Hitting 50k newsletter subscribers isn't easy. But the Growth In Reverse podcast reveals how newsletters are doing it. Chenell Basilio has spent the past 2+ years and thousands of hours reverse engineering how the biggest newsletter creators in the world have grown audiences of 50,000 to 1M subscribers—and beyond. Join Chenell and her cohost Dylan Redekop every week to learn the most effective and unique newsletter growth strategies, hear from other newsletter experts, and figure out how to turn your newsletter into a profitable business. Check out the newsletter of the same name at growthinreverse.com →
Oh, this is a spicy one. I feel personally attacked by this one.
Dylan Redekop:Don't be don't be personally attacked.
Chenell Basilio:You can probably get, like, a 100 subscribers for, like, a dollar at this point. Some people open certain newsletters for the person. Doesn't matter what the title is, is. They're just gonna open it regardless. But until that point, you should never spend money on paid ads.
Chenell Basilio:Sorry, Matt McGarry. I say no.
Dylan Redekop:Chanel is getting spicy. I love it. I love it.
Chenell Basilio:I cannot wait for the comments on this one because I know somebody's gonna be like, but wait. I did it, and I do it every week, and I get all these amazing results.
Dylan Redekop:I'm not gonna argue with you.
Chenell Basilio:You're allowed to if
Dylan Redekop:you want. No. I I can't.
Chenell Basilio:This is, like, the spiciest newsletter thing right now. This is, like, worse than politics at this point.
Dylan Redekop:Hey. Welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. My name is Dylan.
Chenell Basilio:And I'm Chenell.
Dylan Redekop:And we are back with another episode for you guys today. What we're going to talk about in this episode, specifically, giving some sort of spicy takes on some maybe polarizing topics in the newsletter space. We're gonna cover a few things today that we've heard people say you should 100% do this or you should 100% not do this. And I think the great thing here with this conversation is we're gonna provide a bit more nuance to the, you know, black or white, yes or no, do this, don't do this kind of conversation. And, I think it's gonna be an interesting chat about a few things that people often ask, yourself, myself, or just generally online about what they should or shouldn't be doing with their newsletters.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I like this topic. It was a good one. These are definitely questions I get all the time, and people are always looking for a do this, don't do that, and there's no middle ground. And I'm like, but there's always a middle ground.
Chenell Basilio:It's not that simple.
Dylan Redekop:We're gonna start off with a bit of a probably one of the the spicier, I guess, takes in the newsletter space where I've seen people, you know, bash this strategy and people just, like, say, you know, I wouldn't have grown my newsletter at all if it wasn't for this strategy to some degree. So, the first one is, should I or shouldn't I use lead magnets for, my newsletter? Quickly, off the top of your head, what is your very first initial reaction to that question?
Chenell Basilio:It depends.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. I love it. I love it. The nuance has started already. How about I how about I give a spicier yes, you should?
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. You definitely pick the spiciest one to start with, for sure.
Dylan Redekop:I know. We're coming out of the gate swinging.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. For sure. No. I mean, it's definitely for I would lean towards yes with a bunch of caveats in there, but, yeah, I'll let you go run on this one if you want.
Dylan Redekop:Sure. Well, I'll I'll I'll provide some caveats as well. So one thing I was thinking about when I was preparing for this episode and thinking about lead magnets and who it might work for and who it might not work for, I think, generally, for most newsletter creators, and most verticals, a lead magnet can work. But I think when they're we're talking about a newsletter style that's kinda like a daily news broadcast. So, like, you know, you think of the 14 forties and the morning brews.
Dylan Redekop:Those types of newsletters, I don't necessarily see a lead magnet being super useful, or I don't really know how you would prep a lead magnet for that kind of a newsletter. So I think there's definitely some types of newsletters that it would not work great for. That being said, I think there are a lot of newsletters that would work great for. You've leveraged the strategy. I leveraged this strategy.
Dylan Redekop:And before we say, yes, create a lead magnet and send it to everyone and grow your newsletter that way, I think there's a few caveats we should cover. And 1 is that you're you can't just create a lead magnet and send it out and hope that everybody who downloads it is gonna be into your content. You have to make sure you have to be strategic and obviously make sure lead magnet the content in the lead magnet is really nicely aligned with the content that you're gonna be providing. You don't wanna have a super generic, say, checklist or PDF, template, whatever it might be. It doesn't really provide any value to your your actual newsletter, has nothing to do with your newsletter if it's super vague or general, and then your newsletter is, like, super focused and really niche.
Dylan Redekop:So that's kind of my first caveat. What are your what are your thoughts?
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. A 100% agree. I think this is where most people think about when they say, like, don't do a lead magnet because they're thinking about the person that's creating a random checklist just to get people on the email list, and then it has nothing to do with their actual content they're sending every week because it's top of mind. I recently did the deep dive on Justin Moore, and he gives away, like, extra sponsorship data in his email. And his whole premise of his email list is helping you get more sponsors.
Chenell Basilio:So that is super related. However, when he first started his creator business online, he was trying to do all kinds of stuff, and he was giving away, like, a finance checklist, like, end of your tax stuff. And finance wasn't even, like, his bread and butter of what he was talking about. It was just some side benefit that people could use. So it was not related.
Chenell Basilio:It didn't do as well. And he said he felt like he was just creating tens and tens of lead magnets that weren't actually getting him subscribers or the right subscribers. There's definitely nuance there.
Dylan Redekop:There is. And I think one other thing is when people think of lead magnets, they just think, like, the specific, like, you know, PDF download checklist, but lead magnets can be in all shapes and sizes. You've done, I think, 5 or 6 different deep dives where lead magnets have been, like, a really substantial strategy for growth for some of these creators who have 50,000 plus subscribers. And one that I thought was interesting was David Perrell. David was using a lead magnet in the beginning, and he went from using, like, a PDF style type of lead magnet, and then he pivoted to creating email core an email course, basically, a free email course for his lead magnet, and that seemed to be working well.
Dylan Redekop:And then eventually, he kinda stopped doing that for a bit, and then he went back to them again. So I think you can see how with lead magnets, you definitely need to test them and see what is working. Don't just try one thing and write it off as, lead magnets don't work for me. Well, maybe maybe they don't, but maybe you just need to try something new or something different
Chenell Basilio:too. Yeah. For sure. And I think one of the really smart things he did was he was using an email course too. He wasn't just using a PDF giveaway.
Chenell Basilio:I really like the email for email course format for a lead magnet because you're kind of building that habit with your readers of getting them to open emails regularly. So that's a really good way to kind of tease people into your content, get them used to opening your emails versus a PDF where they download it once, it lives on their computer, and they never open it again.
Dylan Redekop:I think the nice thing too with, an email course is you can update it pretty easily, without having to resend it to people with a PDF. You know, it's pretty static. There's not a lot of you can't really change it once people have downloaded it. So I know my first lead magnet was, like, a 20 page PDF sort of thing about how to start on Substack back when I was using Substack, and it did well. And and, you know, it helped helped grow my newsletter and my audience, and it was very related to what I was talking about.
Dylan Redekop:But then, about a year and a bit later, I created a email course because I'm, like, I'm writing about newsletters, and I'm writing a newsletter. And I think a email course would probably get people into that habit, like you said, of seeing me in their inbox, opening my content, finding some value in it, and then, staying on my, email list as well. Yeah. I like it. Let's, run through a few other quick examples of some of the details you've done, like, Eric Partaker, for example.
Dylan Redekop:He did a free book as a lead magnet for his newsletter, which is, like, a ton of value. Getting people on your list is a lot of work, but that's one thing that that really drove a lot of success for him.
Chenell Basilio:The free book that Eric was giving away, I really actually like that one because he was able to use that and take that one piece of content, and he promoted that everywhere. He was on so many podcasts, and I listened to most of them. It was a lot of research on that one. But he in every single podcast, he talked about the same book, and it was, like, his signature book, and it led people into the rest of his, like, product lineup, if you will. But But it was just super smart.
Chenell Basilio:It's like a lead magnet to get people on the email list, but it's also something that drives people directly into the rest of your product suite.
Dylan Redekop:So That is cool. That reminds me actually a lot of, Michael Hauck. He used a term called, like, a Trojan horse, basically, into your business. So you leverage a just an asset like that, and it basically gets people into your ecosystem and everything you have to offer, product services and all that. So I really I really think that's smart and a lot of people could be doing a lot more of that.
Dylan Redekop:Shall we move on to the next topic, or do you have any final closing thoughts on lead magnets?
Chenell Basilio:No. We could probably do a whole episode on lead magnets, so let's save it for that. Okay.
Dylan Redekop:Here's another sort of spicy topic. Should you or shouldn't you use double opt in? And maybe we should, make it clear what we're talking about when we say double opt in.
Chenell Basilio:So, essentially, double opt in is when you essentially set it up on the back end with your email service provider where somebody has to click a specific button or a link to actually get added to your email list. Now it seems pretty straightforward, but the problem with it is if someone misses that email or that email goes to spam, they're never gonna get any of your other emails because the email service provider essentially says, well, that person didn't actually want this, we're not gonna send them anything else. So, unfortunately, that really can reduce the number of actual subscribers you get. So I think we both, have a similar take on this, which is create your own double opt in.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. Absolutely.
Chenell Basilio:Do you wanna explain how that works? Yeah.
Dylan Redekop:I think I mean, the first thing I hear M and M in my head, you only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow it. Like, you you get this one shot at getting in people's inboxes with a double opt in from your ESP provider, I should say. So if people don't actually click on that confirmation email, if it goes into their spam, if it gets buried in the promotions tab or just buried in their inbox and they, you know, don't get around to opening and clicking in it, that was your one shot. And, you know, you don't have the opportunity to reach out to them again.
Dylan Redekop:So that's why I like the idea of creating your own version of double opt in where, basically anybody that subscribes on your sign up form is already confirmed. They're on your list. You can reach out to them more than once, and then you can create your own basically, in your welcome sequence, you basically say, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. You know, just confirm that you actually wanna receive this. Click here.
Dylan Redekop:Whatever whatever the action you want them to take is so that you can confirm that they're there. This might be something you may want to do, at least make sure that they opt in themselves. I don't know what your take on this, Chanel, is, but my thought is if people are organically finding your content and subscribing on your home page and that sort of thing, quite likely, they probably are willing and happy to subscribe and and, maybe they don't necessarily need that confirmation email as well. Whereas people who are getting subscribers via maybe lead magnets or maybe they're, in a referral program or they're getting recommendations, you know, kids create a network or through BeHive, and these people are ending up on their email lists, and they don't necessarily know why they're on their list. They forget that they checked the box in the the, to subscribe.
Dylan Redekop:I think those are more maybe the people that you'd really wanna create that double opt in experience for on your end.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. For sure. I think that's a a really good point. I actually recently had to turn on double opt in, like, the real one because I was getting my home page was getting, like, blasted with some false emails, and they were all, like, yahoo.com addresses from, like, Britain somewhere. So Interesting.
Chenell Basilio:Pretty interesting. So I actually had to turn it on. So my my growth slowed quite a bit on that, but it seems like those people are a lot more engaged anyway. So pluses and minuses of it. Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:But, yeah, I do definitely prefer having, like, that false double opt in. I don't even wanna call it false double opt in. We should come up with a name for this, but I feel like it's gonna come up multiple times.
Dylan Redekop:Like a personalized double opt in or a customized double opt in where you're not just at the at the whim of your ESP. Yeah. For sure. You have more control. I think there's, just maybe a shout to Matt McGarry who, he's worked with a lot of big newsletters and, run strategy for them, and he's shared that, like, basically, 20 to 40% of your subscribers, will be lost to double opt in.
Dylan Redekop:I call it I call it double opt in purgatory because they're really just kinda sitting in this purgatory where they subscribed and never actually confirmed, and you can't do anything about it. So 20 to 40% is pretty significant, and and that's you know, that range that range is probably actually quite wider than that. But, yeah, I think if you consider the ramifications of not being able to email 4 out of every 10 of your subscribers, who've actually signed up for your newsletter, that really sucks.
Chenell Basilio:It's a huge number. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. One one last thing we should mention about, double opt in. I was doing a just a newsletter breakdown for another private community a few weeks ago, and they were using double opt in. It was a newsletter based in Germany. And I said, turn off your double opt in.
Dylan Redekop:Try try this, like, your own version of double opt in, essentially. And what I was told is in Germany, it's actually mandatory to have double opt in. So you just wanna make sure that if your country you a, you may not be able to because of your location or if there's, like, strict regulations around single and double opt in for newsletters or email, you wanna make sure that you're considering that too.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. Super super smart to add in there because there are some different restrictions around the world.
Dylan Redekop:So Cool. Okay. Let's move on to the next one. So should you clean your email list, or is there no point?
Chenell Basilio:Oh, this is a spicy one. We actually had this, kind of an off topic conversation in the community couple weeks back, I think. And some people were like, well, I'm on Substack, so I can't really clean my list. So what do you want me to do? And I'm like, well, that's true, but that kinda stinks for, like, your sponsors or people that you're actually trying to, get good results for.
Dylan Redekop:Mhmm.
Chenell Basilio:I don't know. It's a it's an interesting take because in my head, I'm like, yeah. You clean your list. That's a thing. Why wouldn't you?
Chenell Basilio:But there are some spots where you can't. So I
Dylan Redekop:think the other thing that comes to mind is, like, your your newsletter's growing, engagement's the same, then maybe you don't need to clean your list. Maybe you're doing everything okay, people are unsubscribing when they need to or want to, and everybody else who's subscribed is, you know, opening your newsletter. I guess you could you could argue that maybe cleaning your list, you're actually only hurting yourself because you're deleting people who you may have the chance to reach out to in the future and, or who may just not be interested in your product at this time or your service or your whatever your content is. So I think that was one of the arguments that was kinda made too in the community was that, like, well, you're just deleting subscribers who actually might be engaged at some point.
Chenell Basilio:One of the things I always think about with this is, the gist, the newsletter. It's like the women's sports newsletter.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:They actually talked about how because it's so dependent on the sports seasons and the time of year that instead of actually unsubscribing people, they will put them into separate segments and say, okay. We're gonna come back to these people when NFL season restarts because, you know, they're kinda not paying attention right now, but we don't wanna unsubscribe them because at one point they were interested. So if you do have kind of like a an audience that might be interested, at one point of the year but not all points of the year, it could make sense to kind of like mute them for a little bit, for lack of a better word, and come back to them in a couple months. Whether that's like Matt Giovannini, he runs a swim university. He talks about pool care.
Chenell Basilio:People aren't really paying attention to their pool in December necessarily. Right. Yeah. You don't necessarily wanna be sending emails like that. But, yeah, that one comes to mind as well.
Dylan Redekop:That's a good point. I guess we should also, like, maybe be a little bit more nuanced on this when we say clean your list. Like, don't just delete subscribers or unsubscribe subscribers. Like, make sure you are either setting up an automation where every time somebody hasn't opened or engaged with an email in 30, 60, 90 days, whatever you decide is a sufficient amount of time, you're basically doing a reengagement sequence just to make sure that they are or are not, engaged. I know, Chanel, you can speak for this too because I think you don't turn on images when in your inbox.
Dylan Redekop:So people often assume that you're not opening their emails when in fact you are, and you get a lot of these these calls. And I know they're a bit annoying. Right? But at the same time, on your end, you're doing your due diligence your due diligence as a newsletter operator, making sure that, you're not just unsubscribing a whole bunch of people from your list who may or very well be enjoying your newsletter.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I often get emails from people who are like, oh, I have 1500 subscribers on my email list because I just cut half of them. I'm so isn't that great? My open rate went up, and I'm like, please tell me you had, like, sent some emails out to them and, like, made sure that they actually weren't reading because I did set up a reengagement campaign once. Not that I've only used it once, but when I initially set it up, I got quite a few replies from people on services like hey.com, and they were saying, hey.
Chenell Basilio:I actually read every single email, but hey.com just hides all of those tracking links. So that's one example of that. I'm sure there are plenty of others. So you can't just, like, blindly delete people without, like, trying to make sure that you're actually make ensuring that they aren't opening your emails.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. No. That would be that that would be that's kinda like newsletter suicide a little bit, I think, to some degree. You're just like you're jumping off the building thinking these people aren't aren't engaged, but they very well are. The other thing I would consider too is, when you you can delete subscribers and you can unsubscribe subscribers, and I think there's there's definitely nuance there.
Dylan Redekop:I would never delete a subscriber. When you do that, you're deleting all of the data that comes with that subscriber of when they first subscribed, there any tags or segments they might have been in. So if they ever were to, resubscribe, you'd basically be starting from scratch. And so I think I highly recommend you to unsubscribe them, at the end of your sequence or whatever you choose to do there. If they truly are not engaged, unsubscribe them, have your sequence unsubscribe automatically, do not delete subscribers.
Dylan Redekop:And most ESPs will not charge you for those unsubscribed subscribers.
Chenell Basilio:It's a good point. Okay. So this next one, I wanted to, clarify with you because you're asking, should you push people to your website in your newsletter or just publish everything in the newsletter? I feel personally attacked by this one.
Dylan Redekop:Don't be. Don't be personally attacked. I mean, there's definitely a few things around this because, if for some reason you've not read Chanel's newsletter, you, you can explain how you do it, but, essentially, you you push people to your website.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. So I have, you know, a little blurb about the longer form article, and then I have a button that says keep reading or go visit the full article. Because, I mean, oftentimes these are, like, 3 to 4000 word posts, and, like, Gmail would definitely clip that email, especially with all, like, the screenshots and everything that I have in there. So, yeah. So it just that's how I started, and I just kept doing it.
Chenell Basilio:And so that's how I do it. I get emails at least once a week asking why I don't just publish the full article in there. And so, like, now I have just a little snippet that I just pasted those emails to reply because it's, like, probably the most common question I get.
Dylan Redekop:That is too funny. Okay. So Yeah. This is definitely not an attack on you. I wanted to basically highlight this because I I felt this as well when I was writing my newsletter, when I was doing long articles.
Dylan Redekop:I'm like, should I just publish the whole thing in the newsletter and then and then let people read it all there, or should I push them over to my website? And there's various reasons to change this. So when I very first started, I was on Substack, and you kinda had to share everything in the Substack newsletter because that's that was the experience. You could also read it on the site, but, that was a general experience. I didn't have a website, so that's how I I used it.
Dylan Redekop:Eventually, I switched to ConvertKit, but I still didn't build a website. I was just pushing people to medium, to my medium.com story, and I would share a friend link so they would be able to read it ungated. They wouldn't have to be a medium member and pay that monthly fee. So you could read it for free, but I still didn't have a website. So I was, basically getting, people push over to a different platform.
Dylan Redekop:So, yeah, not the best practice. I wouldn't necessarily recommend people doing that. And then eventually, I finally built a website and kinda caved to that caved to the pressure of of having my own website, and I was then doing what you did. I would do a tease of the article and basically say, like, read the whole article on my website. So I think at that point, it can be personal preference, especially if you're not publishing 3 to 4000 words per edition.
Dylan Redekop:If you want people to just stay in your inbox and or in their inboxes reading your article, then by all means. I'm probably tainted by my own reading preferences where I will often save a long article if I see it in my email in my inbox. I'll save it for later. I'll want to save it for later. And if I just open it and close it and go back and think that I will read it later, I very rarely do.
Chenell Basilio:Interesting. So you save the emails or the articles?
Dylan Redekop:Well, I won't save if there's no option to read it on a browser or on a website, I will probably not read the whole thing probably ever. So, that's why I'm like, k. Let's at least host this somewhere so people can bookmark it, you know, clip it, whatever they wanna do with, whatever tool they want, and they can come back to it later.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. A 100%. That's why I do it also.
Dylan Redekop:How about SEO?
Chenell Basilio:SEO is huge. I mean but there's also the there's the argument that could be made that Beehive posts all of the full articles in the emails, but they also have them living on a website.
Dylan Redekop:Mhmm.
Chenell Basilio:So you could technically say that that's, like, the same thing. So, So, I mean, you do get the benefit of SEO with that. I don't feel like Beyhive is the best platform for SEO necessarily, like, over and above your own, like, WordPress or other website. Yeah. Things are changing.
Chenell Basilio:Google is changing. So who knows? Maybe that's gonna swing in the other direction.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. And I I mean, it's a good point to make too. I you know, Kit or ConvertKit, they also have kind of this hosting option, and Substack obviously as well. So there are ways to to go about it even without your own website as well. But, again, the argument might be, I know for the longest time, my Substack articles would rank higher.
Dylan Redekop:I posted the same one on Substack and on kind of my ConvertKit profile page, and they would rank higher on Substack for the longest time. It's not always the best play to to rely on those platforms for SEO.
Chenell Basilio:For sure. And if they end up changing, like, how the links are structured or anything like that, like, that can really damage your SEO ranking too. So Yeah.
Dylan Redekop:Good point. Anything else to add on this, topic?
Chenell Basilio:Nope. I think we, beat this one with a dead horse
Dylan Redekop:or Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:Never mind. You can take you know what I'm sure to say. Okay. This next one, should you turn your newsletter into a paid newsletter? Oh, strike it.
Chenell Basilio:You or shouldn't you? Again, it depends.
Dylan Redekop:I'm gonna say probably not. And that's coming from somebody who did consider running a paid newsletter and then thought, I feel like this is, like, I'm building my own prison, so to speak, because I feel the the pressure of both creating something that's worth paying for and then having to create that, not whenever I'm, you know, feeling, like, inspired to create it, but because I have to create. I'm a slave now to this subscription and these people who are subscribing. So for me, it was less about, like, the financial gain that could come from it, but more of, like, a deterrent of, like, not wanting this to be something that I am a slave to. So I think you could structure, you know, your your subscription to be not necessarily just content all the time.
Dylan Redekop:But for me, that was that was where I was, like, no. I do not I do not wanna do this. And if you're considering it, you should just I'm not saying it's not for you because there's obviously you know, your growth in reverse was inspired by a paid newsletter and somebody making a lot of money with a paid newsletter. It's doable and it can be done, but you just have to consider the the ramifications of going down that road.
Chenell Basilio:I think there is a place for it. I mean, obviously, Lenny's newsletter, like, we cannot not talk about that. Yeah. Man's making 1,000,000 of dollars a year from a paid newsletter. However, was he early and at the right moment, and is it still a viable option?
Chenell Basilio:I don't know. But I I mean, they're also yeah. Stratechery, again, early. His brain is insane. Like, that's Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:If somebody is a like, if you're able to put out that much content that, he like, the guy from Stratechery is able to Ben Thompson? Ben Thompson. And at the same, like, depth and level and consistency, he's been doing it for, like, decade almost.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. And he publishes pretty regular. It's almost a 5 day a week. Yeah. Or pretty more than just once a week kind of thing.
Dylan Redekop:Right?
Chenell Basilio:Yep.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:But also, you have to think, like, these are b to b either in-depth or the person writing them has, like, extreme amounts of experience in the space. Yeah. So I don't think it probably works for just, like, a random person's newsletter, but I don't know. There is a place for it.
Dylan Redekop:There is. I think I think you called out expertise, essentially. Like, if you're an expert in a field, you could probably you could probably get away with it. It's gonna be a little bit harder to build. You'll probably need a free tier to at least get initial subscribers, get some traction there.
Dylan Redekop:So you have a free tier and then a paid tier. That's usually the most common way people do it, but probably advise against just gating your whole newsletter or all of your content with a paid subscription. I think Lenny's now I just actually was checking, Lenny's newsletter is gated to you get one free email a month, and he's got 3 other tiers, which I found interesting. We'll maybe throw it on the screen for people to see, but, essentially, he has this these 4 different tiers of subscription model. Of course, one of them is free, and the other ones are monthly, annually, and then the, I can expense this category.
Dylan Redekop:And, basically, you can fill in how much you wanna pay as a minimum of I think it was $216 a year, and then you could just, like, put in choose your amount that you wanna pay. And, I love how you're just basically calling out, like, oh, yeah. I could, you know, pay for this, and I can expense it.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. And that's why I wanted to call it the b to b side of things Yeah. Because I think that's just a big piece of this. The other thing I do wanna caveat is, like, I see a lot of creators. They're they're like, I hit a 1,000 subscribers.
Chenell Basilio:I'm gonna go pay it. And I'm like, oh, you're really capping your growth once you do that. So I would almost, like, just make sure you're hitting exit velocity before you actually put up that paywall because you can kinda see it in some of these growth trajectories that, like, kind of kinda slows down some things. So just make sure you've hit that escape velocity before you before you do that.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. And I think the paid subscription, people see the dollar signs too with it and see people like Lenny and Mario and Ben Thompson and think, I can make, you know, lots of money or enough at least to support myself to write this. But I think paid subscription should just be looked at, at least in the short term, as more of, like, a a way to subsidize some revenue. It shouldn't be I don't think you're I would be impressed if you could make it, like, your main revenue stream from the beginning. I think there's there's other ways you could do it, and paid subscription could be, like, a portion of your revenue.
Dylan Redekop:I I just I wouldn't want people to see what other people are doing like the people I mentioned, and be like, oh, I can make 6 figures in, you know, next year with a a paid subscription model.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I think the other thing to call out is, like, Lenny's, paid portion of this is not just content. Like, he has a community. He has all this other stuff included. And I actually was talking to, somebody named Jeff at a conference couple I guess it was a while ago, 6 plus months ago.
Chenell Basilio:But he was like, should I start a paid newsletter, or should I start a paid community? And I was like, in my view, they're the same thing. Like, you have you could there is a world in which you can equate them in your mind of, like, my paid newsletter includes community. It includes all this other stuff. But most people do think of paid newsletter as just like a substack where, like, part of it's paid, part of it's free.
Chenell Basilio:That's it. Just content. So, I mean, there are different takes on that as well, but, yeah, this is definitely a nuanced discussion.
Dylan Redekop:It is. I like I do like the model of providing back when I was at SparkLoop, we we chatted with a guy, I think his name was Eric, and he ran he ran a newsletter about, basically, ideas that were getting really popular on Google Trends. And so what he did was he'd provide a free version of that newsletter where he'd, like, here are 3 business ideas or 1 sorry. One topic that's, like, kind of exploding on Google Trends, and here are 3 different businesses you could do. And so he'd give you kind of, like, the the basics around it.
Dylan Redekop:And then he said, subscribe, to my paid tier, and I'll give you, like, way more in-depth strategy of how you could really actually go about doing this and how I would do it, if I was to build out this business. And so I think I think when you can offer that level of detail or that extra tier of, information, education, support, that's where you can really drive some value for your paid subscription as well. Anything else to add?
Chenell Basilio:No. I think that's I mean, all of these we could go on for hours with each one. So Yes. So this next one is, should I bother testing my subject lines? So within a bunch of tools like Beehive and ConvertKit, at least, you are able to do, like, an AB test of different subject lines.
Chenell Basilio:I know with Beehive, you can actually do, I think, ABC testing and do even more subject lines.
Dylan Redekop:You can do 4.
Chenell Basilio:Oh, 4. Okay. Stand corrected.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. Yeah. That's Maybe more even, but I've seen people test for and show the results on Twitter and stuff like that. So shout out to, to Michael over at Body Brain. He does that all the time.
Chenell Basilio:Nice. Yeah. I mean, my this one is tricky because I think some people open certain newsletters for the person. Doesn't matter what the title is, they're just gonna open it regardless. So I don't think AB testing matters as much in those cases.
Chenell Basilio:However, when you're just starting, you're getting off the ground, I think it can be an interesting way to get more opens, especially when people are just, like, building trust with you. At this point, when I test my subject lines, I usually don't actually see that big of a difference. Like, most of the time, it's, like, 0.02% different. And I'm like, was that worth the extra 3 hours of waiting for people to get this in their inbox? Probably not.
Dylan Redekop:No. I I agree. I think the trade off is it can it can definitely be worth it in some cases. And I think when you are doing maybe a product launch or you're really optimizing for, you know, that, like, x amount of peep if x amount of people open, we'll get x amount of conversions and, like, you've really kind of figured out, this this strategy for launching a product, then then I could see it definitely being useful. You wanna optimize kind of every step of that process.
Dylan Redekop:But for a weekly newsletter or even a a few times a week newsletter, daily newsletter even so unless you're actually testing a specific element, I would say, of that subject line, I think it might be a waste of time. An example of that is, I saw somebody asking, you know, which of these subject lines is better, again, also on Twitter. And they had, you know, 4 different versions, and they were kinda, like, 4 very different versions of the subject line. And I'm kinda, like, well, even if you pick a winner, it doesn't really tell you anything about the results. Right?
Dylan Redekop:Because there's not, like, one omitted certain a certain word or, like, for this one, it was property values. So it was like one of them had property values in it and the other one the other 3 didn't. Kinda like, it just my my whole thing with testing subject lines is testing test things that you can actually get data back from. Like, oh, when I shared for your newsletter example, Chanel, if you shared that somebody had, you know, $500,000 in revenue, if you took that out of the subject line, probably the the, AB test that had that $500,000 revenue in it would probably win. Whereas, if somebody's just testing different sort of random ideas in their subject line, I think that's where this feels pointless to me.
Chenell Basilio:Actually, I really wish that Kit would let you AB test your welcome emails and your welcome sequences because those are the emails that really Yep. Can make a big diff especially over time, whereas a one off send is like like you said, unless you're learning something specific about, like, different, verbiage that you can use moving forward, it's not gonna make as big of a difference. However, with the welcome emails, the welcome sequences, you can absolutely, like, make headway on that kind of that kind of thing. But
Dylan Redekop:Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I think the only time I've really successfully or been happy with the AB testing results was, like, how to get more newsletter subscribers versus how to grow your email list and, like, seeing which one actually performed better. So Mhmm. I don't know. I think it's just interesting to kinda test those verbiage.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. Those I don't even know what I was saying there. We're, like, doing this one today.
Dylan Redekop:I know. Right? I know what you mean, though. Like, you tested, basically, the term email newsletters or your email list versus newsletters. Right?
Dylan Redekop:And see which one resonated more with your audience. And that's something especially if you're in the beginning, you're trying to figure out what people are interested in or catering to or what kind of terms they like. That's where I think AB testing can work really well. But I just yeah. If you're just kinda throwing 3 or 4 or even just 2 different email, subject lines that are totally different, and you can't really extrapolate anything from the results except that, you know, oh, this one was a little bit more popular, so it's going to all the inboxes after my, you know, 2 hour or 3 hour window.
Dylan Redekop:Like, yeah, that's that's a bonus, I guess. But at the end of the day, you're still back to the drawing board. When you go to send your next email, you'll be like, I don't know. I'm gonna throw 2 more subject lines at the wall and see which one wins. I think there should be a way to extrapolate some some data from the results and then use that going forward to just keep improving your subject lines.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I cannot wait for the comments on this one because I know somebody's gonna be like, but wait. I did it, and I do it every week, and I get all these amazing results. And it's like, that's awesome, but I think there is some nuance to whether it's actually beneficial or not.
Dylan Redekop:I think that's why this episode is so fun is because everything we say, somebody's gonna have a counterpoint to it, and that's that's why this topic is perpetually interesting. Yes. Okay. So this next one is, should I have ads in my newsletter? This is usually more of a question for somebody who's just starting out, but the I I think there's a fear, an unfounded fear, that if you put an ad in your newsletter, then people are gonna unsubscribe or not read it or never open your email again or think you are an evil marketer when that is not the case.
Dylan Redekop:You've talked about this in the past. Josh Spector has talked about this in the past, and I think you referenced him when you decided to kind of put ads in the newsletter as well, where it's like he just ran a poll saying, would you like ads in my newsletter, or would you not like ads, and would you be interested in running an ad in my newsletter to the x amount of subscribers I have? And I think he was pretty surprised at the results, And there was only a small fraction of people who are basically like, no. Do not put ads in the newsletter. I'll leave it there because I think, like I said, you referenced this in the past.
Dylan Redekop:So what is your take on this one?
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I think I think the only reason you wouldn't wanna put ads in your newsletter is if that is never going to be a monetization strategy that you want. Like, if you have this signature product that you're trying to sell and that's the only thing you want to make money from, great. Don't put ads in your newsletter. But if you're more on, like, the traditional newsletter side of things where, you know, you you eventually wanna have sponsors in your newsletter to supplement your income and, like, make sure that you're providing good content without actually charging people for it, I think that you should start earlier than you think you need to.
Chenell Basilio:And even if it comes down to you, putting in an affiliate link for a product you use or something like that, you can use it as, like, a sponsored section, and just say, like, hey. I am you know, I use this product. Here's my affiliate link, and have people sign up that way. And then they're getting used to having a sponsor in your newsletter, but you don't necessarily have to go try and sell the space before they do that. So
Dylan Redekop:Totally. I think affiliates are, like, the lowest barrier entry for almost everybody to kind of test out this whole sponsorship advertising, kind of dipping your toe in that realm because, yeah, it could be hard when you only have a few 100 subscribers, you're just starting out, even under a1000 could be tricky to get a a sponsor. And the, you know, the work back and forth with it for maybe a $25, $50 sponsorship spot that may not drive the clicks and revenue that either you or the sponsor want. It's just a lot of work, and, I think dipping your toe with affiliates is a really smart way to do it. I think there's one other point too to make about making sure that the advertiser and or sponsor is very aligned with your audience.
Dylan Redekop:It sounds like common sense, but I I think it's worth repeating that, like, you don't just wanna throw in anybody who's willing to pay you money to go in your newsletter. You wanna make sure that there's actually gonna be value there from, from the sponsor to your audience and vice versa.
Chenell Basilio:100%. And we should probably do a whole podcast episode on how to do your sponsorships better.
Dylan Redekop:We probably should. We probably should.
Chenell Basilio:Okay. Next. Should I use paid growth to grow my newsletter? I'll take this one. Yes.
Chenell Basilio:Because I have a background in paid ads, I would say not until you're able to find content audience fit to the point where you know that if you get a subscriber, you're making $3 on the back end, you're making $10 on the back end, or whatever that number is to allow you to say, okay, I can go to Facebook ads or meta ads or whatever you wanna call it. I can spend up to $5 to get a subscriber and I know I will break even and or make money. But until that point, you should never spend money on paid ads, and I will say that over and over again. Sorry, Matt McGarry. I say no.
Dylan Redekop:Chanel is getting spicy. I love it. I love it. We're not this is a, not a non nuance nuance take. One of the rare non nuance takes we've had in this, in this episode.
Chenell Basilio:I'm sure there's a nuance to it, but I feel like for the most part, smaller smaller creators should not be using paid ads until they have that.
Dylan Redekop:One way you could, I guess, look at it, what what's your take on this? If you were driving, say, a little bit of revenue with your newsletter, you maybe didn't figure out all of your customer lifetime value numbers and all that sort of stuff yet. But let's say you're making, like, $100 a month on your with your newsletter, however that revenue is coming in. What if you just reinvested that into growth?
Chenell Basilio:I would still argue that it's probably a waste of money until you figure out, a, is the content that you're already creating something people wanna read every week, and they're not just gonna unsubscribe after, like, a day. Yeah. B, I don't know. I mean, I do think reinvesting is great. Like, it's a great strategy, but I just wanna make sure you're spending that money wisely.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. That's smart. I think the other thing you'd wanna strongly consider is that you have the rest of the subscriber experience really, really nailed down. Like, landing page needs to be super good if you're paying to get people to go to it. The after you subscribe experience, the thank you page, the almost there page, the confirmation emails, the welcome emails, the welcome sequence, like, that really needs to be buttoned down, optimized, whatever word you wanna use to make sure that any money you're spending to get that subscriber is they're gonna have basically the the best chance of of engaging, signing up, and staying subscribed.
Dylan Redekop:I would
Chenell Basilio:say the probably the only caveat, I guess, I will backtrack here a little bit, is if you have an unlimited budget because you've made millions in another venture, and you're just like, well, I'm gonna figure this out one way or another. Let me just get as many subscribers as possible. Great. More power to you.
Dylan Redekop:All, Ali Richards comes to mind. Is that who who's bouncing around in your head there?
Chenell Basilio:Definitely not. But No.
Dylan Redekop:That is
Chenell Basilio:a good example. Yeah. But, also, like, if you, you know, if you're already, like, a semi respected celebrity in your space or have tons of experience and people are just gonna follow you because it's you, sure. Go spend money. But if you're a new creator, you're testing out this new venture, you don't know if you wanna stick with it, I would not spend money on paid ads.
Dylan Redekop:I'm not gonna argue with you.
Chenell Basilio:You're allowed to
Dylan Redekop:if you want. No. I I can't. I I would a 100% agree. So I'm I'm in the same boat, which maybe doesn't make for the most entertaining episode, but for this one, I'm not gonna argue with you.
Chenell Basilio:We'll have, Matt McGarry come on in and tell us otherwise.
Dylan Redekop:But Hey. Let's do it. I love debating stuff like this because quite often, I will be validated maybe in some things that I've thought, but also very exposed to things that I hadn't been and different variables and different experiences. We're like, no. This is the way you have to do it.
Dylan Redekop:And someone's like, actually, I really was very successful at doing it the opposite way. And you go, oh, hadn't thought about it that way. So, yeah, I think there's a as long as the debates are friendly and, respectful, then I'm all for it.
Chenell Basilio:I keep bringing up Matt. I I he's a great person. I respect him a lot. I just say that because I feel like a lot of people, especially in the the newsletter space or look to him as, like, he's always saying run paid ads, like, starting yesterday.
Dylan Redekop:Mhmm.
Chenell Basilio:So Right. You know, that's why I bring him up, but I definitely respect his opinion, so we'll have to get him on here.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. I agree. Alright. Should we do a few more here? Some, like, rapid fiery ones.
Chenell Basilio:Alright. Let's do it.
Dylan Redekop:Okay. How about referral programs? They were all the rage about 2019, 2020. Morning Brew grew their newsletter, in part on the back of a Morning Brew mug you would get if you recommended 5 friends. And so it was like referral programs are the way to grow your newsletter.
Dylan Redekop:SparkLoop was born out of this out of this idea. So should you use a referral program to grow your newsletter?
Chenell Basilio:Sure. I think it's a good extra thing to have. I wouldn't go spending money on trying to, like, design mugs or shirts or anything, but you can find a way to even give away a lead magnet via referral program. Mhmm. Say, hey, refer 1 person and you get this awesome checklist that I put together.
Chenell Basilio:That's great. I think a lot of people used to look at this as, like, the way to grow your newsletter, whereas I think it's more of, like, a extra type of thing. Like, it's gonna help you grow incrementally, but it's not gonna be that one thing that, you know, explodes your newsletter overnight.
Dylan Redekop:I agree. I think the maybe a best practice, as much as I kinda hate that term for referral programs is, like, make that first referral reward very, easy to obtain or attain. So make it, like, 1 or 2 referrals as opposed to making it 5 or 10, to get your your first reward because that just kinda deincentivizes people kinda right off the bat. Should you use paid recommendations widgets?
Chenell Basilio:Paid okay. So why don't you explain what paid recommendation widgets are?
Dylan Redekop:So, if you've ever subscribed to a newsletter on Substack, a BeHive newsletter, just about any newsletter these days, ConvertKit based newsletter, you will quite often see this pop up appear saying or you'll be taken to a new page where it says, hey, you should also check out if you like my newsletter, you should also check out, you know, x, y, z different newsletters. That's one way that I know Lenny has even written about. He grew, his newsletter on Substack just, like, kinda skyrocketed back in 2022 when they launched that feature. And so other ESPs have kind of followed suit and created that functionality for their users. So kind of some debate around whether you should actually use this, and grow your newsletter that way or if you should use it and monetize your newsletter that way because it's it's like a double edged sword.
Dylan Redekop:Right? You can use paid recommendations, which is to be featured in there to grow your newsletter, and you can also use the paid recommendation widgets to earn revenue for your newsletter. So I guess I wasn't clear on the question whether you should use them in one way or the other, but I'll just leave it open. Like, what do you think? Yes or no for for both growing and earning?
Chenell Basilio:I don't know. This is, like, the spiciest this is, like, the spiciest newsletter thing right now. This is, like, worse than politics at this point.
Dylan Redekop:It's it's the yeah. It's basically you're a democrat or republican when it comes to your take on this. Essentially, you're one side or you're the other. There's no middle ground.
Chenell Basilio:So I I guess if we can explain the pros and the cons a little bit. Sure. Okay. Let's do it. So I would say the pros to using a paid recommendation widget for monetization, so you're earning.
Chenell Basilio:If I were to put it up on mine and say, hey. You should subscribe to these 3, and I get paid for some of them if you subscribe. I think it's a a low barrier cost to or a low barrier way to actually earn a little bit of revenue. Yep. I would say the frustrating piece to this side is that I think these platforms have gotten so, I'm gonna say it, ridiculous with their like, the things that they require from these subscribers.
Chenell Basilio:Like, some people set these up and they could be like, okay, they have to open every single email I send for the next 365 days before you get paid your $3 or whatever. Yeah.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:They have to be from Texas, New York, or California. It's like crazy at this point. So I this is why I have never actually, I think I did it a little bit in the early days, but I have not since used a paid recommendation widget, because it's Turn
Dylan Redekop:turn revenue.
Chenell Basilio:Turn revenue. I do it for it's almost like a swap with friends. Like Yeah. I don't actually get paid for those, but I will, swap with friends and have them recommend me, and I recommend them. I think that's more of a I don't know.
Chenell Basilio:It feels better to me to actually do that because I know the people I'm recommending, I don't know. They're just like good people. Their content's good. So I know I'm steering people in a good direction.
Dylan Redekop:I like the reciprocal nature of it as well. It's it's smart.
Chenell Basilio:I guess I kinda went off on a tangent there. No. I
Dylan Redekop:love it. I love it. You're fiery. It was good. What about, okay.
Dylan Redekop:So what about for growth then? Should you use paid recommendations to grow your newsletter?
Chenell Basilio:I mean, because of the ridiculous parameters you could put on them, sure. Because you can probably get, like, a 100 subscribers for, like, a dollar at this point. And I I'll be fair and say, like, I haven't looked at the back end because I haven't. I'm not gonna sit there and spend money to do this right now, but, yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah. I've I've, you know, working for a business that this was one of their main, offerings or features. It was really interesting to see how people were using them. I won't get into obviously too much detail, but you can definitely grow your newsletter to a path where you are weaning out, say, low quality subscribers, if you will, and only paying for the ones that actually engage. That being said, there's debate about how if those those subscribers if they're actually engaging.
Dylan Redekop:And I think, like, you really touched on the parameters that you need to fulfill for your subscriber to, you know, run through. They gotta click or they gotta open, and they only have so much time to do it before you get paid, like, your $2 for that subscriber. It is to the point where it can be very also demotivating. Like we talked about earlier, it's like, I'm not really incentivized to share this newsletter because I know, like, I'm not gonna actually get money get money sharing it, when somebody subscribes. So, yeah, I could see I could see being both sides of the coin, but, it's it's definitely a very interesting topic.
Dylan Redekop:Another episode we could probably go deep way deeper on.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I mean, there's the argument that you're I don't know. You're getting someone to sign you've done all the hard work to get someone to sign up for your list. Why are you sending them to other people? They're essentially gonna end up with 3, 4, 5 welcome emails at once, including yours.
Chenell Basilio:So why are they gonna stick to your email? That's an another whole rabbit hole to go down, but I don't know.
Dylan Redekop:I don't think there's a limit to some of these platforms, how many you can put in your recommendation. So if somebody just says, yeah. Subscribe to all of them, and then they could have basically, their whole inbox is just all these welcome emails. So, yeah, not the best not the best experience for sure. And you're Yeah.
Dylan Redekop:You're kind of, cannibalizing, I guess, the attention that you could be getting off of yourself. So
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. I mean, it there is a point to say that people have successfully grown their newsletter off of this, and I'm sure it works for some people really well. But there's way too much nuance for me at this point to jump in.
Dylan Redekop:So That is fair. How about we just end on this one? Should I run giveaways to drive more subscribers?
Chenell Basilio:Hold on. I'm gonna go look at my stats for my the one giveaway I did with a couple people. You can rant about this until then for if you want.
Dylan Redekop:I don't have a huge rant on giveaways. My rant would be don't do it. Now it would be funny if you pulled up your data and you're like, actually, this was really successful. But what I've heard anecdotally more so than anything from various newsletter operators is they run a giveaway. They get a whole bunch of sub subscribers right away.
Dylan Redekop:It looks good to them, to their bosses if they're doing this for a business. They're growing their newsletter. It's great. But then it's like, oh, our open rates have plummeted. We are now going into spam filters.
Dylan Redekop:We are getting a whole bunch of not even cold subscribers, but just everybody's unsubscribing. So our our list went way up, and now it's gone way back down again. And I think you're just incentivizing the wrong thing for subscribers at that point. So I think there's a way to do giveaways for sure that can benefit you and keep people engaged and on your email list. Rewarding them with a physical product that has nothing to do with, say, your business or your content is probably a bad way to go about it.
Chenell Basilio:I did one giveaway, and, this was wait. This is a long time ago. So this was March of 2023. So I was
Dylan Redekop:3 months in?
Chenell Basilio:3 months
Dylan Redekop:4 months in?
Chenell Basilio:4 months in. Yep. Way early days. Initially, from that, what we did, it was 5 newsletters, including myself, or I was the 6th one. I forget.
Chenell Basilio:But we each put in a $100. So the winner of this giveaway got $500.
Dylan Redekop:Cash. Each of
Chenell Basilio:us I forget how I think it was PayPal. Yeah. Yeah. Cash.
Dylan Redekop:Okay. Interesting. Not even like an Amazon gift card. Just like Nope. There's some cold hard e transfer to cash.
Chenell Basilio:So we each, like, promoted this in our newsletter and said you got I'm forgetting all the details. It could have been, like, 2 prizes. I don't remember. But I remember at the time, I got I ended up with 294 subscribers, I think it was. A 165 of those are still subscribed to my newsletter, and we are
Dylan Redekop:It's over half?
Chenell Basilio:Long. Yes. Okay. So there's still the open rate for these people is still at, like, 34 point 7%,
Dylan Redekop:which isn't great, but it's not bad. 34% isn't too bad for, I'd say, people who signed up on a giveaway.
Chenell Basilio:And this was 18 months ago. Wow. 20 months ago. And so there's still a 165 of them. So I paid a $100, so that's pretty good.
Chenell Basilio:Oh, my god. Are we ending this spicy episode with, like, the one that I would normally say, don't ever do this, and I'm like, we are. That's great. So normally, I would say yes. Make sure it's, like, super relevant.
Chenell Basilio:You're giving away, like, you know, 6 months to Beehive or 6 months to Kit or something, like, super related to what I talk about, which is growing your email list. However, I did not do that, but it still worked out okay. And I think it's because the creators that I partnered with were all quote unquote building in public. Like, we're all in the same space. The people who followed us were very interested in growing an audience and a newsletter, so I think it worked out pretty well.
Dylan Redekop:Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:I'd actually be interested to see how many of those other newsletter like, the other creators, like, if they're seeing similar results.
Dylan Redekop:Do you know if they're even still publishing the newsletters?
Chenell Basilio:I know one of them sold their newsletter, Christian. I'll have to reach out and see.
Dylan Redekop:Could be could be an interesting conversation. I think there's, yeah, there's definitely a way to incentivize it. Like you said, 6 months free to beehive, or, like, or kit or whatever platform or even, like, if you have a paid tier, I mean, like, an incentive could be, like, a free annual membership or something like that or 50% off, whatever. You know? Like, you could definitely be creative with how you wanna structure it, but as long as it's, like, super focused on your newsletter and your content that you're creating, then it would make a lot more sense.
Dylan Redekop:A $100 cash. I mean, that that is driving the wrong incentives. Sign up so you can get money. So good. I love it.
Dylan Redekop:I love it. We live
Chenell Basilio:and learn Could you tell I was a new newsletter newbie at this point?
Dylan Redekop:I mean, at least you partnered with people to do it. That was that was smart, collaborating, building relationships. So that was probably the biggest benefit out of all of
Chenell Basilio:it. Yeah. For sure. That is not how I thought we were gonna end that that, section there. I was like, oh, giveaways, definitely not.
Chenell Basilio:But I was like, wait. Let me look up my results.
Dylan Redekop:Sometimes the, sometimes the results aren't what we expect. So I would have said, yeah, do not do giveaways, but you've you've proven me wrong, Chanel. You've proven me wrong. Maybe it can work. Yes.
Dylan Redekop:Maybe it can work. If your content is as good as yours and you're willing to pay $500 for subscribers, so, I mean, then then you could definitely go about it. For sure. There's probably more topics we could talk about here, but why don't we wrap it at that? And, I I just I don't know about you, but I'd love to hear what people have to think about these topics because I'm sure there's people on both sides of the fence for a lot of these things.
Dylan Redekop:So, definitely inviting people to kinda call us out on a few things or share your feedback with us on on what you thought about some of these topics or what your experiences with some of these topics.
Chenell Basilio:Yeah. And if we get, let's say, like, 50 comments on YouTube or something, we'll do another one of these episodes.
Dylan Redekop:Well Yeah.
Chenell Basilio:Just curate more of these, spicy takes and maybe bring some other people on to share their ideas around it.
Dylan Redekop:Absolutely. Yeah. To put your spicy takes in the comments. Absolutely, please.