Here’s how 7,000 newsletter subscribers found my email list
With real stats to prove it.
It’s no secret email lists are one of the hottest new ways in recent years to build a close-knit audience of subscribers. Once you grow your audience large enough, you can monetize it in a number of different ways.
Sounds easy enough, but the keywords in the last paragraph are “grow your audience large enough.” Everyone wants to run a newsletter, but no one wants to suggest how to grow it.
I started my newsletter a few years ago and have learned a lot from growing it. Emails are sent weekly (monthly for paid members), 7,000 free subscribers receive the emails and the average open rate sits around 30%.
The majority of my newsletter subscribers DO NOT come from:
- Word of mouth
- Social media
- Advertisements
If you’ve been banking on any of those three methods to grow your newsletter, it’s time to relax and look in a different direction.
Niche blogs
My niche blog tends to convert a lot of new email subscribers. Both the blog and the newsletter are about similar topics, so readers who find my blog tend to like to enjoy my weekly emails.
Picking similar topics of other online projects is a picture-perfect way to secure instant newsletter subscribers.
For example, if you published a book about cooking, a newsletter about cooking would be a great idea. It helps you establish authority, build your audiences on both platforms, and drive free traffic to your newsletter.
By creating a parallel between different platforms with similar topics, you're boosting your chances for success on both platforms.
SEO
Substack is the provider I use for my newsletter and one of the biggest reasons I prefer it is because it acts as another blog. After I create a newsletter and email it to subscribers, the email is also posted online as a blog.
The posted message has a slug, and domain, and can be optimized to rank on Google. My newsletter acquires a significant amount of traffic through readers searching for answers on search engines and finding me.
I LOVE THIS ABOUT SUBSTACK.
It’s an extremely underrated feature of the platform that doesn’t receive enough recognition. To my knowledge — and I could be very wrong — I’ve never heard of another email provider posting previous messages online.
Recommendations
Substack allows you to recommend other newsletters for your subscribers to follow. If you recommend another newsletter, there’s a chance they might recommend you back.
By recommending newsletters in a similar niche as my own, I’ve found the subscribers naturally drift between both email lists. It’s a win-win for both newsletter owners.
Once again, I’m not sure if other newsletter providers have a feature like this, but it’s why I love Substack.
Substack Network
The Substack Network is a feature I know other newsletter providers don’t have because, well, it’s literally called the Substack Network.
More than half of my subscribers were driven to my newsletter via Substack itself. It’s a powerful platform with a lot of potential and many creators just aren’t talking about it enough.
Quick takeaways
So, why aren’t creators screaming about Substack from the rooftops? Well, to be fair, a lot of creators are.
But I still read a ton of creators pushing other newsletter platforms like ConvertKit and I just can’t see how or why they’d do that. ConverKit is more customizable than Substack, sure. But it’s just not as innovative, in my opinion.
I’m not throwing shade at ConvertKit, but I just don’t think it really stacks up against all Substck has to offer. Especially for newer creators with smaller audiences.