Newsletters 101 Part 4: How To Build & Monetize Them with Ethan Brooks

Summary

Content Is Profit Podcast: "Newsletters 101 Part 4: How To Build & Monetize Them with Ethan Brooks"

Hosted by: BIZBROS
Release Date: January 11, 2025
Guest: Ethan Brooks

In the fourth installment of the "Newsletters 101" series, hosts Luis and Fonzie from BIZBROS delve deep into the intricacies of building and monetizing newsletters with guest expert Ethan Brooks. Drawing from Ethan's extensive experience with prominent companies and his role at HubSpot Media, this episode offers a comprehensive guide for entrepreneurs and creators aiming to turn their content into profit.

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1. Editorial Strategy and Writing for Newsletters

[02:03] Ethan Brooks:
Ethan emphasizes the importance of maintaining a lean editorial team, stating, "We keep a pretty lean team at Trends, even Trends and the hustle. I think we're probably a total of 10 people." He highlights that starting out doesn't require a large team and that understanding the business model and desired outcomes allows for flexible editorial rules.

Key Insights:

• Quality Over Quantity: Ethan underscores that “the content has to be good in order for it to travel.”
• Flexibility in Frequency: Contrary to popular belief, daily newsletters are not a prerequisite for success. For instance, The Hustle began as a weekly newsletter, proving that consistency can be achieved on a schedule that suits the creator's capacity.

2. Hiring Writers and Building Editorial Teams

[03:42] Ethan Brooks:
Hiring the right writers is pivotal. Ethan shares, “It's probably one of the harder things. In fact, one time I asked Sam, I said, what surprised you about... he said... how hard it is to hire good writers.” He advises investing time in finding writers who align with your vision to avoid wasting resources on mismatched talent.

Notable Quotes:

• Ethan Brooks: "Don't just outsource it. Because if you're just outsourcing and they're not creating what you really envision, the thing could be you're just wasting your time and money." [04:00]

Practical Tips:

• Invest in Quality: Follow Lexi Grant’s advice by focusing on a writer’s ability to respond to feedback and iterate on drafts. “When she hires writers, she doesn't worry so much about the quality of the first draft. What she pays more attention to is how they respond to feedback and edits.” [05:21]
• Trial Projects: Consider paying for a writer’s first test project to evaluate their fit and adaptability before making long-term commitments.

3. Research and Storytelling Techniques

[11:41] Ethan Brooks:
Ethan discusses the significance of curiosity in storytelling, explaining, “You need writers who are intensely curious about the thing that you're trying to write about.” He illustrates this with examples of unique topics like the economics of soda can tabs, demonstrating how deep research can uncover fascinating stories.

Key Strategies:

• Curiosity-Driven Content: Encourage writers to explore unconventional angles and niche topics that resonate with the audience.
• Community Engagement: Utilize platforms like Reddit, Facebook groups, and super-niche VC blogs to discover emerging trends and stories. "If you're ever researching an industry or an idea, a good way to dig into it is to go find a whole bunch of online communities where people who like that thing congregate." [15:27]

4. Growth Strategies for Acquiring New Readers

Ethan breaks down growth strategies into three main levers: Time, Money, and Audience.

A. Time-Based Strategies

[27:58] Ethan Brooks:
Ethan likens time-based strategies to "getting other people to tell your story." This involves leveraging PR, SEO, and social media to amplify content reach organically.

Notable Example:

• Paul Revere’s Ride: Ethan uses the story of Paul Revere to illustrate the power of external storytelling. “Most people don't know that five other people did the exact same thing that night... You've heard Paul Revere’s name because a poet told his story.” [29:23]

B. Money-Based Strategies

Ethan advises caution with paid advertising, emphasizing understanding customer lifetime value (CLV) before investing. “If you have an ad budget that needs to work, don’t start with paid ads.” Instead, focus on strategies that ensure acquisition costs are lower than the CLV to maintain profitability. [30:14]

C. Audience-Based Strategies

Referral programs are highlighted as a powerful tool. Ethan explains, “Referral engines are a game,” where incentivizing current readers to refer new ones can exponentially grow the audience. Tools like Sparkloop and Beehive are recommended for integrating referral capabilities.

Key Tips:

• Incentivize Effectively: Focus on getting a small percentage of the audience to make multiple referrals rather than expecting all readers to refer others.
• Leverage Whales: Encourage the most influential members of your audience to drive significant referral numbers.

5. Monetization Insights

Ethan touches on various monetization avenues for newsletters, such as sponsored content, premium subscriptions, and affiliate marketing. He stresses the importance of delivering value to retain and grow the reader base, ensuring that monetization strategies align with audience interests.

Notable Quote:

• Ethan Brooks: “There will always be a market for it. There’s so much high-level, Clickbait BS out there these days. It’s just not helpful to people who are actually in the industry.” [23:14]

6. Conclusion and Future Directions

As the conversation wraps up, Luis and Fonzie express their enthusiasm for continuing the dialogue with Ethan in future episodes. Ethan hints at an upcoming guide available at Trends Co, promising deeper insights into newsletter growth and monetization strategies.

Final Thoughts:

• Consistent Value Delivery: Maintaining authenticity and delivering substantive content over clickbait ensures long-term profitability and audience trust.
• Continuous Learning: Stay engaged with emerging trends and continually refine strategies based on what resonates with your audience.

Notable Closing Quote:

• Ethan Brooks: “Understand the game that you're playing and use the lever you have the most access to.” [32:56]

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Connect with Ethan Brooks:

• Twitter: @DamEthan

Follow the Content Is Profit Podcast:

• Available on all major podcast platforms and social media channels at BIZBROS.

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This episode of "Content Is Profit" serves as an invaluable resource for anyone looking to build a sustainable and profitable newsletter. From editorial strategies and hiring practices to growth levers and monetization tactics, Ethan Brooks provides actionable insights backed by real-world examples and expert advice. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your existing newsletter, the strategies discussed offer a roadmap to turn your content into a lucrative asset.

Transcript

[Luis]

Hey and welcome back to Continuous profit. This is Luis, half of the bees res and I'm welcoming you to this incredible start of 2025 in the 10 episode series on where we go all the way from frameworks to how to monetize your content in a very specific way. Even how to outrank Google or how to land your dream sponsors. So I think these 10 episodes are going to really help you. If you haven't listened to any of the other ones, go back and they start on January 3rd all the way to January 12th. So super excited to share these with. Enjoy. Hey, I'm Louise.

[Fonzie]

I'm Louise.

[Luis]

And you're listening to the content is Prophet podcast.

[Fonzie]

This is part three of the newsletter segment with the one and only Ethan Brooks.

[Ethan Brooks]

Part four. Part four.

[Fonzie]

Part three.

[Ethan Brooks]

Part four.

[Fonzie]

Oh yeah, actually part four.

[Luis]

I'm always right. Pick a bro. What we talk about on this one, Fonzie.

[Fonzie]

We actually cover a little bit of the KPIs on acquiring new readers for your newsletter. Very interesting and important. Yeah.

[Luis]

And leads for your content in general. It does apply. So I loved. We often talk about stories, so where to find those stories has been super helpful. And then places that people can actually do research that matters for your content. Anything else, Fons?

[Fonzie]

No. Well, just so you know, we're going to bring Ethan for another round just because he was absolutely amazing.

[Luis]

So good.

[Fonzie]

But this is the last part of that first conversation we had, so enjoy.

[Luis]

Fun. So we talked obviously a lot about the early.

[Fonzie]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. He hasn't, he. He has to dive into the second question. Right. The writers and the editorial strategy.

[Luis]

That was like 40 minutes ago. Okay, you know, I, I got you.

[Fonzie]

No worries.

[Ethan Brooks]

I, I can keep this one pretty quick. So I'm actually a writer. I don't. I, I mean, I guess, you know, I've been there for a couple years now, so I have some like, I, I guess I serve as like writer slash editor. We keep a pretty lean team on trends, even trends and the hustle. I think we're probably a total of 10 people.

[Fonzie]

Lean and mean.

[Ethan Brooks]

Yeah. But there's like now we're, we're rolled up inside HubSpot media, which is so big. It touches all the podcasts. I mean, you guys know podcast, network. Yeah. YouTube, everything. So there's, there's quite a bit more people there now. But the thing I think people need to know about editorial, when they're just starting out, there's like a maybe one or two things. It doesn't have to be a big team like you can do this yourself and you know, you can kind of make the. If you know how the business model works and you know what your outcome is, you can kind of set the rules up however it is that you want to play it. So as an example, like, people look at the Hustle and they think, oh, I have to write a daily newsletter in order to be successful. That's not true. You don't have to. In fact, the Hustle started off as a weekly newsletter. A lot of people don't know that. You can start off writing it yourself and slowly bring writers in. You can curate news instead of writing it all yourself. There's like a million different ways you could do this. One thing that I think is important to know though, is that like, the content has to be good in order for it to travel. And when we, I mean, we can talk about different ways to do that, but like, hiring writers is. It's hard. It's just, it's probably one of the harder things. In fact, one time I asked Sam, I said, what surprised you about, you know, like the reality of running a multi million dollar business when you got to that stage? And he said two things. First, it's surprisingly hard to keep everybody kind of rowing in the same direction. Like, nobody really talks about how difficult that is. And the second was how hard it is to hire good writers. So if you go into this and you want to try and find writers to do it, spend the time to find somebody that really aligns with your vision of what the product could be.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

Don't, don't just outsource it. Because if you just outsource it and, and they're not creating what you really envision, the thing could be you're just wasting your time and money. Yeah. If you can find somebody, you know, who, who work inexpensively and can create something that you think is an amazing product, great. More power to you.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

But just make sure you think it's amazing. That's the most important thing.

[Luis]

Yeah. I want to do a quick parenthesis here and give a huge shout out. Right. Our team right now has been with us almost two years, all of them, and we relate so much with the importance of this because before that we encountered some friction. In many ways, we didn't have really the resources or, or the mission or the goal. The objective was there and we started focusing on, okay, you guys are going to be coming into this bus. You know, the bus might go in different directions. Are you guys good with that? And that was a conversation that we would tell the say, at the very beginning. And we're very proud to. To have them be part of this family and grow with us because we've pivoted quite a few times and in different. In different ways. Part of the back end of the service. Right. And different things. And. And I relate so, so much. Right. So for us, it was not an easy task. So I want people to pay attention, really, to this part. Right. And maybe if you can share, like, one or two tips, like, where do people go to find these people? Like, how. What are some frameworks that people can follow to hire this? Because this applies to not just the newsletter as writers, but also currently with video content. Right. A lot of video editors. We talk a lot about building your own resources, your internal media company that can look like just you and your video editor. Right. Or just you as well. Right. All these principles apply. So what are some things that maybe one or two things that people can do very effectively. Right. Initially in that journey.

[Ethan Brooks]

Totally. Yeah. So the best tip I ever got on this, I think, was from Lexi Grant. Lexi is like a badass media founder. She's founded and sold multiple companies. She helped build the. The. I think it's called the Penny Pincher. Which Penny Hoarder? The Penny Hoarder. That's the one, yeah. Sold for $100 million cash.

[Luis]

Insane.

[Ethan Brooks]

Yeah, she's awesome. She's building a new company right now called they Got Acquired, which is all about. Well, people can go check it out. It's awesome. She told me, she says that when she hires writers, she doesn't worry so much about the quality of the first draft. What she pays more attention to is how they respond to feedback and edits. Like, what does the second draft look like? Because the first draft, like, especially early on in your newsletter, you're not even going to be completely sure what you want this thing to look like, and that's okay. But you need writers who are able to adapt, like you just said, and kind of fit your vision, and that's a skill. So if somebody's not doing that their second, third drafts, they're just not showing improvement. Cut them loose early and find somebody else, because there are writers out there who can come much closer. And, you know, I guess related to that, she does a lot of work, like on. On a contract basis. So she'll actually pay for somebody to do their first test project. And, you know, you pay a decent amount of money. I mean, I get this varies from industry to industry, but, like, right now, the hustle will pay. I mean, I think it's like anywhere from 1500 to two grand for like a full length deep dive from, from professional writers. Doesn't have to be that much. And again, we're in a different position than a lot of people just in terms of what we're trying to get out of our content. But just understand that like, when you're talking about content, you guys know this, right? It's it like you pay for quality, you. You get what you pay for, right? So when it comes to whether it's somebody who's creating it or somebody who's kind of like guiding you along the way, that would be my. My recommendation is, is like invest in the quality and pay attention to draft two.

[Luis]

Oh, so good. I'm going through that process and like, for us, I'm like, we're not too far off, right? And by not knowing that we, we pay for contract work initially, we're like, hey, here's a sample project. Go, go do it. Let's figure out for us was more about the initial side of things. And. But you know, how do you bring that to, let's say, podcasting or video content, right? Which it's. A lot of the people are listening right now. Same thing, right? You can bring them on, pay them for like, hey, look, I want five micro content pieces of this episode. Go do it. They'll probably come back to something, provide that feedback and be. And see how they react to that one feedback. They want me like, maybe provide with some examples, right? Maybe ask them to bring some examples, right? How proactive are they in. In the, in that homework that they got to do. I mean, shout out to my first meeting, right? Like, they did that contest with a 5k with all these video editors and they got millions and millions of impressions of their show. And out of that they picked, you know, one or two people that now create content for them or build businesses around that. You know, full disclosure, we did apply. We didn't win. It's okay.

[Fonzie]

Yeah, we don't. We're not, we're not holding our gr.

[Ethan Brooks]

The guy who did win was like living in a dorm room somewhere. He's just one of these guys who like, grew up on the Internet.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Luis]

Yeah, it's incredible.

[Fonzie]

I mean, we saw the videos. The videos are awesome.

[Luis]

Amazing, amazing. And it's amazing because, like, the opportunities like that, right? Let's say you're in the newsletter industry, right? You're always going to be exposed to content. And one of the questions that we always ask him like, hey, what content are you consuming, right? Because there's a difference between consuming for just consuming, or consuming with seeking that knowledge. What's happening, what's working, what's not working, Right. Whether that's video, whether that's newsletter, and same thing, that's feedback that you can provide your team. Be like, hey, this is maybe something that's resonating in this industry. Keep in mind resources as well. We talked about that earlier, right? Different moments in the history of the company. But, hey, maybe these are things that we can use. Maybe these are the principles that they're following that people can use. So for those listening, take in that information and then provide it. And then that was so good.

[Fonzie]

I think that's a good segue to into research side of things. Right? How do people or how do you guys manage that? Or what have you seen, you know, by talking to these different companies, do you guys have specific, specific researchers? And I'm sure this might change, obviously, depending on people's resources. But me personally, when I think about, okay, I would like to write a newsletter, probably more scary than writing the actual newsletter is that, oh, I have to do all this research. What am I gonna, you know, what's the information that I'm gonna pull? You know, you mentioned at the very beginning, what was it? The showmanship, right? Like, what are those viral pieces of content that I know that I can pull in here can just leave the.

[Luis]

Showmanship to me, man.

[Ethan Brooks]

You guys have a problem with showmanship.

[Fonzie]

You know, but when it comes to the written wor, it might be a whole different challenge.

[Ethan Brooks]

Totally. So I have a couple of tips on this, and they come from people who are much more inspiring than me. So I've talked to a bunch of people about this. Some of my favorites are like, Sam is really great at it, and he and I had a couple conversations about this also. We write a long form email at the Hustle called Our Sunday Story, which is usually much more like in depth, sort of exploratory piece about something that most people never heard of. For example, we wrote about, like, the guy who repos airplanes. Right. Or like, you know, the monopoly that owns pretty much the entire market on ice cream truck sound boxes. Like just these weird things that you've never heard of before. Yeah, the guy who writes that is. Well, one of the guys who writes it is Zach Crockett. So both these guys, I really respect their storytelling talent and I've gotten some tips from them. So the one that comes from Zach is related to what you look for in writers who are going to be able to pull this off. And by far, the biggest thing is curiosity. He said this in an interview we did recently. He says, you know, and I would agree with it because it's, It's. It's definitely the thing that we look for on trends when we're hiring new analysts. You. You will benefit from hiring writers who are intensely curious about the thing that you're trying to write about. And specifically, like, for us, we don't like the.

[Fonzie]

The.

[Ethan Brooks]

What curiosity really helps you do is surface stories that people aren't going to write about somewhere else. Because. Because you're just kind of going through your day, and all of a sudden you notice something. You're like, I wonder why is that? Like, here, I'll give you an example. Okay, so this is a soda can, right? Yep. And you can return these for money, Right. The whole thing is aluminum, including the tab, but the machine that you return it to doesn't care whether the tab is on it or off it. So, like, technically, you can pull this off, and then you could save a bunch of these and then return that for even more money if you just split these two things up. Right. Well, that's kind of interesting. Is there anybody who's doing that? You look into it. You pull back the layers, and there are people who are doing this, and they're doing it at a huge level. And then if you, if you kind of, wow. You spend time in this world where you're researching stories, you know, how to like, find communities of just kind of like, weird people who are out there doing really interesting things or things that you would never think of. You see it. You pass a million soda cans a day. You never think about the economics of just the tabs. Right. But there's a whole industry there. There's a whole history there. And so what you're looking for when you're staffing, editorial teams are people who, like, they have to be able to get the work done right. You can't have somebody who's so curious they can never write anything. But. But you want people who are like, just.

[Luis]

That's Fox's problem, by the way.

[Fonzie]

Nah, that's not a problem.

[Ethan Brooks]

And then as for the showmanship thing, like, I think there's two tips that I got from Sam that really work well for this one is related to where do you find stories? And the reality is a lot of communities will tell you what it is that they want to hear about. So one way that he does this, and we've, you know, we use this at the Hustle and It trends. If you're ever researching an industry or an idea, there's, well, there's the, the, like, the first good way to really dig into it is to go find a whole bunch of online communities where people who like that thing congregate to talk about other people. And so that could be Facebook groups, it could be Twitter, it could be Reddit. But if you go to a lot of these communities, like say, Reddit, you can go in there and you can sort the conversations by most popular, and then you can sort the replies by most popular. And then what you have, if you, if you do that, you have topics that the community has sort of de facto told you have a high likelihood of traveling through the community. And so the example that I give is like, let's, let's say you're in the fitness space, right? And you're looking for ideas. Like, okay, so you go to the home gym subreddit and then you sort the topics by most popular. And the, the, like, the top post is like, here's the 50 pieces of gym equipment that you need to be super successful in your workout. And then you sort the comments by most popular. And like, the first one is, hey, I, you know, you can make a lot of these at home from stuff that you just buy at Home Depot. And maybe the second one is like, well, hey, here's this Chinese brand that's, you know, 10% the cost, but it's just as good as rogue fitness. Okay, now you're looking at this and you know instantly, okay, you have a topic which is pieces of home equipment that you need, right? And you could easily write an article about the 50 pieces of home equipment that you can make from Home Depot or whatever, or, you know, the secret Chinese brand that is going to save you 90% on your home gym. And it's, it's not like a super genius hack. But the reality is these communities will tell you what they want to know about. If you know how to go out and find those topics and then just add late, you layer on your voice, you layer on your curiosity. You can create things that they're not guaranteed to go viral, but there's just like a much higher likelihood because they've already proven themselves, you know, other than that, Reddit.

[Fonzie]

Wait. Yes. Yes, that is a sound.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Fonzie]

This was, this was so good, man. This was so good. I feel like people just go with the mindset of, yeah, let me just, just read and see if I can find something. But you just gave a whole roadmap of how to come like how to discover these interesting ideas that people already want to know and then how to further that and alter your curiosity. Thank you.

[Luis]

Hey, first of all, you're solving my content problem for like the next, like four months. I already have like the notes of like all the individual videos that we're going to be creating based on frameworks and different things. Obviously this episode. Amazing. Do you have like, other than Reddit, right. What are, what are some places that people can go and find this topic? Obviously Reddit, you know, is the homepage of the Internet. Right. It's amazing. Me personally, this is crazy. I personally have to dive in a lot more into Reddit.

[Fonzie]

I love Reddit, but it's a, it's a black hole, man.

[Luis]

You, you need to put your, your, the boundaries right on. Hey, this is like war mode. Put your glasses on. And this, this is why I'm doing it. But other than that, Reddit, like, what are some other ways, maybe like one or two that people can go and do this?

[Ethan Brooks]

Sure, yeah. So I'll give you a couple. But before I do, I just want to speak to kind of the philosophy so that people can develop their own as well. The, the key idea that we lean on at trends. So I guess for people who don't know I mentioned it up top, trends is all about like emerging business opportunities that you probably haven't heard of. And every single week we write several articles on like, industries that are growing. And most of the time we aim for like 60 to 80% of people not to have heard of this thing. Right. So how do we find those week after week? Well, the thing that you have to know, and this goes for every industry, right, is that information doesn't move evenly through society. There are people right now who are talking about things that are only going to be mainstream 10 years from now. And, but they're talking about them. And not only are they talking about them, they're spending real money on them and they're putting real effort into them. And if you know where to go to find these people, you can uncover things that are like, they're, they're already mainstream. The effect just hasn't happened yet. Right. Like Peter or. Yeah, Peter Drucker talks about this. There's also. There's a famous saying that says the future's already here. It just not evenly distributed. Well, a lot of people don't know about that saying is that he said that 30 years ago. And when he said it, he was talking about the need to avoid a situation where VR is controlled by mega corporations, once it becomes really realistic. Right, which is exactly the situation that we're in now. So right now people are talking about things that are going to be important 10, 20 years from now, or even less six months from now, a year from now. If you know where you can find them, you can start to uncover those things. So the way that I think about this is almost that like information moves like a river and you're looking for these like confluence points way upstream where you have individual practitioners who are now coming out and sharing knowledge with other individual practitioners. And so Reddit's a great place for something like that. Super niche Facebook groups. Like I mentioned Zach a minute ago, when he's researching a topic, one of the first things he does is he goes on Facebook, he'll search for the topic and then he just joins the top five groups that are related to that thing. Other great ones are like, I really love super niche VC blogs. Like, you know, there's, what I'm talking about is not just like, not, not just the big ones, like you know, Andreessen Horowitz or something like that, but go find the super niche blogs for VCs who focus specifically on your industry because they're out there talking to startups at the, at the very front edge of whatever's going on in your industry every single day. And they're incentivized to make those things more mainstream. So they're gonna, they're gonna be talking about ideas that a lot of people aren't talking about. I also love like wealth management funds, specifically any fund that writes about short positions that they hold. Because the way a lot of these research reports are done is like, I mean, it's fantastic. It's like having an entire research team go out and pre vet an idea for you. So like, as an example, there's this company, I actually think they have a short position on HubSpot, which is funny, but they have one on SpaceX too. And it's just really interesting to read through their reasoning for, for like, so they go out, they talk to satellite manufacturers, they'll go out and they'll talk to people who used to work at Jeff Bezos's company or people who used to work at Tesla. And so you get all this insight into the industry and then they, you know, they're arguing their point. You can believe it or not, but it's, it's like having an entire research team go out and pre that things for you. So anywhere you can find these areas where operators are coming out and trying to share information with other operators. You're going to find really interesting stories and information that a lot of people aren't widely talking about yet.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Luis]

So good.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. Aren't you afraid of like running out of, you know, businesses that people haven't heard about?

[Ethan Brooks]

No, no, no, because that's a good question. But no, because the reality of the world that we live in today is that the Internet has made so many niches viable and you see this with like hard goods. But also as we've been talking about for the last little while now, newsletters, there's, the opportunities are growing exponentially. They're not, there's, there's no like sort of zero sum game in terms of opportunity.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

So no, I think our biggest problem is like finding enough time to write about everything that we find.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. I'm curious, man. How many words do you write a day? Like especially. Yeah, I'm so curious. All that.

[Ethan Brooks]

It's, it's, it's probably less than you'd think. So we, so, and you know, people talking about newsletters, I, I mentioned you can kind of make the rules however you want. So we are a weekly newsletter, which means, you know, our writers publish about one article per week. They get rounded up and put into the email. The email is about 2,000 words. So our articles are actually pretty short. You know, I'm doing like 500 to 1000, probably actually closer to like a thousand to 1500 words a week just with all the different sections that we have in the newsletter. But the reality is like when you make your decisions editorially about how you're going to structure things, you're always thinking about trade offs. So for us, one of the reasons that we're weekly and one of the reasons that we keep things really short is because, and you guys know this just from reading the newsletter. Like, we lean much more on like short, punchy insights that can expl. Like we try to be able to explain an entire industry in 500 to a thousand words. So the amount of research that goes into that is just a lot more than you could do on a daily basis. Like you need a week to really digest and like understand these spaces. But the flip side of that is what you don't have to publish every single day. So if you're in a position where you're thinking of starting a newsletter and you want to be able to offer like, like I think a lot of, there's a lot of opportunity for B2B's in real industry analysis. There's so much high level Clickbait BS out there these days. It's just not helpful to people who are actually in the industry. So if you want to start something like go deep and actually layer on some real experience, real expertise, take the time to track down interviewees and talk to them, that kind of thing, you're never going to run out of opportunities. There will always be a market for, for it.

[Luis]

I, I, that's how I feel with, especially with content is profit, right? Like in part, part of us is like, screw the that's out there. Like, it's all clickbait. And we have this discussion this morning with the team. We're like, should we make this like more clickbaity or not? And, and the discussion was about, like, are we actually delivering on the promise? Right. And I lean towards like the, the, you know, the, the, the showmanship side of things a lot more than Fonzie does. In my, on my side, I, I.

[Fonzie]

Do believe, I love the showmanship, but we were talking about the moral line of clickbait and then what's on the.

[Luis]

Other side, which could be a whole episode on its own, right? But for the podcast, for example, we go to the direct source, right? Like we vet the people that come onto the show, for example. They have very successful businesses. They dealing with content in very unique ways. And it's awesome, right? The source of that info. So your picture of the river and finding those little streams, I thought the thought authority at the top, that's kind of what we've been mimicking with continuous profit and more now that we've had more experience and there comes the leverage out of it. It comes like the experience out of it. I'm not shy of going and ask, right. I think that's super valuable because just like I mentioned a few, a few minutes ago, this episode alone, which is going to be coming in a bunch of series, right? If you're listening, you're probably like at the end of the series at the moment, but, but not just that, but it also, you share a bunch of frameworks that we can dissect, that we can go, that we do a lot of more research. Like this is going to be content for a long, long time, that we can continue to do that. So for B2B or for people that are there trying to create their own platforms, right? Or for CMOs that are building those media teams, these are the things that you need to be looking for to handle that content in house and make sure that it turns into, into profit. So good. Okay. Oh, man.

[Ethan Brooks]

Okay.

[Luis]

We have like we said that 3:30. We're gonna end. You have your heart stop in a few minutes. I have one last question that I really, really want to ask.

[Fonzie]

All right, let's wrap it up right now, guys.

[Luis]

It can be punchy to the point, right? And we talked a little bit on the growth side of it. But what are, how do I acquire new readers? Right? Like obviously, like specifically, how do I actually go out? So I'll share an example. For example, as we were thinking about the soccer thing, we did a campaign before Continuous profit was the thing before Content Momentum was a service. When we used to help local businesses. We went out to this wellness company and they had different businesses around them that complemented them. And we ran a campaign for about a week. All we did was a giveaway towards like just driving a ton of traffic from these other lists into that one email. I think we gathered 2,000 emails in two emails, which was crazy because the people. First, the medium wasn't like popular. They weren't emailing a lot of people. So the new aspect for the member was amazing. So they're like, oh my God, something new. Also the price was valued. I think it was like $6,000 worth of it in like one price. So all these people came in and then immediately we presented that with an offer to go to a demo in the studio. So they booked 300 sessions out of that one week campaign. Right? So to me, like that framework, so, so good. And, and people are like, when we share, they're like, what? That's crazy, right? Because on the online now, people are a little bit more educated, different things. This was brick and mortar and it was really effective. So like that where are some like one or two things that, that people can do to acquire those new readers into the newsletters?

[Ethan Brooks]

Great question. Well, okay, I got a, I got a first acknowledge that between the two of us and people listening, this is, you can take this straight to the bank. Like you got to listen to these guys when it comes to how to acquire readers more than me. But I can give you, let me give you some high level stuff because I mean, for the most part this is your area of expertise. But I'll show you what I've learned just from a couple of different newsletters and I can tell you some of the more creative methods that I've seen. Okay, so I mentioned earlier that there's like three, three levers that newsletters use. Time, money and growth or sorry, Time, money, audience. Now each one of those, there's lots of different tactics, but each One kind of, in my opinion, boils down to a single idea. And if you can, if you know these single ideas, you'll at least be equipped to determine whether or not your marketing is working. So for time, time based strategies are about one thing, and that is getting other people to tell your story. A lot of people think, and you guys probably see this all the time, like, hey, if I create content, just put it out there, it's going to grow my audience. And you're like, no, unfortunately that's not the case. You can't just, you can't just build it and they'll come. That's not how this game works.

[Fonzie]

It's not Fields of Dream.

[Ethan Brooks]

Exactly, exactly. Time is all about getting other people to tell your story. And that's like, you know, that's. If you want to talk about like PR strategy, that's another media company telling your story. If you want to talk about SEO, that's Google talking about you. When people search for certain topics. Right. So it's all about figuring out how to get other people to tell your story. Even social media. Social media only matters once people start commenting, resharing, what it is you post. Just like the fact that they like it doesn't mean anything. Right?

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

So that's what time based strategies are all about. And the story that I love to talk about that reminds me of this is Paul Revere. Is it Paul Revere? Oh my God. Yeah. Midnight, right? To Paul Revere. Yeah. He's is like a famous American sort of folk tale of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. And he, you know, for people listening to this, who might be outside the US his story is back during the Rev, when the revolution was first starting, Paul Revere jumped on a horse and he rode, you know, through colonial America, warning people that the British are coming. And he's famous for it. Now what most people don't know is that there was five other people who did the exact same thing that night. And a lot of them rode a lot further than he did. Like Paul Revere rode something like 13 miles. There's a guy, Israel Bissell, who rode like 300 miles over the course of several days. Right. But you've never heard his name.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

And the reason you've heard of Paul Revere is because like, like a hundred years later, a poet named Longfellow wrote the story of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Somebody else told his story and that's why you know him. It's not because he was the best. It's not because he did the most work. You need to get somebody else to tell your story. If you want, like, content to work for you, then there's paid an audience real quickly. Paid is all about your cost per acquisition. Right. And this is one of the reasons that we recommend people don't start paid advertising until they're deep enough into the project to understand what the lifetime value of their customers are. So if you're just starting a newsletter from scratch, you're not going to know it. If you have a bunch of money on hand. And like, I know some people who don't care so much, like, you know, they'll, they'll throw $10,000 out as a test project just to see if anybody clicks on these ads.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

If you have that kind of resource, fine. But if, if, if your ad budget needs to work, don't start with paid ads.

[Fonzie]

I'm going to say if you have that kind of resource, just hit us up and then, you know, we can create content for you guys.

[Ethan Brooks]

So with paid, it's all about customer lifetime value and your cost per acquisition. If you, if you can acquire people via paid channels for less than your lifetime value, you're making money. And if you can acquire them at less than the target acquisition price, you throw money at that all day. Right. That's the whole story behind paid content. And like you said, that could be a whole show in and of itself.

[Luis]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

Last you have audience based, audience based. Like, the biggest thing for this is like referral engines, Right. What people talk about in Morning Brew or In the Hustle, Sparkloop is a tool that's often used for this. Also, like Beehive comes with referral engines built into it. So there's a lot of different platforms that can give you referral capabilities. The way that I typically say this, and some people disagree with this wording, but I say referral engines, like referral programs are a game. And what I mean by game is there's this whole study of game theory which is like, how do you incentivize people to act in certain ways? Or how do people act in situations when certain incentives are presented where people get referrals wrong? A lot is that they expect that, you know, if they do it right, everybody's going to refer somebody. And that couldn't be further from the truth. I've interviewed Louis Nichols, who runs Sparkloop, about this, and he says, I don't want to, I don't want to misquote the stats because I don't have them in front of me, but it's the vast, vast minority of your audience. Somewhere between like 1 and 5% overall is going to use the referral platform. What you really want with that is you want two things. You want to get as many people as possible to make one referral and then you want to set up your incentives in such a way that hopefully the whales in your audience who can make like hundreds or even thousands of referrals are incentivized to do that. And so again, it's something that we could go much deeper on in a future episode. If you ever want to, I'm happy to come back.

[Fonzie]

Absolutely. 100%.

[Luis]

Okay.

[Fonzie]

Yes.

[Luis]

So here's the deal. Invitation. Ethan, you and me are going to coordinate to continue the conversation because I think we got to like the third part of your thread and there's so much more as I scroll down and if your game will continue to do this. So for those listening, this is the end of probably part three and then we're going to go into part four and five to continue this convert. But I know that you have to go. You have your commitment. We have our commitment as well.

[Fonzie]

But so. Well, we interrupted you right here at the end. You can, you can finish your idea if you want to.

[Luis]

If you want to.

[Ethan Brooks]

No, no, I think that's it. So those, those three big ideas are just, you know, the, the growth boils down to using which lever you have the most access to and, and making sure you understand the game that you're playing.

[Fonzie]

Yeah.

[Ethan Brooks]

And then, and then like I said, you know, if you, if you, if you need growth, talk to these guys. They're the pros. The last thing I'll just say is, you know, for people who like are looking for more of this, we, we're about to put out a guide that's related to this. I think we mentioned at the top of the show it's going to be free. Just go to Trends Co and search for it. It should pop right up. You can actually, we'll commit to putting it up at Trends Co guide. You go there, check it out. You can get on the waiting list for it and we'll send it to you when it's ready. It's almost done.

[Fonzie]

I know, dude, I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure because you mentioned that you guys started working on this before pre acquisition acquired by HubSpot, right?

[Ethan Brooks]

Yep.

[Fonzie]

I'm pretty sure I signed up for, for that guide pre hopspot acquisition. I'm like, I'm so pumping. I wanna, I wanna read this.

[Luis]

I know for those Listening. By the way, I try to get the guide before the show so you could get it like on the show. But it's so good that it's okay. Just go to Trans Co slash guide and join us in that wait list. You know, I promise I'm gonna. I have Ethan phone number so I'm going to call him every day. Like dude, is this ready or what is right there?

[Ethan Brooks]

So close.

[Fonzie]

Dude, I can't wait. I know it's going to be absolutely massive. And, and by massive I don't mean just, you know, long but like quality wise. And dude, I can't wait to just dive into that. And we should, we should have the. A project one of those spaghetti that we just threw at the wall and do it like kind of like give updates throughout the podcast as. As one of.

[Luis]

I'm down. I have a bunch of ideas so we can, we can talk about this next time. But Ethan, this has been an absolute pleasure man. So good. Time flew by. Obviously we're passionate about this topic. You are passionate about this topic?

[Fonzie]

Yeah. This has been officially the longest conversation we've had in continents.

[Ethan Brooks]

Profit.

[Fonzie]

Yes.

[Luis]

Let's go. Yeah, but two crowns.

[Ethan Brooks]

I'll take two crowns.

[Fonzie]

Let's go.

[Ethan Brooks]

The pleasure is all mine guys. This is an absolute blast. Thanks for having me on. Thank you to listeners and if they have other questions, you know, feel free to round them up. I'm happy to come back on, do another round.

[Fonzie]

Yeah. Where can they find you? Where can they connect with you?

[Ethan Brooks]

I'm over on Twitter @Dam Ethan and.

[Fonzie]

I totally recommend you follow him on Twitter. Yo, your threads are amazing. Honestly, I would love to have a conversation just on Twitter and how to like threads had growth in there and, and yeah, like writing threads. What do you see more valuable threads or like individual tweets? All this thing.

[Luis]

Bro, stop talking. He needs to go.

[Fonzie]

I'm just, I'm just, I'm just teasing the next, you know, conversations.

[Ethan Brooks]

I'm completely down. I'm so down.

[Luis]

Awesome.

[Fonzie]

All right, Ethan.

[Luis]

It was a pleasure for those listening. Thank you so much for tuning to the contents Profit podcast. Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite platforms and on social media at this bros company.

[Fonzie]

That is right. Ethan here help you move one step closer towards your goal and building an awesome newsletter. Better. Please don't forget to share this episode and leave a five star review. See ya.

[Luis]

Bye guys.