The Biggest Mistakes We See Newsletters Making (#002)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Growth In Reverse - Episode #002: The Biggest Mistakes We See Newsletters Making

Release Date: December 11, 2024

In the second episode of the Growth In Reverse podcast, hosts Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop delve into the most common mistakes that newsletter creators make, regardless of their experience level. Drawing from Chenell’s extensive experience in reverse engineering successful newsletters, the episode offers actionable insights to help listeners avoid pitfalls and optimize their newsletter strategies for growth and profitability.

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1. Content and Format Consistency

Chenell emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining a consistent content format to build and retain an audience. She shares her own journey, explaining how her newsletter's rapid growth was fueled by delivering predictable, high-quality deep dives on successful creators each week.

“If you don’t have a consistent format that the reader is like expecting every week, it’s gonna be A, really hard to get them to sign up because they don’t know what they’re getting, and B, moving forward, you’re just gonna like shock them.” — Chenell Basilio [02:34]

Dylan adds that varying formats make it harder to promote the newsletter, as potential subscribers won't have a clear understanding of what to expect.

Additionally, both hosts stress the importance of injecting personal personality into the content. Dylan points out the challenge of standing out in an era dominated by AI-generated content:

“Now anybody can write like a sort of a commodity personality list, content newsletter. And so that’s where your own experiences and your own opinions and your own personality really need to shine through in your writing.” — Dylan Redekop [03:36]

2. Visibility of the Sign-Up Process

A common oversight is making the newsletter sign-up process too obscure. Chenell recounts auditing a website where the newsletter subscription link was buried at the bottom, making it difficult for visitors to discover:

“I think it's like often overlooked is do people know you have a newsletter? Are you making it easy to subscribe?” — Chenell Basilio [05:26]

Dylan concurs, recommending prominent placement of sign-up forms. He cites Justin Welsh as an example, whose website clearly dedicates space to newsletter subscriptions without being intrusive:

“Making it super clear that your newsletter exists and that people can very easily subscribe to it when they’re landing on your website especially is important.” — Dylan Redekop [06:03]

The hosts advise against using cluttered link services like Linktree, advocating instead for a clean and direct approach:

“I am a purist and I think that you should only have a link to your website.” — Chenell Basilio [07:35]

3. Effective Welcome Emails

Dylan highlights the importance of sending a welcome email immediately after subscription, noting that some platforms like Substack handle this automatically. However, users of other Email Service Providers (ESPs) must ensure they have a proper welcome sequence set up:

“Make sure you’re sending a welcome email. There are some platforms like Substack that kind of like build that in.” — Dylan Redekop [11:24]

Failing to send a welcome email can lead to confusion and high unsubscribe rates. Chenell suggests incorporating welcome emails into a monthly checklist to ensure consistency:

“Create a monthly checklist and like put this at the top, like, make sure your welcome email is getting sent.” — Chenell Basilio [12:50]

4. Promotion Strategies

Ignoring social media is a significant missed opportunity for newsletter growth. Both Chenell and Dylan advocate for leveraging social platforms to increase visibility and attract subscribers.

Chenell shares her initial success through strategic Twitter engagement:

“I was just commenting on other people’s posts. And that’s how I got my first three subscribers to the newsletter.” — Chenell Basilio [19:08]

Dylan advises focusing on one or two social channels to avoid burnout and maximize engagement:

“Pick one where you’re gonna focus on your engagement. Right. So you don’t wanna post to LinkedIn and Instagram threads and Twitter and try and engage on all of them.” — Dylan Redekop [20:24]

5. Utilizing Lead Magnets

Lead magnets can be powerful tools for growth when executed correctly. Dylan cites Ollie Richards’ successful use of a comprehensive Google Doc as a lead magnet that significantly boosted his subscriber count.

Chenell concurs, emphasizing the need for high-value and audience-aligned lead magnets:

“They can definitely be very beneficial.” — Chenell Basilio [24:13]

6. Monetization and Revenue Streams

The hosts discuss the importance of diversifying revenue streams to ensure long-term sustainability. Dylan notes that successful newsletter operators typically employ multiple monetization strategies, such as advertisements, affiliate marketing, and lead magnet swaps:

“Almost all of them had more than one revenue stream, if not, you know, three to five revenue streams that their newsletter drove for them.” — Dylan Redekop [26:30]

Chenell advises newcomers to focus on mastering one revenue channel before expanding to others to maintain quality:

“In the beginning, I feel like you should get good at one revenue channel and then move on to another one.” — Chenell Basilio [26:30]

Both hosts stress the importance of maintaining trust with the audience by only promoting products and services they genuinely use and endorse.

“If you’re going to put sponsors or affiliates that you don’t even use or you don’t agree with their business model, like, don’t do that.” — Chenell Basilio [28:41]

Conclusion

Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop wrap up the episode by reaffirming the significance of focus, quality content, and effective promotion in building a successful newsletter. They encourage listeners to continuously adapt to changing technologies and audience preferences, ensuring their strategies remain relevant and effective.

“The three big things: Focus, good content, and let people know you have something.” — Chenell Basilio [29:38]

This episode serves as a comprehensive guide for newsletter creators aiming to avoid common mistakes and implement strategies that foster growth and engagement.

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Key Takeaways:

• Maintain consistent content and format to build predictable value.
• Ensure newsletter sign-up forms are prominent and easy to find.
• Implement effective welcome email sequences tailored to subscription sources.
• Leverage social media strategically, focusing on one or two platforms.
• Utilize high-value lead magnets aligned with your audience’s interests.
• Diversify revenue streams while maintaining trust and authenticity.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you don’t have a consistent format that the reader is like expecting every week, it’s gonna be A, really hard to get them to sign up because they don’t know what they’re getting, and B, moving forward, you’re just gonna like shock them.” — Chenell Basilio [02:34]
• “Anybody can write like a sort of a commodity personality list, content newsletter. And so that’s where your own experiences and your own opinions and your own personality really need to shine through in your writing.” — Dylan Redekop [03:36]

For more insights and strategies on growing your newsletter, visit GrowthInReverse.com.

Transcript

[Chanel Basilio]

That first issue went out to four people, and one of them was my own email address.

[Dylan]

So from 4 to 40,000.

[Chanel Basilio]

Now, if you're bored, your readers are going to be bored. So have fun with it.

[Dylan]

Word count does not matter. It's not something you should be worried about. It's basically like, however many words it takes to say the thing you need.

[Chanel Basilio]

To say on the forums, don't make it say like, get weekly updates. Subscribe.

[Dylan]

One of the ways that you can earn some, I would say, quote, unquote, easy revenue is foreign.

[Chanel Basilio]

Hey, I'm Chanel.

[Dylan]

And I'm Dylan.

[Chanel Basilio]

And this is the Growth in Reverse podcast. You might know my newsletter of the same name, the one where I spend about 20 hours a week researching how the top creators grow their newsletters to 50,000 subscribers or more. If you don't, you can go to growthinreverse.com to check it out. But this is the podcast version of that where we'll go even deeper on the content.

[Dylan]

So.

[Chanel Basilio]

So we can help you figure out the strategies you should try and the ones to avoid. And today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, some of the most common mistakes we see newsletters making and how to fix them. So I do quite a few newsletter audits, and some of these, I'm just shocked that they come up time and time again. So we wanted to kind of dive into some of those as well as others that we've seen.

[Dylan]

And I think one important caveat to this too, is it's not just like, people who are new to the newsletter space. This is like, mistakes that you've seen. And I've seen people who've been publishing newsletters for a decent amount of time and have a pretty significant audience still making some of these mistakes, right?

[Chanel Basilio]

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, some of them I've probably made too, so I am not immune to this.

[Dylan]

Also guilty.

[Chanel Basilio]

Where should we start? Should we start with, like, content and format?

[Dylan]

Yeah, let's start there.

[Chanel Basilio]

One of the big things and one of the reasons that my newsletter grew so fast in the early days at least, is that I was publishing consistently, like, the same type of content every week. Like, you knew you were going to get a deep dive about a creator who had 50,000 subscribers or more. And I spend 20 plus hours on those, so they're very well researched. I wasn't just like, you know, one week sending a deep dive, one week sending, like, a nice little quote that I found on the Internet. Like, the format was very consistent and you kind of knew what you were getting. And I see this quite a bit when, especially in the beginning when people are just trying to find their voice and what they're. They're doing. It's good to experiment, but like, if you don't have a consistent format that the reader is like expecting every week, it's gonna be A, really hard to get them to sign up because they don't know what they're getting, and B, moving forward, you're just gonna like shock them. Every time they open your email, they're gonna be like, what is it this week? So I think this is a big one that I've seen before.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's also, it makes your newsletter harder to promote too. Cause if you're like changing up the format every time, you know, it's, it's a lot harder to say, you know, every week you're getting a five minute read or whatever that might be instead of, oh, this week it's like, you know, one paragraph and next week it's like a whole essay.

[Chanel Basilio]

Right? Yeah. And like I said, you can experiment. And even more recently, like, I've been studying shorter posts. They're not all deep dives, but they are focused around newsletter growth and it's like an actionable idea and people are enjoying it. So it is still an experiment, but, um, it's not all deep dives anymore. But you can still know that you're gonna learn how to grow your newsletter from it.

[Dylan]

Absolutely.

[Chanel Basilio]

The other one I see around content and format is like not including your personality and feeling. Like when you have to send something, it's gotta be like really buttoned up and like perfect and all of your T's and your I's are dotted. Um, so I think that's a big one when people just feel like they can't inject themselves into it. Um, and honestly, like, if you're bored, your readers are gonna be bored. So have fun with it.

[Dylan]

Yeah, absolutely. I think one point on that too is like, I mean, with AI and the things you can do with that, now anybody can write like a sort of a commodity personality list, content newsletter. And so that's where like your own experiences and your own opinions and your own personality really need to shine through in your writing to keep. Keep the thing you're you're talking about or writing about unique and something that only you can create too.

[Chanel Basilio]

Absolutely. And it doesn't have to be like 800 plus words every time. Like, I was talking to this YouTuber named Azul today and he was saying that he tried writing and it was like the worst four hours of his day, every day. And I was like, what? You don't have to send like a long form post. Like, why don't, why don't you just create another video and put that in your email and send that out to people? Um, so the format doesn't have to be written even though it's an email?

[Dylan]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the somebody else who's written about this recently too, Nicholas Cole, who said the word count isn't what the reader cares about. What the reader cares about is whether or not you successfully explained the thing that you set out to explain or whether or not you answered the reader's question. So some people that might be. That might be a thousand words. Other people that may be a hundred words. So it doesn't need. Just because something is longer doesn't mean there's more value packed in.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes, a hundred percent. So that's my hot take on the content and format.

[Dylan]

I love it.

[Chanel Basilio]

Where do you want to go to next?

[Dylan]

Well, I think kind of the natural next progression to me is getting people to sign up to your newsletter. So I think one thing you and I have both found quite often is sort of hiding, you know. Yes, your newsletter quite often is pretty prominent, but it's maybe not as front and center as you think it is. And where it might be. Oh, yeah, it's obviously right here. People can sign up for it. It's not. So let's talk about that a little bit more.

[Chanel Basilio]

For sure. I've had, when I've done a newsletter audit in the past, I've had one person in particular. They were like, my goal is to grow the newsletter by 5,000 subscribers this year. I really want to do this as my main focus. And then I went to their website and I didn't even know that they had a newsletter based on the website. Like, I had to go all the way to the very bottom and there was like a little link to sign up for the newsletter. And I was like, maybe we should make this more prominent if you want people to subscribe. So I think it's like often overlooked is do people know you have a newsletter? Are you making it easy to subscribe? I think people hide that form a lot without realizing it.

[Dylan]

Totally. And as much as I hate pop ups and a lot of people don't like pop ups, like, you got to get people's attention somehow. So try, try different things. I'm not saying, I'm not saying do a pop up. You have to but try like a pop up as soon as people land on your page. Or I actually really like what Justin Welsh does when he links to his Saturday Solopreneur newsletter or when you link to his actual website. He's got just his whole right side of his website that's dedicated to basically like subscribe to my newsletter. So it's right there. It's not invasive like a pop up is, but it's like super obvious that that is where you can sign up to his newsletter. So most people, you know, Justin's really good at this stuff, so most people probably have already subscribed when they're there. But either way, making it super clear that your newsletter exists and that people can very easily subscribe to it when they're landing on your website especially is important. Let's talk about social media though. In terms of like a bio, would you recommend having a newsletter directly linked in your bio?

[Chanel Basilio]

A hundred percent, I think, I think this is often overlooked and people like to add like the link tree, like form where people click it and then they get like a hundred things they can do. I am a purist and I think that you should only have a link to your website. A it's good for branding. So they see, see Chanel Basilio and then all they see is growth in reverse dot com. There's no like other call out, there's nothing. So it's good for like recognition later on for people to remember who you are, but also just keeping it clean. Like if you give people 10 things to do, they're probably going to do none of them.

[Dylan]

None of them.

[Chanel Basilio]

Or they're going to get distracted and go elsewhere. So I am not a fan of link tree, although I know with like YouTubers and Instagrammers it's like very important, but I, uh, I don't know. That's my spicy take. I don't think you should use link tree.

[Dylan]

I would agree. Um, especially for if, if driving newsletter subscribers or email subscribers is your number one objective from social media, then absolutely not. I do get why some influencers and people using LinkedIn or, sorry, not LinkedIn, Instagram might use that or TikTok, but I just, I don't know. To me it's like, well, just start a, just start a email list and then you can promote all that stuff to people who have actually opted in and want to see it as opposed to like hoping somebody who's scrolling through Instagram is going to like click on your bio, then see your link tree and scroll endlessly on all the links you've shared and pick a. Like, it's like, come on, just make it super clean and easy. So I'm 100% aligned with you on that.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I think it's. Make it clean and clear. Clean and clear and clean and clear and under control.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I watched too much tv.

[Chanel Basilio]

Um, yeah.

[Dylan]

I think one last thing that we should touch on too, when it comes to signing up and subscribing newsletters is why people should sign up.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes. Not giving someone a compelling reason to sign up. And this also goes back to the content. Like if you don't have a consistent message or format or something that you're sharing each week, like, that's going to make it really hard for someone to want to sign up in the first place. So I think you definitely want to have a compelling reason to sign up again on the forums. Don't make it say, like, get weekly updates, subscribe. You want to make sure there's like something unique in there. Add your personality and yeah, really give them a reason to sign up.

[Dylan]

And try to avoid the make you smarter kind of thing because that's very much been.

[Chanel Basilio]

I know, but I think it works.

[Dylan]

Sure. Yeah. I guess maybe try to be original or say it in a different way. I guess is maybe my take on that because I'm just like, yeah, everyone wants to make me smarter. I should be like a rocket scientist by now with all the newsletters I'm reading. But no, that's. That's a really good point. I think a compelling reason to sign up. One thing that I've kind of learned is like, people subscribe to newsletters to be educated, to be informed, or be to be entertained. And so it's like, which one of those reasons am I signing up to your newsletter? And just make sure that that's really clear when I'm landing on your subscribe page.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, and it could be a combo of those too, of like, hey, you're going to be entertained while you learn about this one thing, but make sure that's clear. Edutained. Yes. This next mistake is something I struggled with as well for a while, and that was not keeping track of all of the nice things that people were saying about my work. And now I use a tool called Senja that allows me to essentially save everything in a database that I can tag in different ways and that kind of thing. My favorite way to collect these is actually by using their Chrome extension. So I wanna show you how that works real quick. Looking at this nice little LinkedIn testimonial somebody essentially shared our podcast on LinkedIn. So I wanna go ahead and save this. So what I do is just highlight the words that they click, go to the Senja Chrome extension, hit import testimonial, and from there it's super simple. You just use these arrows and you can highlight their name tagline for this person, select their image. You can also just use a little formatting to make it look nice. And then we are off to the races. I can add the podcast tag and we're good to go. I'm going to import this and now I can go over to the testimonials and it's right here and I can just use this wherever I want to send it in emails or just showcase it on the website to get more people listening to the show. So what do you think? Is it more exciting to hear me talking over and over again about my work or seeing someone else sharing it for themselves? Collecting testimonials is super powerful. And you can get started today for [e-mail] Senja that's growthinreverse.com S E N J A. And now back to the show.

[Dylan]

Let's chat about the next big mistake. So welcome emails seem to be an ongoing evolution for people. And so they've, they've taken many different paths. At first it was just like, hey, make sure you drag my email to the promotions tab. And now, you know, people have come a long way, I think, with how to do welcome emails, but I think one of the, one of the biggest issues is obviously not sending welcome email or if you have like a, if you're doing like double opt in, you're sending your confirmation email but you don't have anything to follow that up. So make sure you're sending a welcome email. There's some platforms like substack that kind of like build that in. So you can't not send a welcome email, which is actually kind of very smart on their end. Um, but if you're using a different esp, then make sure that you have an email, a welcome email sequence, even if it's just one welcome, send that. So step one, send a welcome email. I have seen people still not sending them and you're just automatically right into their newsletter rhythm, which may or may not be a bad thing, but chances are probably not a good thing.

[Chanel Basilio]

Not a good thing?

[Dylan]

No, definitely not a good thing.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I saw this, I saw this like 2 days ago actually, I was talking to someone. The other thing is this is not for newbies. Like you can set up a new form and not link that to your welcome email. And then they don't get a welcome email, which is what happened the other day. I was doing a newsletter audit and we tested out the signup and I never got the welcome email. So they had to go back and like, fix that. But this happens all the time. So I'd almost like create a monthly checklist and like put this at the top, like, make sure your welcome email is getting sent.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, that's a very smart idea. Export your email email subscribers and make sure your sequences are still running properly and your automations. Yeah, no, definitely.

[Chanel Basilio]

It's like to make a welcome. Like a monthly checklist for people to send out or something.

[Dylan]

That might not be a bad idea. Um, yeah, good point. Okay, so one other thing that, that I see people making, and I saw this a lot when I was working for Sparkloop, and that was basically your welcome sequence, or your welcome email was just one welcome email to rule them all. Basically, like, any, any subscriber, no matter where they're subscribing from, if they're getting through a paid Facebook ad or through an upscribe recommendations widget, or if they're just landing on your website, wherever they're subscribing, they were all getting the same welcome email. And the reason why that is, or could be a problem is because they don't have context to your newsletter or why they're getting your welcome email in their inbox. All of a sudden they may have just like clicked yes on one of these recommendations with recommendation widgets. And all of a sudden they're getting like five different welcome emails from five different newsletters. They just, you know, maybe unknowingly opted into, or maybe they did mean to opt into them, they just forgot that they did and they're like, wait, who is this Growth in Reverse newsletter? What is this coming from? And so all of a sudden it's in their inbox and they're like, spam. You know, they'll click, I didn't sign up for this. Or they'll unsubscribe immediately. So what I always advise people to do is using those channels is fine, but just make sure that you have specific welcome emails set up so that when they hit your. When they are sent out to your new subscriber who has come in through a specific channel, there's context there. So you say, hey, thanks for signing up. I'm excited you're here. By the way, here's why you're getting this newsletter and how you got on my list. I'm not just, you know, some rando on the Internet send who, you know, got your, your email address. So I think that's a really important thing to do that a lot of people overlook. A lot of people are doing it, but there's a lot of people who are not. So it's just something to keep in mind when you're sending out your newsletter. Welcome sequences.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, for sure. That's definitely important and I avoided that for a little bit. I should have done it earlier but I mean it's, it's a good channel to get subscribers sometimes. Like the quality can be good if you are nurturing these people the right way and making sure they know where you came from and what kind of content they're going to get from you. But if not, they're probably either going to unsubscribe or worse, just like filter your messages to go somewhere else. And then they're still a subscriber. You're paying for them, but they don't open anything.

[Dylan]

Yeah, and potentially affecting your open rates and because they're not engaging at all or not. Sorry, your open rates but even your center reputation and all that stuff because all of a sudden all these people are not opening your emails and you're starting to get flagged as spam potentially. So yeah, these can be, these can be things that can be very easily avoided.

[Chanel Basilio]

So make sure you get one.

[Dylan]

Make sure you create tags or segments for the channels that you're basically getting these subscribers from and then set up custom welcome sequences for them if you can.

[Chanel Basilio]

With substack. I know you won't be able to, but I think their recommendations widget is a little more obvious, but who knows.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. If your ESP can do it. If they can't, then you might want to send out somehow maybe in with the custom welcome email. One thing you could do, I guess with, with substack is in the welcome email that you send out. Just remind people how they might have gone on your email. You can, you know, list out a few ways. Hey, you might have, you might be getting this email because you were, it was recommended to you and so on. So you could still, I think, call it out even though some people will not have got on that way.

[Chanel Basilio]

Very true.

[Dylan]

Cool. Anything else to add on the welcome email front?

[Chanel Basilio]

I don't think so. I mean, I think not having one is the biggest problem. So the other stuff can come later. But I think at least having One is a good idea.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And we've, we've done a lot of, or I should say you've written some good deep dives on onboarding welcome sequence. Actually some growth levers recently on those as well with Alex Garcia and Kate Burgoyne. So people should hop on to those and check them out for good examples of how to set up thank you pages. You know, the almost their page, the welcome email and that sort of thing to get people to engage with those. So we can link those as well.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. We did a challenge in the community recently, the growth and reverse pro community. And it was just so eye opening to see people like, who have been doing this for years realize like, oh, I am totally skipping this one piece. Like, and I, I had to caveat it because I knew as soon as I announced that challenge, people were gonna be like, uh, I've been doing this for a long time. I don't need a new landing page or a welcome email. Like, my stuff's good. And then everybody's like, oh wait, maybe I was wrong.

[Dylan]

Hold up. Yeah, that's that. It's funny how. Yeah, it's. You just, you get into the rhythm of doing something for so long, you don't realize that, you know, there's better ways to do it. So.

[Chanel Basilio]

And there's just stuff that breaks over time. Like it just happens.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And technology changes and stuff too. Well, let's, let's move on to if you're cool with it. Our next topic about basically like all around promotion. So mistakes that a lot of newsletter operators are making around like promoting their newsletter.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes, 100%. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to sigh at this one, but I think ignoring social media is a, it's a huge missed opportunity. And I did this too. Like, I'm not perfect. I still don't post as consistently as I'd like to, but I think ignoring social altogether is a big missed opportunity in terms of growth.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I mean it's a quote unquote free growth channel. Right. If you don't tell people you have a newsletter, they're not going to know about it, not going to subscribe to it. So I remember when I first started out, that's just, that was my number one growth strategy was basically not spamming my Twitter account or my Twitter feed with posts about my newsletter, but using it in different ways to, you know, say what I'm talking about in the newsletter this week, posting links from it and you know, using it in various ways to make, just make sure. People were aware that it existed and then, you know, that just kind of snowballed from there.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. Even when I started Growth in Reverse, like I just changed my entire Twitter profile to be about the newsletter. And it was very clear, like I had a good call out of like what I was sending. And then growth in reverse.com I wasn't even posting on Twitter about the content or the newsletter. I was just commenting on other people's posts. And that's how I got my first three subscribers to the newsletter.

[Dylan]

That's awesome.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. So that first issue went out to four people and one of them was my own email address. So the other three I got from commenting on Twitter.

[Dylan]

So from four editions almost two years ago to 40,000 now.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Amazing.

[Chanel Basilio]

Big change.

[Dylan]

Big change. So I think, I think one thing people do get is they're like, yeah, but there's like, you know, 20, gazillion different social media channels. Which one should I be on? And I think we wrote about this recently as well, about the basically, like, you don't have to be everywhere and you can, you can just like test as well. Like Alex from Was it Byte Byte Go. Who basically was like, well, I don't know If Twitter or LinkedIn is the best place I should be posting my content. So essentially, for the most part, copy and pasted his posts on each channel and then just, you know, saw which one performed better and how quickly his channels grew there, there. And so you can do stuff like that or you can just focus on the channel that you feel more most comfortable with and where you know that most of your audience will be too. That's pretty important.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. And I think that's the best path forward for new people, especially, like, if you're just getting started, pick one. Don't try and copy and paste everywhere because you're just gonna like add more mental stress to yourself. Like pick Twitter, pick LinkedIn, pick Instagram threads, or whichever one you want.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel Basilio]

And just try and get really good at that. Try and get to like 10,000 followers there before you're moving over to other platforms.

[Dylan]

For sure. And if you are bold, and I guess bold is, I don't know if that's the right word, but if you are willing and able to do short form video, if that's the way you want to go about things, you can, I mean, in that regard, you could probably just like, try TikTok, try reels, try YouTube shorts. You know, uploading video on all those platforms isn't too hard. So one thing you could try is just a post on all those channels, since you're creating the content anyway, and then see which one is most effective for you.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, and I think even if you do that, pick one where you're gonna focus on your engagement. Right. So you don't wanna post to LinkedIn and Instagram threads and Twitter and try and engage on all of them. If you're gonna be like, copy pasting everything to other platforms. I would pick one to like, really go deep and build a community and like engage with other people's content on. If you try and do all three, you are gonna burn out so fast. So very true. I would definitely pick one.

[Dylan]

Spoken like somebody who may have done that at one point.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes, a hundred percent. That's why I quit social for like six months.

[Dylan]

Yes, exactly. Anything to add on the social media front or should we move on?

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, let's move on. The next one we can talk about is opa, or as Brian Harris, who we recently chatted with, calls it B O P A borrowing other people's audiences. Um, I think a lot of people just kind of skip the whole building a community, building relationships. But you have this huge opportunity in partnering with other creators and just like sharing each other's stuff. You could do cross promotions. You can do lead magnet swaps, all kinds of things.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah, there's. There's such a huge opportunity to do kind of this free version of almost like a newsletter ad. Right. Like, as soon as you can do a cross promo with somebody and it doesn't have to be an audience of the same size, just make sure that, you know, there's some alignment there. But, like, doing cross promotions is a really great way. I know you probably can relate to this, but, you know, I didn't have much money to pay for any kind of paid growth in the beginning. Um, and so I relied a lot on cross promotions with other newsletters who were kind of growing at a similar growth rate as I was or had a similar size audience. Some a little bit bigger, some maybe a little bit smaller. And those were some really effective ways of growing in the beginning.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, for sure. And I know some people will try it and have like, not a great experience, but I would recommend trying at least five or ten. Um, there are people I've done cross promotions with who had like double the subscriber count. I did. And they sent me like zero. Like literally zero subscribers. I was like, is this real? Like, did you really send the email or am I just getting it? Um, and then there are some that have like a thousand subscribers and they send you like 50 plus, you know, so. Pretty interesting.

[Dylan]

Yeah, there's, there's a lot we could go down that path. But I really think basically the whole point is like, make sure that you at least test this path out because it, it can be a really, a really good fountain of subscribers that you may have not thought of.

[Chanel Basilio]

And this goes for even just, you know, being a guest on someone's podcast or like writing a guest post too. It doesn't have to be a typical cross promotion.

[Dylan]

Yeah, absolutely. I wrote about guest posting on your website a few weeks ago and then you've also written up a nice like how to do cross promos effectively on growth reverse as well. So like we've got some great resources on how to do that properly.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, for sure.

[Dylan]

Let's talk about the. One of the more polarizing subjects in the newsletter world, lead magnets. So we could go down the hole. Should you use lead magnets? Shouldn't you? For the sake of this conversation, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we are pro lead magnet, or at least pro lead magnet when done effectively and correctly.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes. Needs to be done well, you don't need it if your content is super good or is it's only a lead magnet by itself, but they can definitely be very beneficial.

[Dylan]

Absolutely. I think we did just speak with Brian Harris who came into the growth reverse pro community and I mean that's, that's how they've grown a huge portion of their business with doing like lead magnet swaps. And then also Ollie from story learning. I mean he had his Google Doc lead magnet that earned. That may end up earning him a total of a million dollars over a couple years. So super impressive numbers from something that is one high value. So there's a lot of value in the lead magnet and it's highly aligned with your audience too. Those are two really important factors if you are going to do a lead magnet strategy to grow your newsletter. Those are, those are pretty key.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I really, really liked Ali's example of that. It was just so honestly like that thing went viral. I couldn't believe it. But I was like, who is this guy?

[Dylan]

Everywhere was everywhere.

[Chanel Basilio]

He's everywhere. Ollie Richards we're talking about.

[Dylan]

Yes, Ollie Richards. And it wasn't just a like two page Google Doc. It was a 118 page or 120 page Google Doc that basically broke down how he built his business. So like I said, super high value. Could have been a, a book that he could have charged for, and I believe he does now, actually. And it just, it skyrocketed his newsletter growth and really tapped into the audience that he wanted. So then why don't we talk about revenue to round up this conversation? Because one thing I didn't think a ton about in the beginning when I started my newsletter was revenue, which is it was just something I was doing for fun as like a creative outlet. And then at one point I realized, oh, other people are actually making money publishing a newsletter, so maybe I should consider that. So I think one thing I've noticed a lot of people do is they just want to, you know, grow a huge email list and they haven't really thought super thoroughly about revenue or they've only thought of just one revenue stream as opposed to multiple. So one thing that I noticed when I was working at Sparkloop and I interviewed a few dozen successful newsletter operators, almost all of them had more than one revenue stream, if not, you know, three to five revenue streams that their newsletter drove for them. So that is one. One thing that I. That was kind of like ingrained in me is like, yep, you can sell ads, but you know, sometimes the ad market will dry up and you won't be making the money or you won't be able to book ads as much as you want. So you should have something else to fall back on.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I agree with you to a point. But I also have a counterpoint, which is in the beginning, I feel like you should get good at one revenue channel and then move on to another one. Because if you start and you're trying to do sponsorships and other promotions, create a product like all this other stuff, it's all going to be mediocre. Instead of trying to like, actually really nail down like, your processes for sponsorships, how are you going to do outreach if you need to, that kind of thing before actually adding more. But yes, I mean, the successful ones do have multiples, but in the early days, I have a theory that they probably started small.

[Dylan]

That's a good point. That's a good point. It's similar to the, you know, focusing your energy on one social media channel too at the beginning instead of going into getting too far in the weeds and a whole bunch of things and then not doing anything really well. So that is a good point. I think one of the ways that you can do. One of the ways that you can earn some, I would say, quote, unquote, easy revenue is doing things like running the Spark Loop, upscribe widget or beehive boost or Whatever that might be. If you want to do paid recommendations, that's one way that a lot of people have earned revenue. If that's your jam. If it's not, I totally get it. But that is one thing you could do or recommend specific newsletters in your inside of your newsletter. Again, that's not everybody's jam, and I totally understand. But that is one way you can earn some additional revenue. I would just recommend or advise that those are actually newsletters that you read yourself. So you can like really put your passion and, oh yeah, and all of your, I guess, energy, positive energy that you have for those, all your love that you have for them into those recommendations because otherwise they'll fall pretty flat and no one's going to really believe you. So if you do have newsletters you love and they are on those networks, definitely you can earn some revenue from recommending them. So that's kind of like an easier revenue lift. And then there's of course, again, affiliate products too. That is another somewhat easy revenue lift. If you again have products that you use that you actually enjoy, that you would a hundred percent recommend to your best friend to use, then by all means, I think those are some good revenue streams that you could kind of start with. Lower lift too.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah. And I think when you're starting a newsletter or building an audience, like the whole goal is to get an audience that trusts you and they like what you write and they really respect you. And if you're going to put sponsors or affiliates that you don't even use or you don't agree with their business model, like, don't do that. Like, please don't. We don't need another person like that. Try and be a trustworthy, respectable human in that sense. That goes for the sponsors. You take on the affiliate links that you add in there as well. So. Yeah, yeah, that's a big piece of this.

[Dylan]

Yeah. And I think one of the other things too is like making sure if you do take on a sponsor that it's, you know, something that obviously your audience is going to want to use or a certain product or service that they're going to actually that is aligned with what they, they want. Even if you use it and you love it, it might not be, have anything to do with your, your newsletter content, your audience. So just make sure those things are aligned too.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, I've definitely made that mistake before.

[Dylan]

So anything else you wanted to add on the monetization front?

[Chanel Basilio]

I don't think so. I think just starting with one, getting good at it and then moving on to another one if you need to. Um, but yeah, I think the name of the game and what I'm realizing after going through all this is, like, focus and make sure you're doing one thing at a time. That's how a lot of people grow. Newsletters and audiences and then just, like, let people know you have this thing and make it good. It's like, yeah, the three big things. Focus, good content, and let people know you have something.

[Dylan]

Yeah, don't. Don't keep it under wraps. Let. Shout it from the rooftops if you can.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes. Looking at you, introverts.

[Dylan]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, that's awesome.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes.

[Dylan]

I think this is. This is. This is a good reminder, too. And I like that we had some healthy. Some healthy disagreements at some points as well. Not disagreements, but it's good to see, you know, both sides of both sides of an argument, too.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah, for sure. I think there's some good stuff in here.

[Dylan]

Anything else you want to mention before we head out?

[Chanel Basilio]

I'm just excited to have these conversations with you and be able to kind of share some of the things we're learning as we're. As we're learning them, too.

[Dylan]

Yeah, no, absolutely.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yeah.

[Dylan]

And some things we talk about today could very much change in six months or a year, and we'll have to. We'll have to pivot as we go as technology changes and as audiences change and stuff like that. So. Yeah, I love how this topic never gets stale. There's always something new. Something new to discuss and debate.

[Chanel Basilio]

Yes, definitely. Or some cool new strategy that's being used. So always fun.