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Discover how the best media brands and solo operators are winning at newsletter growth & monetization.
Hosted by SparkLoop's cofounder Louis Nicholls and SparkLoop's newsletter nerd, Dylan Redekop—we take you behind the scenes and share the strategies, trends, and tactics you need to know to build your email audience and revenue.
Featuring exclusive interviews with the smartest media experts and operators out there today. Including from the Hustle, Morning Brew, Workweek, The Pour Over, and more.
S&G - Aleyda Solis [Transcript]
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Louis Nicholls: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Send and Grow podcast. I'm your host, Louis Nichols. In my day job at Spark Loop, I spend all my time helping the best newsletter operators and media brands in the world to grow their audiences. So I get to see firsthand what growth tactics, strategies, and channels actually work, which ones you should copy, and what mistakes you should avoid.
And now with this podcast, you get that access too. Every week I sit down with a different guest from industry experts to successful operators, and we go deep on the stuff that you need to know so you can become really effective at growing and monetizing your email audience. Today I'm joined on the podcast by Aela Salt List.
ADA is an amazing newsletter operator, and I've been lucky enough to watch her journey growing the SS E o FOMO newsletter firsthand at Spa Loop over the past three years. In today's [00:01:00] episode, we'll dive into growth revenue and the lessons ELAs learned to along the way. But first leader, can you give us an introduction to your S E O FOMO newsletter in your own words?
Aleyda Solis: Yes. Well, thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be able to share with you today. SS e o. FOMO is a weekly newsletter where I feature the latest news resources, guides free tools, jobs, SS e o, also to follow in order to facilitate anybody in the S e O community or digital marketers who wants to keep up and not to miss anything.
Uh, worthy from the ss e o industry to keep updated easily. Right. That, that was my goal. And it was a little bit of like a self, self-serving type of, of initiative that I have because I am an s e O consultant myself. I have been doing ss e o since 2007, and one of the main challenges that [00:02:00] I had, And I know that many of my peers have as s e o specialist is to keep up with everything because there are always a new update from Google.
Uh, new resources, new tools, something that changes, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So I, I wanted to, this is something that I was doing sort of anyway, to check saving links during the week. Can, so I say why I don't start a newsletter. Doing this and sharing it with everybody and, and yes. I, I started it just with this like a little bit in mindset, right?
Yeah.
Louis Nicholls: So it, it comes from your expertise as someone who is, I think, very well known and respected in the, the s e o community as a, as a consultant and as an expert. And you were essentially doing this anyway and putting together this, you had to do all this reading and all this research, and you thought, I should turn this into a, a newsletter for, for other people.
That's awesome. What are you hoping that the average reader. Sort of gets out of it when it comes out and it, it, it's once a week, right? Is it Sundays? I think Indeed
Aleyda Solis: is. I send it [00:03:00] on Sunday at the end of the day on the, in the evening because I have seen that many will end up doing a little bit of planning in the evening of the Sunday before starting the week.
So I aim to get. Into the inbox of those readers right away easily. And then of course that the newsletter is there fresh to be, to be read by those who start on Monday. Right. And it works pretty well with this cadence, let's say. And, and also the timings because of the, the behavior of the user. And yes, and, and pretty much my aim is to really make it.
Very, very easy to, to keep up with everything in, in s e o, in a, in a way that is not so intrusive too. Um, many have told me, look, oh, one way to even grow more or, or enable more spaces, let's say, to, to sell more sponsorship, things like that. Like send it biweekly or send it more like, realistically, I, I don't think that it will [00:04:00] solve any additional problem than the one that.
It already solves, which is to keep up. Sending something like this, at least for a weekly, uh, at a weekly basis, works, works pretty well without being too spammy, but being relevant and fresh at the same time.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, definitely. How important do you think, is it that it's that it's your curation, that you are the one who is putting this together and, and sending it out?
'cause there, there must be other. Ss e o sort of roundup newsletters of, of links. Why is yours sort of so popular and, and going so well,
Aleyda Solis: do you think? I think it's because of the mix of information that I send and the sections that I have integrated through since I, I started right when I started, and if I compare what the first edition versus what it is right now, it's mind blowing how it has.
Evolve. It has a section about the latest search engines updates. Now also the AI features, right, that have to do with search too. So there, there's a section about that. There's also sections [00:05:00] about new guides that have been published in the, in the last week, new guides, resources, and then a section about new SS e o tools.
Or tools that are free and is important. The, the one, the ones that I feature here are free or free. Then I have also the section about ss e o events. And, and here I try to not only add ss e o conferences, but webinars and, and online events too. And we have had so many after the pandemic, right, of, from the pandemic.
So that is also a, a good way to. Uh, like raise awareness of, of them and important topics that SEOs might want to take a look at. Then there's the section of SEO o jobs, right? I try to also maximize those that are remote, so they are as relevant as possible to, to as many, and, and then of course, the specialist that I recommend to follow.
I, I am very careful of what I include and what I not. I I am pitch [00:06:00] a lot with resources and tools of course, so if the tool. It's paid and completely paid. I say, okay, this is great, but it's, it's not really relevant for the free tool section. More than happy to include you if, if you're up to it for a sponsorship or there's also a way to collaborate to do a giveaway.
For example, if you want to give away a few of. Free seats. That's the other way to, to be featuring the newsletter in an, in, in, in another different, let's say inclusion or section, but not as part of the free tools. Right? And, and the exact same thing. Many times, for example, tool makers will, will create guides for their own tool, how to solve X or Y.
We are a tool and it's like if you. Had feature ways to solve these problems with other tools and or free options, I would be more than happy to include you, even if it was published on your own block, that that's not a problem. But if you only showcase how to do it with your own tool, so it's pretty much a tutorial of your tool, [00:07:00] sorry, but it won't be a good candidate.
So I am, let's say I am very picky with what I feature or not. And for me, like the litmus test is like, is this something that I will ask? As an ss e o myself consider worthy to spend my time go going through, and I like to read that pretty much like I, I will include around 80% of what I have saved through the week to include.
And yes, unfortunately, a a lot of the things that I am pitched are not included 'cause of they don't follow certain standards and, and, and let's say alignment from, from an editorial perspective.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. That's great. And I, it's really interesting. I want to talk more, a little bit more about your process for, for how you, you put that together a bit later, but to kick things off, can you give us a sense of some of the numbers behind the newsletter, some of the sort of, let's start maybe with the size of it, how many subscribers you have and can you share anything about, I don't know, open rates or, um, revenue or anything that you feel comfortable sharing about the, the numbers?
Aleyda Solis: Yeah, sure thing. Right now, the newsletter has [00:08:00] 27.5 k. Subscribers, open rate for 3% and average click rate 10.35%. And yes, it's growing like 400 users or subscribers per month, more or less eliminating the, the churn take, taking churn into account. So net new subscribers and yes, funnily enough, and I have to say, right, and that is why I'm so excited.
With newsletters in general as as a format, as a medium, as a platform. I have been sharing about s e o for a long, long, long time, like since, pretty much since I started. I started with Twitter, et cetera. I speak at conferences in webinars. I'm very active over social. I have 140 something k. Followers in Twitter and literally, I, I, I have also started, I have to say as a test too, like a year before the newsletter, a YouTube channel, because I always, every year I like to test with a new format and new way to share, [00:09:00] and literally the newsletter has been by far the most profitable.
And the one that have had the highest growth rate and engagement and the one that have given me this feedback from people saying, thank you very much, like completely spontaneously. I, I didn't start it, it to make it profitable necessarily, but as another way to share and get to my audience and to establish more my authority in the field, et cetera.
At the end, that is how I get clients too. And this. Has been historically the way that I make money, right? My consulting, s e o consulting, uh, however, I have to say that I think the, it was after I reach a couple of thousand subscribers, three, 2000 something, 3000 for subscribers. The s e o tool makers especially came my way and they started to get in touch.
When we say, Hey, is there a way to be included? Is there a way that we can advertise in your newsletter to do some affiliates if you want to do this and that, so they. Got in touch with me very naturally, [00:10:00] spontaneously, since very early, and I was very impressed because, I mean, speaking as someone who have almost 150 K followers in Twitters, this doesn't happen to me because of my follow followers in Twitter.
But it shocked me that with so very few subscribers already was happening to me with newsletter. And right now this newsletter is yeah, doing very, very well. I like more than seven K per month and I could be doing. A lot more if I was open to do, let's say, affiliates and other ways of be besides a sponsor, um, sections.
But I'm very, very careful because I don't want to conflate editorial links what anything that is sponsored and, or, or is affiliate. I am planning, by the way, I'm going to release a new home for the newsletter. That I'm going to call the SEO FOMO hub with Yes. A section only for tools, like more things there that I expect that hopefully will be also as profitable.
But I, I'm very, very careful how I, I monetize the newsletter [00:11:00] because of yeah, my, my authority and visibility and just worthiness in the field. I, I don't want to say to complete things and make it seamless. I include links that just for the sake of, of making a little bit of money. Right.
Louis Nicholls: Got it. Yeah, totally.
So the. The main revenue for the newsletter now is, is sponsorships, is that right? The sponsorships and then also the funnel into your, your consulting business?
Aleyda Solis: Yes. I have to say that there, there's a very, like very specific, there are three sections that I have for sponsors and I. Tag them very clearly that these are sponsors.
Uh, I don't do affiliate because of what I mentioned before. So in the future, yes, but like in a differentiated, let's say section connected with the newsletter branding, and I guess that that's pretty much it regarding the, the consulting. It's funny because let's say I get a lot of feedback and, and replies and, and messages, like, I love the newsletter, et cetera, et cetera.
Uh, potentially. I have never had a client necessarily that says, oh, Dennis, Larry is the primary way that I get to know you. Help me. Right? [00:12:00] The, these people who have already usually started to follow me in social media or see me speak or see some article or guide that I have published before, that doesn't mean that.
The newsletter, of course, doesn't help out by being a really good distribution channel of whatever I do, of course. But yes, it might not necessarily be so straightforward to, to connect with conversion from, from a consultant standpoint.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. So it might be something that I. It's not necessarily the top of the funnel where they're discovering you, but it might be something that's helping them feel more comfortable making the decision to, to work with you or something
Aleyda Solis: like that.
Yeah, indeed. It's someone who's reliable enough who's sending something every single week. Uh, this person know, knows what. She's talking about 'cause she's up to date in the market, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah,
Louis Nicholls: yeah. Well, with, with that framing of it, so if you have the newsletter, and I think you, you said before the, the initial decision around the newsletter was to help with your, almost your personal branding and your, your connection to potential [00:13:00] clients and, and building up that, that sort of reputation in, in, in the space in the industry.
How did you decide to brand it as the S E O FOMO newsletter rather than. I laid his newsletter, or I laid as well as his newsletter. What was the, the decision
Aleyda Solis: behind that? Yeah. This is funny because before s e o, and I have to say this is like a little bit like a disclaimer too. Mm-hmm. Before E fomo, I used to have a newsletter that, it was called, I laid a ss e Tips, literally.
Mm-hmm. And I launched that newsletter when I launch, uh, design my website pretty much like, oh, I, I'm going to include a newsletter section. I thought it. Could be a good idea. Another way to publish or to distribute whatever I publish on the website. At the end of the day, my intent was to share a tip per week, but it, it was, I, I wanted the, I wanted tip to be meaningful enough and creative enough, not the same.
You're hashing whatever, whatever. And at the end, Sometimes I sent it weekly, sometimes by weekly, like the [00:14:00] cadence and the frequency wasn't, wasn't the strongest part of, of the newsletter. At, at some point I started doing much more and ended up not continue sending it unfortunately, and at some point I realized I have 1700 subscribers without doing.
Nothing. And this how I, I thought, okay, maybe I should retake this, but making it something that will make me literally send it at a certain frequency. And even if I am, if I ampire or un inspire that week, it is easy for me to get the source of information to feature it in the newsletter. And that is how I thought on.
SS e o news. 'cause I knew also that there was a need for that. Uh, not only for knowledge, but also for, for, yeah, keep updated, right? Mm-hmm. And that is how I came up with it. Then the name of FOMO is because as I, there was a lot of conversation, I remember at that time in seo, like, oh, don't [00:15:00] be fomo. Like the fomo.
Fomo. And. For me, it was, I, I, I, it felt something much easier to promote. It's very difficult for me to beat the whole time talking about me, me, me, me, me. La does this, la does that. So I, I ended up coming up with a, a name that was easy to, to remember, easy for me to refer to and promote without feeling that I'm always self-promoting.
I, I am at the end of the day, but you know, at least I'm not talking about me the whole time. But osteo fomo. Right? And I felt also that this. Could eventually become something bigger too. So from a scalable scalability perspective, I wanted to give it that, that room too. I did the same with my YouTube channel, crawling Mondays.
Looking back, I could have potentially like, call them in the same way, right? And facilitate things like the, the, the video version or YouTube version and then the newsletter version. But yes, I, SEO Ooma is perfect. Some people also at the beginning were like, oh, is this SEO fomo or SEO mofo? It's like, But, uh, there was [00:16:00] this room to be playful around it, so I, I liked it.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome man. It gives you a lot more space in the future, right? If you want to maybe even hire people or to collaborate with other people. SS e o FOMO is a nice, it's a nice brand. You can do that under, and it doesn't, that doesn't conflict with it being personally branded, right? You can, you can do a lot more, you have a lot more flexibility with a, an actual brand 'cause it can be whatever you want it to be.
Whereas your personal brand has to stay your personal brand in a sense.
Aleyda Solis: Yeah. Yeah. 100%.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. So can you tell me a little bit about the, sort of the journey that the, the S E F O monies letter has been on since you started? Let's, let's start with how you found the first hundred subscribers, and then let's talk through maybe the first thousand and then the big inflection points, sort of what changed as you, as you grew.
And let's start at the beginning, those first hundred subscribers.
Aleyda Solis: Yeah. So the, I mean, Thankfully when I started the CFO, I already had those 100 subscribers because of my previous news newsletter of the [00:17:00] later SS e o tips, I had I think 1700 and, and what I did was to send that previous newsletter saying, Hey, from now on this is going to become a c Ooma.
O confirmed that you want to continue receiving this. Otherwise, feel free to unsubscribe please and you'll start receiving weekly the latest in, in S E O I I believe that this. The, those first 200 subscribers, though, what? The initial newsletter that I had, the la the s e o tips was very, very organic by pretty much publishing content on my website.
You could see that in the sidebar and at the end of each post, I'll have the newsletter box saying, if you like this, God. If you like this resource, please subscribe for more. Learn for more. And then at the time also I was trying to promote Alida, s e o tips. And I will, like, after I send, and this is something that I continue doing with S e o, fomo, do after I send a newsletter edition, I will share it over social, over Twitter, over LinkedIn [00:18:00] saying, Hey, I'm about to share.
And after I send it, it's like, oh, I have just share about this and that. If you're already subscribed, look for it. Right now. It's, it's, it's, it's good. If you're not, this is your opportunity to subscribe right away. And this is what, how, uh, pretty much ended up having this 1700 or so subscribers at the beginning when I reformatted it or rebranded it to s e o fomo.
And
Louis Nicholls: then I think the. If I'm right, the next inflection point for the newsletter after that was, I think when you started with the, the referral program. Is that, is that more or less, right. So yes. Can you tell me a little bit about the journey between sort of that initial start and then getting to the point where you said, I want to try something different, I'm gonna try referrals.
Can you sort of, what was that phase Like what, what was happening?
Aleyda Solis: So, uh, this is funny because at the beginning, you know, I saw that. After the first month of launching seo, fomo, I had like a low bit, almost as a like a thousand new [00:19:00] subscribers per month because it was something new there. There were not that many Ss e o news list letters like this, et cetera, et cetera.
And of course I had certain reach in the, in the sector thanks to social media, et cetera. Also, every time that I went and spoke at a conference or, or it was during Covid, right? I also pretty much aligned at the time. Did a lot of webinars and every time that I finish a webinar, remember to subscribe to my newsletter, et cetera, et cetera.
And then I realized that of course there was this big curve at the beginning of new subscribers that was going down at some point. 'cause it was. The novelty, right? Like, uh, they were already subscribed and that's it, and they didn't refer it necessarily spontaneously. So I was thinking, what is the best way that I can do to incentivize my already existing subscribers to refer it more to their friends?
So before actually starting with Spar Loop at, at that point, I have to say, at that point, I remember searching for a platform like Spark Loop. And it [00:20:00] didn't existed yet, I have to say. And, and I actually went and saw there were all those with like referral programs in general, not for newsletter, but in general.
And oh my God, they were like difficult to, to configure and set and also very expensive for what I wanted for. Right. And, and I remember going through them. It's like saying, oh my God, all, all this hassle just to make this happen. I'm, I'm not starting our referral program right now. Uh, or a loyalty program right now because it's ridiculous.
And then I thought about then doing the giveaway. And this was literally the, the first thing that I did to incentivize the, the referral of more users. The requirement was to, to register and then, Share it with a couple of other, other people. And for that I was able to, to, to find, I remember a platform for giveaways, for online giveaways that was able to keep the track of this.
And I was able to [00:21:00] literally only use it for this in particular. And the price was also reasonable. So I ended up using it for it and it was amazing. And then the funny. Thing of this is that I, I started the, the qi that was called SEO Form five K Challenge, and this was to reach the five K subscribers at the time.
And this was when I was at. Thousand something to 2000 something subscribers. Right. And I, I was seeing that I wasn't growing as I expected, and so I, I pretty much say, okay, I, I got in touch with this couple of tools that had already got it, gotten in touch with me because they wanted to sponsor the newsletter.
And I say, Hey, this is an opportunity for you to get in front of the subscribers. I want to launch this giveaway. The timing is that, It will end when the newsletter reaches the five K subscribers. And with all of these people who are subscribed and refer during this period of time, they, they're going to [00:22:00] participate to gain your, your tools.
Right? And I will be mentioning you in every single edition until that happens. So they, they accept it. And the funny thing is that after they accept it, Money more got in touch with me because they wanted to be in, they say, oh, I, I want to be in, in that giveaway that you're doing. And I think that in that initial giveaway we had like, Five tools, six tools or something like that.
And it definitely accelerated the growth until we, we, we reach the five K subscribers. Right. And then I continued doing like smaller giveaways until I think it was seven K, eight K, and then I started to. Look again for a solution to help it grow more because I was seeing that it was getting a little bit stuck again and this when I found you, I, once I found Sparlock, I integrated with Sparlock for the referral program to incentivize, yeah, like a shoutout after a couple of subscribers that, that are refer.
[00:23:00] If it is five, then I, I will give you the thank you as part of the newsletter in a section, and if these are 15, you are going to get access to three. Video how to, that I have, these are 30, you, you're going to have a, an ebook from an SEO friend that has an s e o ebook and I am going to give that for free, et cetera, et cetera.
All right? And, and that went really well. And then I realized after some months that you also had included at that point now a giveaway feature. And then I say, okay, this is my opportunity to leverage the new feature to make it grow for further. Feature it like, you know, like literally like. Promoted much more.
Mm-hmm. And this how I think that I did the S e o fomo, I think this was the 10 K or the 20 K, uh, yeah, it's the SS e o FOMO 20 K giveaway that I [00:24:00] did. I literally to, to, to achieve the, the 20 K subscribers I ended up giving. Away like thousands and s e o tools. I don't know, more than 15 tools included, like a big combo box of, of tools.
Then access to. S e o platform and community that is usually paid. Also, mentorship with people one-on-ones. So it, it was a big combo of things and so I, I, I think that I have given, give big, big combos of giveaways. Five K, 10 K, and 20 k like big. Let's say milestones of of the newsletter, and yes, thankfully after the first one, it was much easier thanks to Spark Loop giveaway feature that has highly, highly facilitated the whole, the whole tracking and management and validation.
Louis Nicholls: Indeed. Well, awesome. And I mean, I, there's a couple of different things I love about the, the referral program and the giveaways that you run. So if we talk a little bit about the referral program first, I [00:25:00] think the rewards you have, I mean, they're, they're great. You know, you have this nice ladder of milestones ranging from something that's free and automated for you up to valuable sort of physical items that you can, can send out that your audience wants.
But what I really love about. Your newsletter referral program, I think you do a really good job of is giving those shout outs to people who are making referrals and making it seem like expected behavior. Right? So you are praising, you are thanking people personally in the newsletter. You do it online and on Twitter.
I see it in your, your thread, you say thank you to people who are, are reaching that mark and the, the top referrers of the, the month I think I've seen as well. And I think it's, it's so underrated. Just to go that small extra step and to call these people out by name and say thank you, because it makes everybody else think, oh, this is something that everybody is doing.
I should follow that expected behavior as
Aleyda Solis: well. Yeah, a hundred percent. Especially also when I, I run a giveaway, they win something or they are included as an ss e o to follow. Or some of the resources have been featured in the [00:26:00] newsletter. I also give them a shoutout in social many, many times. This is people who were already have an trio following too, and when they get mentioned, they will reshare it quite quickly.
Right. Oh, thank you, Alida. I'm happy to be featured. This is a big, this was a big golf. For me, or, or, or thank I, I'm, I'm happy to be able to pro, to support the newsletter because this is the way I, I keep up with things. This type of reactions are amazing because they're very spontaneous and this is another way to reach a bigger audience that I don't have yet in many cases too.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I like that you do the same thing for the giveaway, right? You tie those giveaway. Prizes, you tie the giveaways to a concrete milestone that people are, you are all sort of achieving it together, right? Everybody is helping you to hit the 20,000 subscriber mark. So they're feeling good about supporting you, about sort of trying to achieve a concrete number, and also then you have that, yeah, you know, you have those, those [00:27:00] prizes, these amazing prizes.
That are essentially free for you, right? You're, you're getting those free from, from sponsor or sponsors or, or, or partners. Yeah.
Aleyda Solis: Yeah, indeed. This is like a challenge that is like the 20 k challenge. I try to include people to have with, with me, right? I expect to do one. I probably, I should launch it quickly because I'm already 20, 27 0.5 K in subscribers to reach that 30 K, right?
So any big milestone like this, I. I like to get people involved and have this sense of community. Right. I, I am actually expecting, expecting eventually, and, and if, if you are newsletter platform, it's great that they hear this, that they integrate more and more. Community related features that highly, highly facilitate the socialization interaction, feedback, comments within the newsletter platforms directly or with the publications that you type or [00:28:00] connect the newsletter with many, many times will be in the newsletter platform.
Directly, like for example, convert it or, or, or behave or, but, but many of the times also will be in your own WordPress based website or whatever platform you use. Right. But having this sort of features to interact and connect, I, I believe is is very, very powerful because this is something that I have.
Been doing also in my own social media platform. And I believe that if I will have like a little option chatting option or community option for the newsletter below every edition that I, that I send, this is where it will happen too, right? And, and engage even further.
Louis Nicholls: So I want to move on a little bit from, from the growth side of things now, and I, I have, I want to talk about two topics.
Number one, I want to talk about the, the sponsorship side of things. So I wanna talk a little bit about where those sponsors are coming from, how you're acquiring them, what you've learned there in terms of which lots should be sponsored and which not. And then I also wanna talk a little bit about the, the [00:29:00] process that you found for putting the, the newsletter together.
So let's start with the, the sponsorship side of things. Are those, I think you said mostly coming inbound to you at the moment. Yeah. Is that right? Indeed. Are you doing any outbound at all to find sponsors?
Aleyda Solis: No. I have been very thankful that, uh, yes, all of them have come my way or another. In fact, the issue is that I need to say no a lot and what I have learned.
Is that, look, there's so much hassle for me to be dealing with one time sponsors. There's only so much time that, that I have in today and it makes sense for me to go through many times like, like a dozen of pages of agreements or whatever if it is a, an e consulting clients that will spend like. A few thousands or, or even more, right?
I dunno going basis. But if it is a onetime sponsor out there, I tell you if you're, if you want to sponsor us like a newsletter out there, don't make operators to lose time going through a lot of paperwork for a onetime [00:30:00] thing. And potentially you are going to spend like even less than one k. Euros or dollars.
It doesn't make sense, right? So one of the things that I identify right away is like, look, it doesn't make sense for me if you want to sponsor, right? Only one edition. Sorry, I don't have availability for that. A minimum of four editions is the way, so it makes sense to go through even. I need to go through paperwork hassle, and, and then of course, I always first ask what it will be about to take a look at the tool, if it is a tool or a service.
I, I take a look at dimensions. If I don't know the tool, which is rare, but if I don't know the tool, if I don't know the service, I will go on, take a look at what is being said already, and, and validate the quality to ensure that it's high quality and it's something that I would like to buy myself or consume myself.
And, and then of course it gets featured. In a way that, let's say, not too salesly that is actually meaningful and let's say promote a feature or a benefit that the product or the service [00:31:00] will give to the audience while featuring a special offer. I always tell this to the, the sponsors like, give a a little something like 5% off or even like a.
One-on-one extra at the end. Something different for the audience to make it feel special, to incentivize also the, for them, the conversion. So it doesn't take forever. And this is what I, what I try to do. Then on the other hand, I have, I. Like I have sponsored like big platforms that they are not too stress, let's say on the conversion side side of things.
So they use their spot to pretty much give an extra promotion to their resources, to their guys, to their free courses, et cetera, et cetera, that I will be including anyway many times, especially if it is, uh, resourceful and, and, and free. Right. But they. One and they prefer to mix it up so it's not al always to sell ser and promote, but they use it in this other case, which I find it to be [00:32:00] strategic and positive at the end of the day too.
And what I have found that re like remember that I told you I don't want one off subscriber because so much hassle, minimum four. But I also, at the beginning, I had only a single subscriber at the top spot because, This platform had all the money and, and wanted to pay for the top spot, pay more, even exclusivity, whatever.
But that can be also tiring for the audience to see every single time the same, the same brand there. Yeah. So what I did was to have like one off week having other platform services to balance it out so it's not the same vendor, let's say every single time while. Also complying with this other criteria that I mentioned before.
So it's not such a hassle for me changing it every single week. And, and yes, that has worked pretty well. I tend to have with them quarter or agreements for, for every quarter or [00:33:00] every six months maximum because of course the pricing. Will increase with the increase of subscribers. So that is a good frequency to revise the prices and, and yes, it has worked well like that so far.
It is important though to say that there will be a few. Let's say advertisers and you need to, let's say, advise them. And as a consultant myself, I feel like very flexible when doing this. I'm very happy when doing this because this is what I do with clients. At the end of the day, they will come, oh, I want to feature this.
And you know that it's something that your users will likely not click because of the way, mm-hmm. That is worded or because it's you. They don't add a call to action that is clear. Or many times I have had. Also the other situation that potentially they. What do you want? Do you want really a sale or do you want to promote your brand over social network?
Or what do you want? Because based on that, oh, add a link to my [00:34:00] LinkedIn and add a link to my website. But we prefer to promote use cases, but then they come back on a month after saying, Hey, but we haven't. Gotten enough calls saying that it was found by the newsletter, but like, oh, mm-hmm but you wanted to incentivize your use cases, so you shouldn't have done that.
Then if you wanna tell her. So, you know, you need to advise a little bit, even as a, as a, as a, as a expert operator of your newsletter, knowing your audience now, knowing how to sell stuff within the, the platform to say, okay, if you want conversions, Definitely call to action, definitely to your landing pages for that.
If you want to establish your brand, then you can mix it up, going to your resources, to your LinkedIn, where you publish stuff, et cetera, et cetera. It feels crazy, but because as marketers, I think that we all should know this stuff, but many, many times I have had to advise and validate this and tweak things along the way when they were not working out because it wasn't aligned in the first place with the real goals that they had because they [00:35:00] hadn't disclosed it.
Clearly as they should. Mm-hmm. Right. So it's stuff that happens. You learn along the way. Now I'm very, I'm much clearer now whenever I knew. Potential advertiser comes to validate that eventually in the future I might want to, I dunno, hire an assistant to, rather than avoid avoiding having, um, agreement every six months and be more flexible with that.
'cause if I had someone, I guess it wouldn't be so much of a hassle for me to do the negotiation, to have like, More advertiser at the end of the day and very likely end up making more money eventually, et cetera. But yes, I haven't reached that point yet. I guess I happy also by featuring three spots.
This is again, another thing a lot of people say, oh, but you can't make me a section, an extra section at the bottom, whatever. Like, no, I don't want it to make it too noisy or, or too intrusive. Uh, three. Slots are perfect per newsletter. At some point we can see creative ways to do it, [00:36:00] or as I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, like extra presence with the website of the newsletter, et cetera, et cetera.
But no written, the newsletter itself. Um, the, I have gotten also potential sponsor asking me, oh, do you want to send an extra feature? Just. Like showing our latest case study or whatever. No, I want spam. My audience trust is fundamental here, so I'm more than happy to wait and be patient and test things very carefully without burning out my audience.
This is something that I hadn't done even before and I have been a consistent, let's say, share in the SEO community, and I won't blow it up right now just for the sake of a few thousand dollars.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, there's a lot of good advice in there. There's a lot of really interesting stuff around the, the sponsorship side of things.
If you were to sit down today with, with a leader from the past, so with, with a new newsletter operator who is starting out today with a, a similar newsletter and doesn't know any of the stuff that you've learned, [00:37:00] what would be sort of the. The, the one big thing that you would say, oh, here's something that I had to learn the hard way.
Here's, here's a mistake I made, here's something you should, should watch out for or avoid. What's, what sort of one piece of feedback you would, you would give yourself to do differently?
Aleyda Solis: Oh, well, feedback. I, I think that there are quite a few things. Right, but, or advice or, yeah, or advice. A few advice. I will potentially, and I don't know if it was available back then, but convert it.
Uh, the migration to ConvertKit and, and using a platform like ConvertKit that is creator focused. Creator friendly, has make the whole change. I was using a platform that was very well known, but it was not focused on com, on, on, on creators, let's say. So they didn't have the features to facilitate. The, the development of the creation of newsletters as we need, as we want, but more email marketing type of, of, uh, emailing and, and all these extra features [00:38:00] like if you want to scribe or there are certain sections or you want to even some point sell some, some resources or, or digital resources or whatever to give you that option.
And now also with. The, the wrong network of, of newsletters that you can cross refer. So I, I see that there's this group of newsletters that are coming up that have all of these features that can highly, highly, highly facilitate stuff. Also, the integration with you because they have the proper a p i, et cetera, et cetera.
So be very careful at the beginning, which platform you go with, because they can facilitate stuff from making the newsletter as if it was a simple. Blog posts and then distributing it much more easily or not, or, or making it a hassle and then also having to spend a lot for, for it too. That is one thing.
Then another thing, when, when doing the giveaways, it was interesting. I. And also the Referral Pro program. Two things on that, the giveaways. [00:39:00] A mistake that I did is that I got so many tools on vendors wanting to participate. I think it was in the 10 K or the 20 k, I don't remember. But anyway, I ended up having all of this, I dunno, more than 15 tools.
One of them, it was even an access to a learning. S e o type of, of community course, whatever. So you literally had tools and services for all type of ranges of SEOs and unfortunately the person who won this person won and say, this is amazing. I'm so lucky. Thank you very much. But I have just started.
Doing s e o like six months ago. So the one thing that will be actually useful for me is the access to the community to learn more. But all of these tools, sorry, but they are over my head. I won't be making, uh, use of them. I. Feel free to give it to the next person. And I, that was super honest from, from this person who won, and I was really, really thankful, but made me realize that I should bundle my, the [00:40:00] giveaways better.
The giveaways for limb builders, the giveaways for, for content focused SEOs, the giveaways for technical people, the P like so. Mm-hmm. So this is something appealing and you know that the person participating in the giveaway. Really, really want it, not because they want just one thing of many that you're offering.
Right. And finally, I did the mistake and potentially I'm more than happy to give your, uh, to have your advice here because I know that you have now also integration with. How do you, how do you call it, the fulfilling systems to, to send goodies
Louis Nicholls: like, like Printful and other places Indeed. Where you can do the, the physical rewards can be sent out automatically.
Indeed. Exactly.
Aleyda Solis: Yeah, indeed. So one of the mistakes that I did with the rewards starting out is that for the cops, I only ask for, I think it was 35 referrals. And of course, I, I caught. A couple of people like referring to fake emails that they will create, they will subscribe. So, and it's like, I know you're [00:41:00] not doing it well.
Then you also added some, a system to identify that quite quickly, which is amazing, by the way. But then even those who ended up getting those, that, that cop, I say, okay, amazing, A cop, what is it? I, I literally spend like, I dunno, seven euros or five euros or so to. To order a cup, but then I realized that many of these people were like in Asia.
Mm-hmm. Or were in far away countries in South America, in Australia, in like, oh my God. Then I had to realize, I, I realized in the hard way that I had to spend. Pretty much 50 euros or even more to send a cup that was seven euros. And even when they got it after, I dunno, three weeks or so because of customs or whatever, the people will ask for some extra customs.
Cost, whatever to them directly. Not even. Yeah. You bought tax. Yeah. Not even to me, because I will have paid it. And I remember that this [00:42:00] happened with someone from Bangladesh or whatever, and of course for this person they were asking for $15 or something like that. And for this person, $15 was something not trivial.
And I was like, is there a way for me to pay for you? Or how I do it? Like it's like, oh no, I have to already like. Say no thank you. And literally I 10 60 something Euros to send a seven as a seven Euros cup just for it to be reversed or like forwarded back and I was like, This is not viable and it's not very smart for me to be doing this, so I ended up like change it.
It's for anything physical good, it will require many more referrals. I want a lot of digital goods that are as worthy, I have to say, even more meaningful than I could for less referrals. To avoid all of this hassle, if I am going to be spending like quite a bit on sending something, at least let's make it worthy for a few hundred uh, subscribers.
Indeed.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, and [00:43:00] that's the advantage of using something like a printful, like the, the integration we have there, because you, they have fulfillment centers all over the world. So the, the, the fulfillment, the shipping is, is very cheap and it's automated. And then, you know, if you want to say, well, we'll only send to certain countries, then you can also just click the button and say, well, we'll ship it to anywhere inside of the US and Europe, for example.
Or, you know, so you can still win it, you can still get it shipped wherever you want, but uh, you can still get it shipped to you, but you have to choose an address in, in that location. Because of the, the increased shipping cost. Right. So that you don't get hit with a, uh, a hundred dollars bill for sending something to, that's supposed to cost $10 or something like
Aleyda Solis: that.
I, I should definitely start, I I, I actually use Printful for a few of the Yeah. The cups, et cetera, et cetera, and, and send it with them. Mm-hmm. Much more straightforward. But yes, I, I did it myself. I seed, I saw the integration some time ago and it's something that I should definitely go and finally do.
Right. Directly
Louis Nicholls: saves a lot of, a lot of time, and a a lot of headaches. Well, um, Alida, thank you so much for, for joining. Is there anything that you think I, I [00:44:00] should have asked you that you think newsletter operators should know or need to know from your experience that you, you want to share? Yeah,
Aleyda Solis: no, the, the only, the only potential last.
Thought on this is that I have never been so excited to be doing something that I believe that has so much growth opportunity and is in the right moment. I feel like with newsletters right now is how I felt with ss e o back in 2007. Right? It's growing. Mm-hmm. That's so much. Many, many operators, different areas, different topics, opportunities, angles that haven't been tackled and covered.
So for example, I started marketing, fomo. Another newsletter also a three, four months ago. It has more than 1500 subscribers, very organic and naturally from the ones that I refer from S e o, FOMO to. And uh, literally like I expect that in the next couple of months to put a little bit of more effort.
Promoted independently too. But yes, I believe that there's so much opportunity right now and highly, highly, [00:45:00] highly incentivized to move forward to not overthink the the, I know that the people who are scared to write many times, but also. There are many tools nowadays also that we can leverage for inspiration, right?
Not necessarily to make do it on autopilot, but for inspiration for sure, that you can leverage to do something meaningful and rewarding and can be attractive for a lot of people out
Louis Nicholls: there. I. Yeah, definitely. Well, where can people find you? Where can they find seo, fomo, and marketing? Fomo and, and follow along?
Aleyda Solis: Yeah, so you have seo, fomo, dot co.co, and then marketing fomo.com too for you to scribe. I am reachable at ela da so list.com. If you search for, Aleida, A A L E Y D A. I am the first one in Google, as it should be, as an ss e o. And, and then I'm also quite active in Twitter now X or whatever could be called in in the next mm-hmm.
Days at Aleida is [00:46:00] my handle. And then I'll also, in LinkedIn, I, I'm always sharing tips over there too, and I'm very happy to connect and to share. Anything else regarding my journey as a new newsletter operator is something that I, uh, really. Quite enjoyed
Louis Nicholls: it. Awesome. Well, I'll put all those links in the show notes.
It has been great to chat with you about this. We are so excited by, you know, the success that you've had and how well it seems to be going now and, and the future. And I hope that we can have you back when you're even, I don't know, 50,000 or maybe even a hundred thousand subscribers in, in a year or two, we can have you back and, and talk about how that journey has been and, and what's next.
And thank you so much.
Aleyda Solis: Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thanks
Louis Nicholls: for listening to this episode of the Send and Grow podcast. If you liked what you heard, here are three quick ways that you can show your support. Number one, leave us a five star rating or review in the podcast app of your choice.
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