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DEEP DIVE

How I Grew To 25k+ Subscribers and Built a 7-Figure Business From My Newsletter

Here’s how it happened in 19 months:

The First 100 Subscribers

I started the Newsletter Operator on Jan 16th, 2023.

At that point, I had ~1300 Twitter followers and ~1000 followers on LinkedIn. This small audience was a great launchpad.

I got the first 100 subscribers in 3 ways:

1) A Tweet that I was starting a newsletter (drove ~75 subscribers)

2) Adding a call to action for the newsletter in my email signature (~10 subscribers)

3) Asking close friends and clients to subscribe (~15 subscribers)

I did this about 7 days before publishing the first newsletter.

Promoting it before I wrote the first issue got me subscribers to write for — which kept me accountable to write and publish every week.

The First 10,000 Subscribers

My first 10,000 subscribers primarily came from three places:

• Twitter

• Twitter ads

• Direct traffic

Direct traffic likely came from word of mouth and people hearing about me from Twitter.

I also picked up some sign-ups from beehiiv boosts, recommendations from other newsletters, a referral program, and LinkedIn.

Here’s the results from the channels that got me to 10,000 subscribers:

Twitter - 4,219 subscribers, 65% open rate, 26% CTR

Writing 1-2 threads per week and Tweeting every day has had the largest impact on my newsletter growth.

I’ve found Twitter followers to have a high conversion rate to newsletter subscribers and customers.

For every 1,000 followers I gained, I would also get ~500 subscribers.

Twitter Ads - 2,314 subscribers, 60% open rate, 13% CTR

I spent $6,231 on Twitter ads to acquire 2,314 subscribers at a $2.69 CPA (cost per subscriber).

For a niche B2B newsletter like mine, that CPA is pretty good.

Read my Twitter ads guide here.

Acquisition sources: 25,000 subscribers

The all-time view looks similar to my first 10,000 subscribers:

• Twitter

• Direct traffic

• Twitter ads

But something surprised me about this:

My #1 growth source is actually “other.” This is a mix of various channels, none of them adding up to over 1,000 subscribers.

Most of the “other” sources are website referral traffic, beehiiv boosts, recommendations from other newsletters, and cross-promotions.

I’ve never had a “strategy” for getting recommended by other websites and newsletters, but in the long run, this adds up.

Another big part of the “other” category is beehiiv boosts. Later, I’ll break down my results from this and other paid channels.

In the past 6 months, I’ve gotten most subscribers from Meta ads (aka Facebook ads).

Here’s what changed:

Social growth

• Organic Twitter growth has slowed down. I’ve been busy running my marketing agency, GrowLetter, and I haven’t had much time for content creation outside of writing this newsletter weekly.

• A large portion of the “market” interested in newsletters may already be following me. I can’t be sure of this, but it feels like the most experienced newsletter operators all subscribed last year.

• The “hype” around newsletters has died down. In 2023, people seemed to think starting an “AI newsletter” was the next get-rich-quick scheme. Last year, I wrote about why this was a bad idea.

• I’ve been working on LinkedIn growth and posting 4-5x times per week for the past 6 months. So far, LinkedIn has worked to drive agency clients. I’ve got 8k followers there, and I’m happy with the results. However, LinkedIn has not yet resulted in a significant number of newsletter subscribers.

Paid growth

• I’ve had more money to invest in growth. I’ve done 2 cohort courses that generated $250k+ in sales. I’ve used some of that money to grow faster with meta ads.

• I’ve completely shut down Twitter ads. This is frustrating because Twitter ads worked early on, but I've had challenges with the platform. I can’t spend beyond $50/day and get a decent CPA. It’s also full of glitches and bugs that can break the platform and make it impossible to launch or update ads. That said, it’s still on my list to test again.

Wins and Failures

Here are the growth tactics that worked great, worked okay, and totally flopped:

Wins

Twitter

I’m still bullish on this channel. The most sophisticated entrepreneurs in the world spend time on Twitter.

Here are my insights on using Twitter to grow:

1) Auto plug is a must-use tool

I had many one-off Tweets that drove 100+ subscribers. But I would have seen far less newsletter growth if I didn’t “plug” my newsletter below that with another Tweet (example) using Tweet Hunter.

2) Pre-newsletter CTAs work surprisingly well

Here’s how these work:

The day before your newsletter is sent, post about its topic and add a call to action (CTA) to subscribe.

Here’s my guide on pre and post CTAs.

3) Consistently is key

Since January 2023, I’ve averaged 1 post per day. The only way to grow is to post constantly.

With every post, you learn how to make your future posts better, gain more followers, more subscribers, and more favor in the algorithm.

This creates a snowball effect.

4) Repurpose your best content

You can grow on Twitter by saying the same thing in different ways.

After I post a Tweet that does well, I’ll rewrite it and post it again 45-90 days later. This always works.

Wins

Meta ads

I’ve spent $23,398 to acquire 6,060 at a $3.86 CPA. I’d love to get the CPA to <$3.00, but overall, I’m happy with the results.

Meta has been the only paid channel (for my newsletter) that provides high-quality subscribers at scale. On average, I see a 52% open rate and 11% CTR from Meta ads.

Read my Meta ads guide here.

Fails

Newsletter ads — ~$2,000 in spend, ~150 subscribers, ~65% open rate

I’ve bought 4 ads in other newsletters. 1 worked well. The other 3 were flops.

That’s a small sample size, but my time and money are better spent elsewhere.

The subscriber quality from other newsletters is great but it’s hard to get a good CPA and organizing this takes time.

beehiiv boosts — $2929 in spend, 2630 subscribers, $1.11 CPA, 45% open rate, 5% CTR

I have mixed feelings about boosts. The CPA and engagement are okay.

Here are my concerns:

• CTR is bad. The 5% average seems okay, but about half the newsletters that sent subscribers via boosts had a 1%- 3% CTR. Compared to my average CTR of 10%, that’s awful.

• Not a single subscriber from boosts bought anything. I haven't gotten a single customer or client from beehiiv. That’s the kicker. If the channel can’t drive customers, it’s worthless.

Boosts and other paid recommendation tools like SparkLoop are cheap ways to increase subscriber count, but I’ve never seen them drive meaningful revenue for me or any of my clients.

Customer data and insights

For the 3 products/services I offer, we have had 406 customers.

Of those customers, 320 (80%) are subscribed to this newsletter.

It’s likely that a higher percentage of customers are subscribed, but they didn't subscribe with an email address that matches their purchasing email address.

Here’s a breakdown of our customer data and their newsletter engagement:

• The average open rate of customers is 79.72%

• The average CTR (click-through rate) of customers is 32.73%

• On average, a subscriber was on my email list for 170 days before purchasing

• 35% of customers subscribed from the source: Direct traffic

• 28% of customers subscribed from the source: Twitter

• 9.5% of customers subscribed from the source: Google

• 4.5% of customers subscribed from the source: Twitter ads

• 3.4% of customers subscribed from the source: LinkedIn

• 1.5% of customers subscribed from the source: Meta ads

Keep in mind that most customers are from my cohort course, Growth System. I’ve done two cohorts where people buy, one in January and one in May 2024.

That’s likely why the time to purchase has been so long. I haven't given subscribers many opportunities to buy things.

How I plan to get to 100k+ subscribers in the next 12 months

I plan to grow to 100k by doubling down on what's working and testing a few more channels that are promising:

Existing channels

• Meta ads — I plan to spend a lot more and lower CPAs to $3.00.

• Twitter — Soon, I’ll spend more time writing content and growing my audience there.

• LinkedIn — I’m just scratching the surface on LinkedIn. The content I create for Twitter will also be repurposed here.

• Podcasts — Being a podcast guest has been a huge driver of direct traffic and customers.

• Twitter ads — I’m going to test Twitter ads again soon.

New channels

• Google search (SEO) — I’ve accidentally ranked for a few terms that have driven subscribers and customers. This year, I plan to create an SEO strategy and dedicated content for the channel.

• YouTube — I have a podcast we publish on YouTube, but it’s not optimized for the platform. This year, we’ll improve the packaging by making better thumbnails, intros, and titles. We’ll also interview top founders and cover new topics that will attract more views on YouTube.

• Short-form video clips — We’re creating great content with the podcast, but none of it is being clipped for short videos on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms.

That’s it. I’ve found most newsletters don’t need new growth sources to scale.

In most cases, they need to do a better job with what’s working. Then, focus on 1-2 new strategic growth channels.