an engaged audience (pro tip: niching down usually helps you stand out more), then you can pitch yourself to sponsors (even if you have a small list to start).

Before you start researching sponsors and cold emailing them, make sure you have a media kit. Newsletter Operator also recommends being willing to follow up via a phone call after reaching out, so be prepared!

Who Sponsors Stuff has a guide on how to reach out to a potential sponsor. You want to start pitching in your subject line, keep your email short and to the point, and have a strong angle. Be prepared for follow-ups as well.

High performing ads will make your sponsors happier and more likely to be repeat customers. Simone Verde has some tips on how to make a high performing ad, including using a strong headline, having a clear, concise value proposition, and using numbers if you can.

Case Studies

It helps to read what’s worked and what could have worked better from other people. With that in mind, here are some inspiring newsletter case studies: