His Paid Newsletter Launch Drove $50k+ (and 500+ paid subs)

Summary

Growth In Reverse: Episode Summary – "His Paid Newsletter Launch Drove $50k+ (and 500+ Paid Subs)"

In this compelling episode of Growth In Reverse, hosts Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop delve deep into the successful paid newsletter launch of Tom Orbach, author of the renowned Marketing Ideas newsletter. Released on July 16, 2025, this episode offers a thorough exploration of Tom's journey from inception to generating over $50k and securing 500+ paid subscribers. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the conversation.

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1. Introduction to Tom Orbach and Marketing Ideas

Tom Orbach joins Chenell and Dylan to share his experiences with his newsletter, Marketing Ideas. Launching in August 2023, Tom has grown his subscriber base to 43,000 free subscribers and recently introduced a paid tier that has attracted over 500 subscribers within the first few days.

Tom Orbach [00:22]: "I physically write the newsletter one day a week, but every time I'm breathing and not asleep, I'm growing the newsletter."

2. The Genesis of Marketing Ideas

Tom recounts the origins of his newsletter, emphasizing his passion for marketing and the realization that people are eager for fresh marketing ideas. Leveraging funds from his successful side project, the Viral Post Generator for LinkedIn, Tom acquired the premium domain marketingideas.com, setting the stage for his newsletter venture.

Tom Orbach [01:31]: "I bought the domain marketingideas.com because .com is the leading domain extension, making me eligible to become the category king."

3. Building and Growing the Subscriber Base

Starting with a waitlist and actively promoting his newsletter at conferences and events, Tom avoided the dreaded zero-subscriber start. His strategic promotion led to an impressive 1,300 subscribers in the first week and continued exponential growth thereafter.

Tom Orbach [04:46]: "I had a wait list, so it was very easy to not start with zero."

4. Key Growth Strategies: LinkedIn, Product Hunt, and Substack

Tom attributes his substantial growth to three primary channels:

• LinkedIn: Regularly posting snippets from Marketing Ideas and directing traffic to his website.

  Tom Orbach [09:34]: "With LinkedIn, the more you publish, the more chances you have to get something go viral."

• Product Hunt: Successfully launching his newsletter on Product Hunt, securing first place daily, weekly, and monthly, which alone garnered 7,000 subscribers.

  Tom Orbach [11:30]: "Product Hunt alone gave me around 7,000 subscribers so far."

• Substack Recommendations: Leveraging guest articles and mutual recommendations with other Substack writers to maintain a steady influx of subscribers.

  Tom Orbach [13:43]: "With Substack recommendations, it's always alive. I always get new subscribers from those recommendations."

5. Balancing a Full-Time Job and Newsletter Growth

Despite maintaining a full-time role as the Director of Growth Marketing at Wiz, Tom efficiently manages his time by dedicating Saturdays exclusively to writing his newsletter. He utilizes tools like Obsidian for organized note-taking and idea management.

Tom Orbach [06:42]: "I dedicate one day per week, Saturday, for the newsletter and that's it."

6. Launching the Paid Subscription Model

After nearly two years of providing valuable free content and building trust with his audience, Tom introduced a paid tier. His approach was meticulous:

• Mass Subscriber Base: Ensured a substantial free subscriber base before transitioning.
• Comprehensive Launch Plan: Developed a series of strategic emails, including reminders and added value offers like a free PDF copy of his book.
• Pricing Strategy: Initially offered a $100 entry-level price for early adopters, advised by Chenell to create urgency and exclusivity.

Tom Orbach [15:00]: "I wanted to wait until I have a really good plan for launching the paid newsletter."

7. Successful Paid Launch and Revenue Generation

Tom's paid newsletter launch was a resounding success, attracting over 500 paid subscribers within the first few days. His thoughtful launch strategy, combined with the value proposition of tangible offers (like his book and exclusive community access), played a crucial role.

Tom Orbach [21:14]: "All of those 500 joined in the first few days after launching the paid newsletter."

8. Enhancing Content Quality and Managing Pressure

Transitioning to a paid model heightened Tom's commitment to delivering high-quality content. He now spends more time per article, providing in-depth guides and exclusive marketing ideas to justify the subscription cost.

Tom Orbach [32:12]: "I feel like I literally spend more time per article. But it's great because I keep building this big library of really good marketing ideas."

9. Addressing Challenges and Negative Feedback

While the launch was largely positive, Tom encountered some backlash from long-time free subscribers who felt alienated by the introduction of paid tiers. He emphasizes the importance of transparency and maintaining value for both free and paid subscribers.

Tom Orbach [36:14]: "I was not prepared for it, but maybe like this is something I would have loved to know in advance that it's going to happen."

10. Exploring Sponsorships and Advertisements

With increased subscriber growth, Tom began incorporating sponsorships into his free tier content. He strategically limits sponsorships to maintain the value of his paid content and ensures that ads are relevant and non-intrusive.

Tom Orbach [37:39]: "I've welcomed the first sponsor and decided to do it very rarely, like only four or five times per year."

11. Future Plans and Continuous Growth

Looking ahead, Tom plans to launch a community platform for paid subscribers, offering AMAs with marketing leaders, additional resources, and micro-launches of new products or services to keep the content fresh and engaging.

Tom Orbach [43:05]: "I plan to have many smaller launches throughout every couple of months... and keep a cadence of new things that are happening."

12. Key Takeaways and Advice for Aspiring Newsletter Creators

Tom's journey underscores the importance of:

• Strategic Planning: Thoughtful preparation before launching paid tiers.
• Multi-Channel Growth: Leveraging platforms like LinkedIn, Product Hunt, and Substack to maximize reach.
• Value Proposition: Offering tangible benefits to justify paid subscriptions.
• Consistency and Quality: Maintaining high-quality content to retain and attract subscribers.
• Adaptability: Being open to experimenting with sponsorships and new growth strategies.

Tom Orbach [34:44]: "Be really mindful and thoughtful about your launch plan. Don't just flip the switch and wait for people to convert."

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Conclusion

Tom Orbach's success with Marketing Ideas serves as a valuable blueprint for newsletter creators aiming to grow their audience and monetize effectively. His strategic approach to launching paid subscriptions, coupled with unwavering commitment to quality and value, highlights essential practices for turning a simple newsletter into a thriving business.

For those interested in elevating their email marketing and newsletter strategies, tuning into Growth In Reverse and following Tom's journey offers actionable insights and inspiration.

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Notable Quotes:

• Tom Orbach [01:31]: "I bought the domain marketingideas.com because .com is the leading domain extension, making me eligible to become the category king."
• Chenell Basilio [04:46]: "I had a wait list, so it was very easy to not start with zero."
• Tom Orbach [09:34]: "With LinkedIn, the more you publish, the more chances you have to get something go viral."
• Tom Orbach [15:00]: "I wanted to wait until I have a really good plan for launching the paid newsletter."
• Tom Orbach [32:12]: "I feel like I literally spend more time per article. But it's great because I keep building this big library of really good marketing ideas."
• Tom Orbach [34:44]: "Be really mindful and thoughtful about your launch plan. Don't just flip the switch and wait for people to convert."

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This summary encapsulates Tom Orbach's insightful conversation on launching and monetizing a successful newsletter, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of his strategies and experiences.

Transcript

[Tom Orbach]

I had like a thousand people that got my first email, which is amazing because when you start with zero and you just send out emails, no one reads them. It feels really bad.

[Chanel]

Mine went out to four people, so I do know how that feels.

[Tom Orbach]

Without my full time job, I would have never succeeded in my newsletter.

[Chanel]

I've been watching your journey since around 10,000 subscribers, and I was like, wow, he's just exploding.

[Tom Orbach]

I physically write the newsletter one day a week, but every time I'm breathing and not asleep, I'm growing the newsletter. Only after you send 100 email. I think you actually can better realize what's the content that people want to read.

[Chanel]

I'm curious. So you're the marketing ideas guy. What kind of ideas do you have for marketing this and like, growing the newsletter from here?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah. So my overall plan is to do.

[Chanel]

Tom, you run a newsletter called Marketing Ideas, and I'm super pumped to have you on the show today. Welcome.

[Tom Orbach]

Thank you for having me.

[Chanel]

Yeah, we are excited because you. You've been on my radar for a long time. You've been running marketing ideas since I. September of 2023. Is that about right?

[Tom Orbach]

August. Yeah, August 23rd.

[Chanel]

Yeah, August 23. Okay, cool. Uh, so it's been what, like, almost.

[Unknown]

20, almost two years? It's almost August. Like in a month, it's like August.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Oh, yeah, it's June 30th. Okay, you're right. Wow, that's crazy. Um, and so at this point, it looks like you have 43,000 free subscribers. So congrats. That's awesome.

[Tom Orbach]

Great. Thank you.

[Chanel]

Do you want to tell everybody a little bit about your newsletter and how you kind of started with it?

[Tom Orbach]

Sure. Okay. So I'm a marketer and I write about marketing. And for the longest time, people always told me that my thing was marketing ideas. Like, I meet with a lot of founders and entrepreneurs and we talk about branding and strategy and hiring and whatever, but whenever we speak about marketing ideas, I see everyone's light. Everyone's eyes, like, light up. And I think, like, for the past five years, any meeting I had with any founder or entrepreneur, like, whenever we got to talking about marketing ideas, they told me, oh, my God, please talk about it more. Like, let's talk about it more. Write about it. I want to hear more about it from you and etc. So in 2022, I built a side project called the Viral post generator for LinkedIn. It's like a simple parody tool that generates cringy LinkedIn posts based on your input. So that was funny. And a few million people use this tool and then it was acquired by a company and they paid me a really nice amount of money and I used this money to buy the domain and marketing ideas.com it was a very expensive domain. Someone bought it back way in 1995, which is the year I was born. And they held onto it since then. And I finally could buy it with the money that I got from the tool that I sold. So why did I buy the domain marketingareas.com and not C, SEO or IO or net or other things? Because.com is like the leading domain extension. And I think that once you have the dot com, you are eligible to become the category king. You know what I mean? Like only you could have the dot com. Nobody else could ever have it. Only you have it. And it's like it makes you automatically much more credible and also eligible to be the category king, at least in my perspective. And I didn't actually know like that I'm going to do a newsletter. I thought about a website or like just a list that I will sell or airtable or I don't know. But the first thing I did once I had the domain was to start a waiting list. Just like a simple landing page with leave your email address below. And I started speaking in conferences and being a panelist or being a keynote speaker. And every time I plugged it in and I told people to join the waitlistofmarketingeries.com without knowing what it's going to be in the future. And at one point I decided that I will do a substack and newsletter. And in August 23rd, like you said, I started the newsletter and it's been almost two years and I'm now at 44,000 subscribers. And I also flipped the switch and enabled paid subscriptions exactly a month ago. Wow.

[Chanel]

And you are crushing it with both. I'm excited to see it because I've been watching your journey since I think like around 10,000 subscribers. And I was like, wow, he's just exploding. Yeah, thank you. I know you like you launched and you had like 1300 subscribers in the first week just because you were telling people about it beforehand and like talking about it and at conferences and events and that kind of thing.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, I had a wait list so it was very easy to not starting with zero. Like I imported everyone to substack and I had like a thousand people that got my first email, which is amazing because when you start with zero and you just send out emails, no one reads them. It's. It Feels really bad.

[Chanel]

Yes. Mine went out to four people, so I do know how that feels.

[Unknown]

I think my substack went out, my first one went out to two people and they were both like my two test email addresses. So yeah, a thousand is a little bit more significant. So were you nervous when you hit that send for the first time having that big of an audience? Because for Chanel and I, it was like just, you know, pretty much nobody is reading this, but how did it feel publishing like your first newsletter to a thousand people?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, I was very nervous also, like it was the first time ever I wrote a newsletter. I didn't have a voice and tone. I didn't know what will keep people like hooked or not. So it was a lot of trial and error and I think like if I just waited without sending name and I'm thinking about it and researching about it without sending anything, it, it would have never worked. Like, only after you send this. Actually this week was the hundredth email that I sent. So only after you send a hundred emails, I think you actually can better like realize what's the content that people want to read.

[Unknown]

No, absolutely. Publishing is very powerful. When you don't publish, you don't get that feedback and that chance to iterate and test and see what's working. So publishing is very important. I'm curious, you were publishing weekly, was that, is that correct?

[Tom Orbach]

Correct. Every Friday I send one new marketing idea. Like that's the big promise. One new marketing idea every Friday.

[Unknown]

Okay. And you were doing all of this on the side of a full time job and still yet you're consistently publishing every week. How did you juggle those? Because like you mentioned now you're at 44,000 subscribers still with a full time job. Can you talk to us a little bit about like how you, how you grew that And Chanel, if you have any kind of add on questions to growth, feel free.

[Tom Orbach]

Sure. So I work in marketing. I'm the director of growth marketing at a company called Wiz. It's a cloud security company and you know, marketing is my passion. Like I write about marketing in my newsletter and I work in marketing and none of it feels like work. So I feel lucky enough to be able to do it and do have a. And an audience that loves what I like, what I love as well. But I think that without my full time job, I would have never succeeded in my newsletter because all of those experiments and the marketing areas and the tactics and the strategies that I come up with and send people every Friday, I do all of Those myself in the full time job that I have. So this job, this full time job basically gives me a platform to experiment and try new things and learn from my colleagues and friends. So it's like, I think they're intertwined now in terms of like time allocation or time. Like how do I manage my time? It's super easy. Like I work Monday to Friday and then on Saturdays I write the newsletter. Like I dedicate one day per week, the Saturday for the newsletter and like that's it. I think if I had more than one day, I would have just stretched it to forever and it would have taken me like forever to write every single piece. So that's easy.

[Chanel]

That's awesome. Yeah. So the constraint of only having that one day has really helped you in a way of like just forcing yourself to get it done on a Saturday.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

And then it sounds like you're probably throughout the week, you're probably like marinating on some ideas in your, in your head of like you see different things happening throughout the company or even in like adjacent companies and you're like, oh, that's super interesting. And naturally, like this makes so much sense because naturally you're researching all this stuff during your workday and then on Saturdays you just kind of distill everything into one piece.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, I used to, I used to like Apple Notes used to be my big note taking application. But then it gets too messy because as you said, like I get too many thoughts during the week and I get too many like ideas or things that I want to write about. So I moved to Obsidian. The great thing about Obsidian is that everything is connected. So like I just write a new note and I can refer to other notes and it's like a nesting of notes. One thing relates to another and it's very easy to navigate between them. So Obsidian is a lifesaver for me here.

[Chanel]

That's awesome. I am definitely the same person. I'm like, I used to work with Apple Notes and then I was trying Obsidian and then I went to Notion and now I'm back at Apple Notes and so it's just all over the place. Oh, that's great.

[Unknown]

I got one follow up question to the one day a week thing because people might be hearing, oh yeah, like one day a week to spend to publish a newsletter makes a lot of sense. I think I can manage that since I have a 9 to 5 job. But what about growth? Like we kind of omitted how you went from like a thousand when you started to 40,000 before you launched your paid Newsletter. So what were kind of the main things that you were doing and how are you doing those things during the week?

[Tom Orbach]

Sure. Okay, so I should, I should emphasize because it's a very good point and I, I, I physically write the newsletter one day a week, but I think about the newsletter and I like, try to grow it every single, like, waking moment. Every, every, every, every time I'm breathing and not, not asleep, I'm growing the newsletter. So I have a few, like, a few growth levers or strategies that helped me grow to 44,000 free subscribers. The biggest ones are LinkedIn, Product Hunt and Substack itself. So LinkedIn, I just write a lot of content there and some of my posts are like snippets of those marketing ideas with a single screenshot from the article. And then like, if you want more, head over to marketingaids.com to read more. And it's been working fine. It's great. The more you publish, the more chances you have to get something go viral. So like every time I click the post button on LinkedIn, it's like, I don't know, getting a lottery ticket. And some of them hit, some of them don't, and it's fine, whatever. So that's LinkedIn. Productant is the second biggest lever is, in case you don't know, productant is like a website for launching new products. Every day is like a contest of 24 hours between all of those products that launch on the same day and the product that wins the day that gets the most upvotes, which is a popularity contest. The product that wins gets loads of exposure and badge and trophies and yeah, so I studied Product Hunt for the longest time and then I actually launched and it was a huge success. I won the first place of the day and also the first place of the week and the first place of the month, which is great. So Product Hunt alone gave me around 7,000 subscribers so far. And so that was something great.

[Chanel]

And just from hearing other people talk about Product Hunt, like, it's a lot of work. It's not just like, oh, I just did this thing and it's like it worked. It's like, no, you have like, probably 80 hours of work went into getting product on the first day.

[Tom Orbach]

I think for everything, it's like, everything is a lot of work. You know what I mean? Like, you need to be thoughtful about and mindful about whatever you do. Like, like you need to be, to actually care about it in order to succeed. It's not like, oh, like, I will just write a Small newsletter on the side, like, I will not care about it. I will just ship something and leave it. No, you need to actually care. So if you care about product and, and you study, then you research everything and you make the right connections that you can totally win and get a lot of traffic.

[Chanel]

I love that. Okay, Product Hunt. What, what other things? Product hunt, LinkedIn and then.

[Tom Orbach]

So LinkedIn product hunt. And the third is Substack itself. So I think it's a mix of notes and recommendations. Notes is like, everybody knows. It's like a social media platform inside substack where a lot of authors just share small, like small posts, like short pieces of advice and thoughts, and it's been great. What I love about Notes actually is the fact that they actually show you how many new subscribers did you get from each note? So I can actually analyze and say, oh, if I write about this topic on notes, more people will come. And lately, since I started the paid newsletter as well, it actually tells you X amount of people join the free tiers and each X amount of people join the paid tier. So. So it's great to analyze everything. And the second thing is the recommendations. I don't know. It's been a huge growth lever and I think it's. It's a very steady one as well. Like, it's not like. So with Product Hunt, you get a huge wave of new subscribers and then it's like every little bit dies down, even though I still get a few nowadays with LinkedIn as well, you post something and then you get like a big wave of new subscribers and then like, the post dies down until you publish another. But with substack recommendations, it's always alive. You know what I mean? I always get new subscribers from those recommendations. So it's a fantastic growth lever.

[Chanel]

Who are you recommending with? How did you build those relationships through Substack to get the recommendations?

[Tom Orbach]

It's a bit more complicated. It's not really black and white. But basically I pitched myself to write a guest article to a lot of other publications, a lot of subtext, and I wrote them. I just gave like my best article for them for free to publish on their own newsletter instead of my own. So they published it and they saw a lot of engagement and new subscribers. And I also shared, oh, look, I wrote a new piece for whatever. After. After that, like, we became friends and I started recommending them and they recommended me. And also, like, I think because I recommended them first and then I got a lot of subscribers from the product at launch and from LinkedIn they saw on their analytics that, oh my God, like is someone named Tom. That gives me a lot of new subscribers. Maybe I'll check it out and maybe I'll recommend them back. So it worked well. This way.

[Chanel]

Very cool. Those, a mix of those and some other growth tactics. I'm sure I've gotten you to your 44,000 subscribers at this point. I'm curious. You've recently launched this paid side of things. I'm curious when you decided, like, okay, it's time to flip the switch. Like, I'm ready. It's been almost two years. The time is now. How are you thinking about that?

[Tom Orbach]

Sure. So I had two things in my mind. First is to have a big enough mass of subscribers before I flip to switch, I flip to paid. I don't know why, I just felt like I wanted to make it first to see if I can actually make a big enough newsletter even only if I prove to myself that I can collect so many subscribers. Only if I can prove to myself that I can do it, then it will be like, I, I will be worthy enough to start a paid newsletter. And the second thing is that I wanted to wait until I have a really good plan for launching the paid newsletter. Like, I didn't want to do it. Like, oh, okay. By the way, new, new, new tier. You can join the paid like plans if you want. If you don't want, that's fine. I didn't want to do it. Like, by the way, as I said before, you must be mindful about what you do. You must really care. So building up this plan took a long time and only when I felt confident enough that it's good, then I flipped the switch to paid.

[Chanel]

I love that. And just from seeing it and like hearing you talk about it, like behind the scenes, like it is a serious plan. Like, you were not joking around with this. You had this full email sequence built out. You created a whole book around like the same time the launch. Oh, nice.

[Tom Orbach]

I have the book. You have the book?

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, it was a. I saw other newsletter authors and how they launched their paid plans and it really seemed like they, it, it really seemed like a missed opportunity because they didn't really, like, they didn't remind people enough about it and they didn't like have a sequence that makes people think like, it's like, you know, gradual learning about what's, what's in the offer. So yeah, I build this plan and with the book, with everything I do, I try to like every offer that I provide. The offer must Be tangible and non calculatable. So tangible makes sense. But non calculatable meaning let's think about another newsletter that sends four emails per month and it cost $20. So in people's brains everyone is thinking, okay, so $24 emails per month, it means I'm paying $5 per email, which is like a cup of coffee. And I don't want people to make those comparisons. So I thought about what tangible offers I could provide that will make the newsletter a bit more non calculatable. So the book is one of them. And the community that I'm starting in the newsletter for like the marketing leaders that are paying is also part of it. So it's like making the offer much more holistic and again, not non calculated.

[Unknown]

Right. So like offering things that they can actually say, well, this is worth X amount per issue. You've like added so much value that you can't just break it down like five bucks per year. That's, that's really smart.

[Tom Orbach]

Exactly. I do it with everything, by the way. Like for example, I give workshops and trainings for companies which is like a 90 minute Zoom call with their team. So like I don't want them to divide the amount of minutes by the cost. So I give other things like a 30 minute one on one with the leader and also follow up amas with the entire team via email and like to make the offer much more like holistic and less, less calculated.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I love that. Okay, can we talk about exactly what you are including in the paid subscription offering just to start and then we can kind of dig into the launch and like how it's gone and that kind of thing.

[Tom Orbach]

Sure. So as I said, I send one marketing idea every Friday and I actually kept my best marketing ideas until I could get like the content because I know, but it's not really for monetization reasons because some of these ideas that send every Friday now are like if everyone started using them, they will lose their power. It's like, it's like they love declining growth channels. So I wanted to keep those specific marketing ideas to a smaller audience base. So I like, I wrote a lot of articles during those two years and just waited before publishing them because I didn't want to send those for everyone. So that's what I offer. And I also give archive access so you can read all of the best marketing areas, which is something that I know people really love and they want to have like this library of marketing ideas. And it's, this is what's going on right now in marketing. Ideas.com I also give the book a free PDF copy of the book that Chanel has a physical version of. And starting September, there will also be a community. And so basically it's like a group chat with me and others and I plan to do it really well. So I plan to really have a schedule and you will know in advance what are we going to discuss in the community every single day. And people will share ideas and I will post interviews and AMAs with my friends that will be there too. So it's going to be like a whole thing. And that's the offering of the paid tiers of marketingedits.com that's awesome.

[Chanel]

I love it.

[Unknown]

I have one question before you decide to go paid just for, for some context, were you monetizing the newsletter in any other way prior?

[Tom Orbach]

No, I wanted, I don't know why, but it felt wrong to monetize like with ads or stuff like that. But like it's just a hunch because I wanted to build trust with my audience so I wanted them to really like really enjoy free. And it worked. When I flipped the switch, the toupee people really loved it.

[Unknown]

Yeah, you did. You did the ultimate like give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give and then ask basically. Right. Like two years basically of, of providing really high quality, engaging free content. And then when it was time to flip the switch, which obviously you put lots of thought, strategy and thought behind, then it was, it was an easy and a much easier ask for people, which is why it was so successful. I know you don't want to share exact numbers, but we can safely say that you have over 500 paid subscribers to the newsletter now.

[Tom Orbach]

And all of those 500 joined in the first few days after launching the paid newsletter. Which is amazing because it means that 500 people joined the premium plan before I even sent a single paywall article. So it's great. People trust me and it shows because 500 people pay for a product that they have not experienced yet. So it's great.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah, I'm included in that. I definitely joined same especially what Tom. Honestly, one of the tactics that worked on me was like, hey, I'm offering this entry level price and it's going to go, it's going to basically double at a certain period. And so I was like, yeah, I want to get in on the entry level price. So I mean, I don't know how much thought went even into that. But that, that was something that worked on me.

[Tom Orbach]

That was actually Chanel's idea. I actually went with Chanel before flipping the switch. And there you go.

[Unknown]

Oh, Chanel, 100 bucks.

[Tom Orbach]

Actually, actually said, like, I actually like told Chanel, okay, I'm going to charge 100 bucks. And she said, no, it's too cheap. You should increase the prices and only have the $100 for the first day or two. So that, that's what, that's what happened. Yeah.

[Unknown]

Amazing. That's, that's very amusing how that went Conversation right now. My God.

[Chanel]

That's why I made sure to buy when it was a hundred bucks, because I was like, I know this is coming. I love it.

[Tom Orbach]

Thank you.

[Chanel]

That's great. Okay, so this launch, just seeing it like we had talked and you had mentioned a couple of other things and so I'm just curious, like, can we talk through like your strategy for launching, like all of the pieces of the puzzle? Like, there's so much going on in this. I think a lot of people see, you know, a Lenny Richeski or someone who has a paid newsletter and they get so overwhelmed of like, how do I even begin? Like, where do you start going from a free newsletter to a paid newsletter? Like, how did you think through the process? Like, what was involved in the launch? I'm just curious of like, how you've been started with that.

[Unknown]

Well, I'll also add just one more follow up question to that is you mentioned sequences and with substack you can't really quite do that. So I'm curious if you had any other software that you're using as well.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, it's not really a real sequence, it's like a manual sequence that is planned out in an Excel sheet beforehand and like, and then every single day or a few hours, I go ahead and send the emails. So I think like my biggest advice is to send multiple emails. You know what I mean? Like, if you send just like one lunch email and oh, here's my paid plan, Some people will read it, some people will not read it, but most of the people will read it and then forget about it. So you need to send a lot of emails. Like my plan real quick before you keep going.

[Chanel]

When did you start sending emails, like hinting at this? Like, was it early on? Was it just a couple days before hinting?

[Tom Orbach]

Never. Like, it was a surprise, I think. Sorry.

[Chanel]

No, but you never, like before you.

[Unknown]

Actually open the doors, like open the cart, if you will.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, never. Like, no one knew, like, except for 10 friends like Chanel who helped me with the advice. No one knew before, I think so.

[Chanel]

Interesting because you always hear marketing People say like tease it beforehand. Let people know why.

[Tom Orbach]

Like if I tease them and they cannot pay, how will it help me? I'm wondering. Interesting.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that's the whole Jeff Walker's like product launch formula or something along those lines. I can't remember the exact name of the book but he's always like you got to seed your list or seed the pre sell the thing that you're going to be launching with people basically at the most being able to sign up for on a wait list or maybe add their names to a pre launch sort of list and then they're kind of primed once you actually open the doors. So you didn't do anything along those lines?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, that's smart what you said. I didn't do it, but it's a smart area. I think people should do it, but I think it's a mess, especially in substack when there is no automations. It's a mess to keep a separate list of waitlists. But it's smart conceptually. I like it. It should work well what you just said anyway. No, I didn't tease anything. I just dropped the bomb one morning, it was a Wednesday morning and I said here is everything that I offer. It was a very long email with a lot of social proof and tangible things and if you join in the next 24 hours you will get a very discounted price. So that was the first email and again of course after 12 hours in the evening of that same day I sent a reminder. And each reminder is not like a chatgpt generated email like oh, reminding you about things. It's usually with added value like my feelings, my experience or like hinting at another thing that is coming and et cetera. The day after there was unfortunately I had to extend the sale. I had an issue with Stripe again, first time charging anything online. So sale extension for another 24 hours and then that evening another like reminder that the sale is going to end soon. So that's the first 48 hours. Friday morning book launch. I initially wanted to launch the book with everything else but Chanel smartly told me not to do it, to wait with the book for Friday. So that's great. So I launched the book and I said that each paid subscriber gets the book for free, like a PDF copy. So that's Friday and then Saturday, like an FAQ about the book. Sunday, the first chapter of the book for free. And then if you want more, click here to subscribe and read the rest. Monday social proof that I generated within the last Five days. Like social proof of the paid subscribers and the things that they've been saying in the last four days. So that's like a lot of testimonials and quotes. Tuesday is another sale that's going on, like a smaller sale than before and only until Friday. Wednesday, another reminder. Reminder. Like, so as you can see, it's a lot of emails and like the entire lunch week or campaign ended the Friday after. So it's like nine days where each day was about one or two emails. Now, not all of the emails were sent to everyone. Some of the emails, I only send them to the most engaged subscribers because I didn't want to like people to unsubscribe. So some of the reminders were only sent to the top 2000 most engaged readers. So that was part of the strategy. And yeah, that's how the launch plan looked like.

[Chanel]

So what? Because substack shows you which emails drove the most paid subscribers. Can you see, was it the beginning of the launch, the end, the middle? Which emails had the biggest impact?

[Tom Orbach]

The one email that had the biggest impact is the reminder email of the first day. Why? Because it had the most urgency. I think it was like 10, 10 hours left for the one time, like one time sale. Also, the book launch was big. People really want the book. The COVID looks good and it's a PDF copy. It's like 400 pages. You get to keep it forever. Like, why not? And I anticipated that a lot of people will just do one month and then cancel just to get a book, which is fine, like if they. And it's your. Their choice. But today, exactly 30 days after that launch, I see that all of like most of the subscribers are still subscribed, like the paid ones. So almost no one unsubscribed, which is great.

[Chanel]

Wow. Yeah. Just for a little behind the scenes, Tom was. I don't think you were going to create a physical book. And I kind of bullied him into doing it because, I mean, look at this cover. Like, it's just so good. Right. And like the inside, it's like a full color.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, you got the earthly example right there. It's a great marketing idea.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Oh, it's so good.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Chanel]

So sorry.

[Tom Orbach]

For only five books and you got one of them. The other four are like, in my closet. Yeah.

[Chanel]

Amazing.

[Unknown]

Wow.

[Tom Orbach]

Thank you.

[Unknown]

Is there. Do you have any plans to expand that or, like, put it on, like, Amazon or anything like that? Or was it just like strictly. Just a little test you wanted to do for the launch.

[Tom Orbach]

That's a good question. I think I will keep it, like, only to my paid subscribers. Like, I want it to be a gift that you can only get there and it feels good. No, no, the physical. I will never do it again. It's so expensive. I will not. Have you ever printed a book? It's so expensive to do. Just find copies.

[Unknown]

Well, I was going to ask you, like, a hardcover book. I can only imagine that's like 300 pages. I would think that's like full color.

[Tom Orbach]

All of them. Full color. With all of the screenshots and examples. It's. No, no way. I will never print.

[Unknown]

It's going to be hundreds of dollars per book kind of thing, I would think. But you don't have to tell us. But I can only imagine that was probably over $1,000 for five books. Or give or take something like that. So.

[Tom Orbach]

Give or take something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unknown]

Wow. Amazing.

[Chanel]

Well, thank you for making a physical cover.

[Tom Orbach]

Well, the thing is that now that my newsletter is making money, I can write it. Write it off as a business expense. So it all checks out. Yeah. Beforehand, whenever I spent money on the newsletter, like it wasn't a business expense. And like, it was, it was. It was not fun. But now it's like, fun to grow my newsletter by spending money, like on ads or stuff to see what happens. Like, everything is now an experiment. So it's great. I can pay for stuff.

[Chanel]

Are there anything, like, anything in the last 30 days that you've started paying for to grow the newsletter? Like, now that you have that feedback loop of paid subscriber money?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah. So it's not really correlated for the growth, but I bought a whole new gear, like camera gear and microphones and teleprompter. So it's great to have these calls with you guys right now in a higher quality. But also I experimented with more types of ads on LinkedIn mostly, and none of them delivered so far. But it's fun that I can just try and see what happens.

[Chanel]

Yeah, you'll have a lot more good experiments to write about too.

[Unknown]

Yeah, absolutely. Any desire to do Facebook ads or anything like that?

[Tom Orbach]

Not really. As a marketer, I know it's not so easy to target the right people with Facebook nowadays for a reasonable price. So I don't even want to start, like, I don't like it.

[Unknown]

I have a question just about now that you've got a paid newsletter and people are paying to hear from you, has that changed how you approach the content or your mindset around it? Because Just personally, I can imagine if I all of a sudden had over 500 people who are paying me to publish content that you know is worth paying for every week, I would feel this, like, intense amount of pressure to deliver on that. And. But I mean, you've been doing it for two years and so they trust you and you know that what you're writing about is good. But has that changed at all the way you've like thought about your, I guess, the pressure you feel about writing the content or anything like that? And do you ever worry about running out of content?

[Tom Orbach]

So you're. You're absolutely correct. Like, I was terrified and suddenly like, I, I felt like I had to write better content or a bit longer content. And I always tried to keep my content short and like to the point. And here's the marketing area, here's the pragmatic way to do it. But suddenly I felt like I should provide more info and more, I don't know, background materials for each marketing idea. So that's what I do now. I feel like I literally spend more time per article. But it's great because I keep building this big library of really good marketing ideas and their guides. So it's been working really good.

[Unknown]

Do you worry that you'll run out of marketing ideas or things to write about?

[Tom Orbach]

That's a great question. A really good question. I've been thinking about a lot. So first I got a full schedule already until the end of 2026, and that's not including new ideas that I think about in the day to day. And like these lists keep getting longer and longer. However, to mitigate the risk that I run out of marketing areas, one of the perks of joining the paid subscription is you get career growth advice. So once a month, instead of the usual marketing ideas, I write about career, for example, how to be more creative and how to do reverse engineering in marketing and stuff like that are not per se marketing ideas, but are skills that marketers should have. So I write guides about that and it's like, it gives me a bit of leeway because like a quarter of my content is suddenly not new marketing areas, but rather just career advice. So. So it's a. Yeah, it's a good point.

[Unknown]

Very cool.

[Chanel]

I love that. This is reminding me of like the whole Lenny thing. Right. Didn't he start with Q&As, like questions from the audience and then he moved to like research and then he's also doing career stuff.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah. Nowadays most of these content is like guest posts, which is great as well, but like you rarely see a piece by Lenny, which is like a great concept.

[Chanel]

When is the Tom Orbach Lenny Rachitsky thing happening? Maybe do a guest post, maybe 70. That would definitely get you some readers, I'm sure.

[Unknown]

Totally. I have, I have one follow up question to the two. Basically going from free to paid. What would be somebody who's listening to this right now has a decent, a decent list, maybe on substack, maybe not. And they're thinking about going to paid. What would be kind of like your number one piece of advice for them when they're making that switch.

[Tom Orbach]

So again, I think be really mindful and thoughtful about your lunch. Like don't just flip the switch and wait for people to find out that you have a paid newsletter and like convert somehow. You need to make a lunch plan and think about what emails are we going to send and how will be the first, like the first few weeks after the lunch. Like which paid content you will send and what will be free. Like be really mindful about it. I think that's my biggest advice. Okay.

[Unknown]

I think that's really solid advice.

[Chanel]

Do you have any, anything that you would have changed from your launch? Like any mistakes you maybe you made or, or just different things you would have done?

[Tom Orbach]

That's a great question. I think it's not, I don't know if it's a mistake, but I would have liked to know in advance that I will get some negative attention. What do I mean by that? I did get like more than 500 subscribers in the first week and it's been great and I got a lot of love and like the readers really like what I did here. But there are some people that will never pay for any newsletter, not mine and not other newsletters and they feel really betrayed, you know, and it's fine. Like it's their feeling like they got used to getting free content for me and they started sending me really like aggressive emails like what are you doing? Like this is not good. They used really hard words and I wasn't prepared for it. But maybe like this is something I would have loved to known like in advance that it's going to happen.

[Unknown]

Well now people listening to this are, can expect it to some degree if they decide to ever go to pay that you might get a few people who are going to share some unkind words with you. And for what it's worth, from my perspective, I think you are doing them a service providing them all this free information that you're creating for them. Curating and creating and it's like if you decide that you want to put that behind a paywall, that's your prerogative, 100%. And yeah, they may, they might not want to pay for it, but like, I could see how they'd be like, well, I can't afford it, so now I can't get it. That sucks for me. But like, I mean, everyone's so used to free content. Like, I just think this is the way. This is the way it is. This is the way it is. Pay the people who are doing it.

[Tom Orbach]

I try to be transparent about it. Like, pay like free. Subscribers can remain free and it's fine and they will get one free marketing idea per month. And I think it's a good deal if you want. But like, it wasn't like, I, I don't know, like try to deceive some people by promising stuff that didn't happen. Like, you still get one free marketing idea, but instead of once a week, it's going to be once a month. Yeah, that's it.

[Chanel]

Yeah. Sometimes people just feel like everything should be free. So that's not on you. Yeah, it's not a great business model. So I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, so I see that with the paid stuff now the free version is sponsored. So you're now diving into sponsorships at the same time as a paid newsletter, is that right?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, I didn't plan it, but okay, so something weird that happened since I flipped the switch. My growth rate for these free subscriptions and actually for the paid too. Like the growth, the natural growth rate that I used to experience, it's like doubled now. And I checked. How did it happen? Because, like, how come I get a wave of new free subscribers? It's weird. Where did they come from? And apparently it's from the substack owned channels. So notes and recommendations are now like, I get so many new subscribers from those channels now it makes sense, right? Because think about substack. What do they want? They want to make more money. How do they make money when I make more money? So they want me to make more money so they send more subscribers to my way. So like the algorithm is prioritizing me with notes and recommendations and it's been great. So part of that huge growth also attracted advertisers and sponsors that want to sponsor the newsletter. And I said, why not? So I welcomed the first one last week and I decided to do it very rarely. So it's like only four or five times per year. I will have a sponsor and see what happen. So far I didn't get any pushback for the sponsor and it's only on the free articles. Like the paid subscribers don't have sponsors on their content. Okay, okay.

[Chanel]

And yeah, that's so interesting.

[Unknown]

I, I got a few follow up comments to that. One of them is I did an interview with the guys who run the newsletter conference in. I think you were both there, weren't you, at the newsletter conference in New York?

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah. Front row, front row, front row.

[Unknown]

There you go. So Ryan was on when I was doing the Sparkly podcast. Him and Jesse actually were both on the Sparkly podcast. Interview them and one of their big things that they said was they're really, of course now this is coming from their bias being advertisers and people who, you know, source advertising. But they are very strong proponents of people putting ads. Even in paid, paid newsletters.

[D]

We see people say, oh, the, the value proposition of our subscription is that we won't show you ads. Please don't do that. That's, you know, we've never found that consumers, that readers are that offended by ads, that that's a great value proposition. And then if you are going to run ads to your free audience, you're cutting out the best part of your audience out of the advertising pie. Like all of a sudden, the people who have the money to buy a subscription, the people who are engaged enough to buy a subscription, all of a sudden they're cut out of your advertising audience. That's, that's just sort of bad on both sides.

[Unknown]

That was an interesting thing that I, I kind of wrestled with a little bit because I see it being one of those things where you're like, well, I'm paying for the content, I don't want to get ads for it. Other things as well. So I don't know. It's a weird.

[Tom Orbach]

That's a very good point. But I think I don't do it because of my, like, it's not the relationship with my paid audience, it's the relationship with the advertiser because like my, my total paid subscriber count is less than a thousand people. So I don't know, it feels wrong to me to put an ad for less than a thousand people because how much will them convert? How many? Yeah, like 5%. So it's like, I don't know, it's not a lot of people and I don't think it's a good deal for the advertiser. So that's why I don't really do it.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Tom Orbach]

At the moment that's fair.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I guess a large, you know, 95% of your list is on the free. So keeping it to that. That doesn't make some sense. Chanel, did you want to follow up with that?

[Chanel]

I have something completely different, so if you wanted to keep going, go for it.

[Unknown]

I just thought it was interesting about the other. My other point was a substack. Like now that you've turned on paid and you became a substack bestseller. Right.

[Tom Orbach]

In.

[Unknown]

In at least in the marketing niche or business niche.

[Tom Orbach]

I think it was in the business niche. I think the bestseller is for like everyone that has more than 100 paid subscribers.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Tom Orbach]

So it was like between a few. After a few hours of launching paid, which is fun.

[Unknown]

That's amazing. Congratulations on that. The fact that you are now. It's almost like this hack, if you will, of getting in front of that many more people by turning on paid and getting those initial. That initial growth on. On your launch with the paid subscribers. So it's. Of course they're going to want to promote you and show you to more people now that you're driving revenue for yourself and for them. So I think it's. Is Substack still 10% that they take in terms of revenue?

[Tom Orbach]

Correct, 10%. And I want to add something more. Like it's just a hypothesis that I have.

[Unknown]

Please.

[Tom Orbach]

That when people see it's a paid newsletter, like they feel. They feel it has more value and even if they just join the free tier, they feel like there's more to it. You know what I mean? So maybe this also helped attract more subscribers since I launched the paid plans.

[Unknown]

Yeah, that's a good point. Oh, well, this thing's paid, but he's still got a free tier, so that's got to be really good or really valuable since.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, exactly.

[Unknown]

That's a really interesting kind of like, I don't know, buyer bias or something along those lines. Some buyer psychology there.

[Chanel]

Oh, that's so smart. I like that and it makes sense. But like you don't think about that until it happens, I'm sure. And then you're like, oh, yeah, well that. That's clearly obviously how they would do that. I'm curious. So you're the marketing ideas guy. You now have like a schedule through 2026. You said of like things to write about so you don't have to spend your mind share thinking about that. What kind of ideas do you have for marketing this and like growing the newsletter from here? Like, do you have any big grand plans you want to try or what's coming next.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, so my overall plan is to do micro launches of new stuff for my readers. So for example, the upcoming one is the community that I promised in advance. But it's going to happen soon and I'm going to have a big party around it in September. Like, oh, there's a new community group chat for 1,000 marketing leaders in the top companies. So that's one launch. But I plan to have many smaller launches throughout like every couple of months. So it could be like a resource like another book for example, or another. Anything like that. But it could be also like a new benefit that I maybe will not share yet. But I have a few ideas for micro lunches and like I want to keep. It's also for me to keep everything interesting. I want to keep, I want to keep a cadence of new things that are happening besides just the one email per week. So yeah, that's what planned. And each, each of those micro lunches will get a massive launch on the newsletter and on social media and like in communities and et cetera. So yeah, that's overall my plan.

[Chanel]

So the community. Are you launching that on Slack or.

[Tom Orbach]

That's a good question. I hate Slack and I also hate discord. I want it to be as simple as possible. So it might be on substack own chat platform, but it could be on something like WhatsApp or something like that. I don't know yet because the issue with WhatsApp is that it requires participants to give up their. Your phone number. Like anonymity and I will see. But I want it to be very direct chat. Like I, I hate all of those Slack communities with like thousands of groups and, and it's, it's so messy and like I hate it. I just want a streamlined chat and, and that's it. Like it works best that way.

[Chanel]

I'm always interested now that we like Growth in reverse Pro is the thing. I'm always interested in how people are planning on doing community and like what that looks like. But you said you're gonna have AMAs and everything with, with other. Either paid subscribers or just outsiders that you bring in.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah, exactly. Still planning it out. I still have a little bit of time, but I want to bring in friends from like marketing, like the marketing world to do AMAs in the chat, in the, in the community. And I hope that people will find value in it because like my network is pretty good. I think. I know a lot of really senior people in the marketing world, so I hope people would love to ask them questions about their job and what they do and how they come up with new marketing ideas.

[Unknown]

I probably should have asked this at the very beginning, but are you more focused on like B2B marketing and marketers, or is it B2C or is it a blend?

[Tom Orbach]

A blend. Yeah. Okay, a blend. So I think like, my, my. The holy grail of my marketing areas are like, the best marketing areas that I share are the ones that you can apply everywhere.

[Unknown]

Right?

[Tom Orbach]

Only a small subset are just for B2C or just for B2B or just for something like that. But almost all of them are like, you can apply them everywhere. And it's not really. That's the difference between tactic and idea. So it's like the tactic could be especially for B2B because that's what you do. But the idea itself, the core idea, the human psychology and like the marketing channel that you exploit, this is the idea that you can leverage in any niche.

[Unknown]

Makes sense.

[Chanel]

Okay, well, I'm always a big fan of reading your newsletter, so I'm excited to see where this goes before. I mean, I guess everyone can just go to marketingideas.com to sign up if they want to join, check out what you're doing, see how you're running the paid newsletter. Anywhere else that you'd want people to go to?

[Tom Orbach]

No, I think marketing ideas.com is the best way to read my content. And I will say, like, see, I told you. I got a lot of attention. After launching my paid newsletter, I also shared my progress on substack notes. So a lot of other newsletter authors, they saw my stuff and they saw my progress and like, how everything went well. And so many people, you have no idea how many people messaged me and told me like, oh, give me just like one piece of advice. Give me a growth idea, something to how to grow my newsletter. And like, substack shows you that they're not subscribed to the newsletter because if they were subscribed, they had a little label that says subscribers, but they're not. And like, all they have to do to get growth advice for me is to click on my name and click on marketingideas.com which is the substack newsletter that they operate. And that's it. Read my latest content. I share all of the behind the scenes in my newsletter. I have multiple articles about growing my own newsletter, like, as a product. And like people don't read it for some reason. Like, they don't try to click and see through if I shared this advice already. So Like, I don't know, be curious, please. Like, be, like, be more resourceful and. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And click on my name and click on marketingadays.com and actually read the newsletter before you ask me questions? Yeah, please.

[Chanel]

It's so simple but so hard for people to do, I guess.

[Unknown]

Apparently.

[Tom Orbach]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Amazing. Well, Tom, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate you being here. This is great. Can't wait to see where the paid newsletter goes for you. And yeah, excited to keep reading the newsletter.

[Tom Orbach]

Thank you so much.

[Unknown]

Congratulations.