12 steps to a $10,000+ per month newsletter

DEEP DIVE

I’ve generated 7-figures from my newsletter and helped clients add 10,000,000+ subscribers and tens of millions of sales.

Here’s how to get your first $10k:

1) Be hyper-scale or hyper-niche

You should have an audience as broad as the New York Times OR as niche as Industry Dive’s B2B brands.

Don’t be in between.

• Advertisers want hyper-scale — the ability to reach millions or tens of millions.

• Or hyper-niche — the ability to reach a targeted high-value audience.

For new founders, I recommend hyper-niche.

By narrowing down who your content is for, you stand out more.

Most newsletters fail because they try to be everything to everyone. Inevitably, they end up nothing to no one.

2) Your newsletter needs to solve a problem. Have a clearly defined “job to be done”

Step one of starting your newsletter is to develop your newsletter’s value proposition — how your content solves a problem and helps the reader reach a goal.

We’ll use the “Job’s To Be Done” framework to do this.

You can bucket every great newsletter into the “job” it’s doing for people.

For example:

• Help me save money on flights: Going

• Help me become a better dad: Daily Dad

• Help me build better habits: James Clear

• Make me smarter about crypto: Milk Road

• Keep me informed with just the facts: 1440

• Help me expand my vocabulary: Word Daily

• Inspire me and help me be positive: Nice News

• Keep me up to date on tech in 5 minutes: TLDR

• Help me sell more sponsorships: Creator Wizard

• Help me get a job on Wall Street: Wall Street Oasis

• Help me win more at fantasy football: Football guys

• Help me use AI to become productive: Superhuman

My newsletter’s job-to-be-done is to help you grow and monetize your newsletter. To share news, insights, and tactics on how you can do that.

If I can do this job for you consistently, you’ll keep reading.

When starting a newsletter, your goal should be to find one “job to be done” that you can do better than anyone else in the world.

You don’t need to be the best in the world right now. But strive to be.

3) Publish one newsletter per week

Start weekly, even if you plan on publishing more often in the long run.

A weekly newsletter is the sweet spot.

• It’s often enough to keep readers engaged. 

• It’s possible to write in your free time without feeling overwhelmed.

Don’t publish more frequently until there’s a clear way to make more money from each issue you publish. 

For most, that means you need to sell out of ad inventory in your weekly newsletter for 2-3 months. Then, add an additional newsletter send to give you more ads to sell. 

For others, you can build a 7-figure business on the back of a weekly newsletter – plus email automation and one-off marketing emails.  

4) Create once. Distribute forever

Every newsletter you write should be repurposed into 5+ social media posts on 1-2 platforms.

Your newsletters should also be published as a blog and optimized for SEO.

This is how you get discovered. 

Publishing an email newsletter alone won’t grow your audience. You must utilize discovery platforms like X, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and search engines.

If every newsletter you publish is repurposed into 5 social posts on two platforms and one blog post, you’ll publish…

• 780 social posts per year

• 52 blog posts per year

If that content is great, you’ll grow. 

5) Build relationships in your niche

Just like entrepreneurs and investors use other people’s money (OPM) to grow their wealth – you need to learn how to use other people’s audiences (OPA) to grow yours. 

Here’s how to start:

• Reply to your favorite newsletters. Tell them you liked the issue or share helpful feedback.

• Respond to everyone who replies to your newsletter or comments on your social posts.

• Leave thoughtful comments on ten posts in your niche every day.

• Send cold emails to creators you can help or collaborate with.

• Respond to polls and surveys from your favorite creators.

Don’t do these things without an objective. Be helpful for free.

After you’ve built a relationship with a publisher or creator for a few months, you can ask to:

• Be a guest on their podcast (pitch yourself with ideas or stories you can share)

• Agree to like and comment on each other's social posts to boost reach

• Create an affiliate agreement and promote each other's product

• Do a cross-promotion between your newsletters 

• Guest post for their newsletter and/or blog

• Speak at their event

• And more…

6) Convert your rented audience into an owned audience

Make the most of every follower and view by:

• Send a DM to every new follower

This is a simple way to convert 40-50% of your followers into subscribers. Yeah, it takes time, but you can hire a VA to do this for $5 per hour. 

• Post 1 pre call to action and post call to action per week to tease your newsletter.

This is the #1 growth tactic you’re probably not using. 

• Include a call to action in (almost) every post.

Even if it’s subtle, mention your newsletter and it’s value proposition.

• Create and promote a new lead magnet every quarter 

Incentives are powerful. Give people something for free if they sign up. They could be a template, checklist, cheat sheet, guide, video, etc.

Just make sure this lead magnet is aligned with your newsletter content.

7) Reach out to 10 sponsors per week to sell ads and custom content

If you’re struggling to get sponsors, you do more outreach. 

Reaching out to 10 sponsors can done in <1 hour. Plus, you can outsource this to a VA after you’ve recorded yourself doing it 3 to 5 times.  

If you convert 10% of those prospects into a sponsor each week, you’ve sold all your ad inventory that month (assuming you're sending once weekly).

Here’s how to do it:

• Create a new email address 

• Subscribe to every newsletter that is similar to your (in audience, niche, or content). This should be 10-50 newsletters. 

• See who’s sponsoring those newsletters.

• Find the contact information of the person who manages ad buys.

• Reach out to them via email and LinkedIn

• More advice and examples on this here

One more thing:

You should sell sponsorships AND custom content. 

• Sponsorships mean a primary ad spot in your newsletter (examples here)

• Custom content means a sponsored post about the advertiser you publish as a newsletter and a blog post. 

Custom content creates more value for the advertiser and can sold at a 3-5X higher rate than a primary ad. 

The advertiser gets:

• A dedicated newsletter sent to your entire list

• A blog post that can rank on search engines

• A blog they can link to, use on their website, or drive paid traffic to

• Quotes from the post they can use to build social proof and authority  

Custom content could be a product review, a listicle, a “how-to” article, or a deep dive.

The format should fit the advertiser's goal and what resonates with your audience.

8) Sell 1-3 hours per week of your time

Sell 1 hour of your time using Calendly and Stripe/PayPal.

You can see your CUSTOMERS' problems and challenges by selling coaching calls.

Use these to identify the focus of an information product you’ll sell later.

Talking to people who pay you (customers) and seeing their problems and what they will pay to fix is a better signal of what product you should create than surveys, polls, and interviews.

9) After 2,000 subscribers, sell an online course or digital product

Don’t wait too long to actually sell something to your list. 2k subscribers is enough. 

I recommend creating an online course with 2-5 hours of content plus a few resources.

Start with a $99-$199 price point. Presell it for 30-50% off.

For more, read my guide on launching your first info product. 

10) Make money in your sign-up flow

It’s easy to make $0.50 to $1.00 for every new subscriber you get with:

• SparkLoop Upscribe or beehiiv boost paid recommendations 

• Promoting your product and/or coaching on your thank you page and welcome email

• Promoting other products with affiliate links on your thank you page

Use at least 1 of these tactics in your sign-up flow (landing page, thank you page, and welcome email) to bring in revenue immediately from new sign-ups.  

11) Create a list of recommended tools or products with affiliate links

This is a simple way to create (mostly) passive income from your newsletter. 

• Find products you genuinely use or recommend to readers

• Sign up for their affiliate program (or negotiate an affiliate deal if they don’t have one)

• Create a post on your site with your “favorite products” or “recommended tools” that list 5-15 products and why you love them.

• Highlight this on your website and mention it at the end of each newsletter.

If you have a product audience match, it works.

I’ve earned over $30,000 from beehiiv’s affiliate program just by mentioning it in my newsletter.

By the way – beehiiv is my favorite ESP.

Try it for 30 days for free and get 20% off your first 3 months with my exclusive link ;)

12) Spend $10-$25 daily on paid ads to grow your list

To stay motivated, you need momentum. 

Early on in your newsletter journey, getting a few new subscribers daily will motivate you to publish every week.

The easiest way to do that is to set up a Facebook ad campaign with a daily budget of $10-$25. 

At this level of ad spend, you can bring in new subscribers for $1 to $2 or less. 

• Set this up in <1 hour after reading my paid ads guide. 

• Keep your budget <$25 per day until you make the ad investment back in <30 days with revenue from paid recommendations, sponsorships, affiliate, and product sales.

• Don’t forget about organic growth channels. You need both to be sustainable.

BONUS: Attend my free webinar on how to start your newsletter, get your first 10,000 subscribers, and generate $10,000+ per month in revenue.

I’m hosting a live training on how to do this step-by-step!

There are two live sessions you can attend:

• Tuesday, September 10th at 1 pm EST / 10 AM PST »

• Thursday, September 12th at 1 pm EST / 10 AM PST »

Tap one of the links above to RSVP. 👆

Each session has the same content. 

Please attend one because we only have 1,000 spots available. Most are already taken. 

Plus, after the training, I’ll be on the call as long as needed to answer your questions.

Conclusion: The math you need to reach $10,000+ per month

There are many ways to reach $10k+ per month with your newsletter. 

Here’s the path most people should take:

• Sell 4 sponsorships per month at $500 per ad spot = $2,000

• Sell 1 piece of custom content per month for $2,000 = $2,000

• Sell a $150 info product to 20 customers per month = $3,000

• Sell 8 coaching calls per month at $250 for 45 minutes = $2,000

• Sell $2000 of affiliate products and earn a 30% commission = $600

• Make $0.50 per sub with SparkLoop or Boosts and add 1k subs per month = $500

Total monthly revenue = $10,100

Here’s a Google sheet with the math you can copy and edit. 

This model is designed to show you that $10k per month (and much more) is achievable.

Yes, it’s an oversimplification. Yes, most people will never put in the work to get there. 

But it’s possible. 

In fact, a great newsletter in the right niche can earn so much more than $10k per month with 10,000 subscribers.

My business hit a 7-figure revenue run rate at just over 10,000 subscribers, and many other founders have done the same. 

I hope to show you how to do it in the live webinar next week!