Learn from Web3Daily: How to grow a newsletter from 0 to 55k in 28 months | Episode 1 | The LetterStack Podcast

Sebastian Lindner and Chevy Cassar grew Web3Daily, a daily crypto and web3 newsletter, from 0 to 55k in the span of 28 months. Learn how the Web3Daily team grew their newsletter to eventually getting acquired by The Milk Road, one of the biggest newsletter brands in the web3 space. 

Renganathan Padmanabhan talks to Sebastian to understand their newsletter journey, from their origins in building products to making the newsletter content a product in itself. He also unpacks what it takes to build a crypto newsletter with trust and integrity in an ecosystem which is riddled with scams and misinformation even in 2025.

Learn from Web3Daily and more such successful content creators at LetterStack.co, the one and only destination you need to head to create, grow, and build a successful newsletter business.

Learn more: letterstack.co

Creators and Guests

Host

Renganathan Padmanabhan

Marketing to niche audiences? I can help.

Guest

Seb Lindner

Recently sold my company (Web3 Daily) to Milk Road. Currently figuring out what to work on next 🤔

What is The LetterStack Podcast?

Build your newsletter and achieve online growth, with high quality content from the top 1% of successful newsletter creators across the world

00:00:00 - 00:01:20
[Music] welcome to the lest tag podcast I am renga and I run lest t.co the One-Stop shop where any Creator or brand could understand how to run grow and build a new setup business and who better to learn it from than these new statup creators who have hit it big and been able to run successful new statup business and they would be happy to share their secrets with you we are going to share with you one such new Creator guest number one Sebastian lner Sebastian ran web 3 daily a daily newsletter on the state of crypto and

00:00:40 - 00:01:43
web3 and they recently sold to the milk road which is one of the biggest newsletters you must have heard about but before we get into that we're going to hear from Seb himself and I want to make sure that you understand that this is one half of a wonderful uh Duo I would say who ran web 3 daily Seb along with but Chevy actually ran the web3 daily newsletter which was a daily occurrence so we're going to understand how they went through it the grind about growing it building it and you know

00:01:11 - 00:02:25
writing daily that's that's Quite a feat in itself so let's get right into it talk to Seb Seb welcome to the show thank you so much thanks for having me I'm excited to be here sure and Seb before we get into the N cries and we talk about the makings of web 3 daily I would like for our viewers to get to know some quick facts about web3 daily so would you mind talking about your daily newsletter or rather your last News subscriber count before you went over to mil c yeah absolutely so um we started web 3 daily

00:01:47 - 00:03:03
and I think we we posted a few sort of test Publications in February 2022 uh we posted our very first public uh publication on the 1st of March of 2022 um we ended up running that for about 2 and 1/2 years um before we got acquired by milk Road as you say uh when we got acquired we had about 55 I think just a bit over 55,000 subscribers wow we had a pretty good good average open rate I think it was a little bit over 42% so you know it wasn't amazing but it was definitely higher than the average um

00:02:26 - 00:03:36
and we had a really shot well we we had a really really uh engaged audience so in other words every single day when we would send out a newsletter we would get tens or maybe occasionally hundreds of responses of people you know either interacting clicking with our tic like well certainly clicking on the Articles we'd probably get thousands of those per day but um uh you know people responding commenting with their thoughts their ideas uh interesting cool things that we should check out um so it was a it was

00:03:01 - 00:04:13
super cool experience it was a it was a great great business to to start and run and scale and and ultimately we sold it too which is really cool yeah so let's let's hear all about it let's start from the very beginning could you describe how you and Chevy met you know how did you come about this idea yeah so Chevy and I have a funny story in that uh we are both from Australia originally uh from Melbourne kidding yeah uh but we both in the US now um and uh we've actually known each other

00:03:36 - 00:04:46
for uh you know over 20 years um and we met because our moms are both actually friends they sort of like family friends um and we knew each other we kind of met each other when we were young kids but we didn't really kind of get to know each other at all until we were in our sort of mid 20s or early to mid 20s had a previous company um which I built and ran um and I actually sold that as well just before moving over to to the US in 2019 um and that was a a short stays accommodation company so it was

00:04:13 - 00:05:17
nothing to do with crypto nothing not even really to do with tech um but it was it was a good company and Chevy had and that kind of uh Chevy had a an e-commerce company so he was you know he really I rode the coat tales of the uh exponential growth of Airbnb Chevy rode the coattails of the exponential growth of the Drop Shipping sort of boom and the amazing cycle around around that sort of stuff and and Facebook marketing and he was really really amazing at at growth marketing Facebook marketing he

00:04:43 - 00:05:53
still is awesome um so we ended up uh when we were both living in Melbourne we would catch up all the time um and just talk about you know business ideas and things that we had learned and things we'd listen to on different podcasts and sorts of different things like that um and this is actually the sixth company web 3 daily was the sixth startup that I've I've started um most of them have not gone that well um but uh you know two of them this the second one which has gone pretty well and you know

00:05:18 - 00:06:41
ultimately sold it um and uh but the background of web 3 daily and how we actually and why we started the newsletter is that I had a pre company um which I started in 2020 um ran that for about a year and a half or so right in the middle of covid or yeah it pretty much started about the start of Co um okay so uh you know I saw that there was this clear trend of people you know working from home and and consuming a lot more digital content really and so I came up with this idea to uh work with with creators and and

00:06:01 - 00:07:03
people who already had an audience mostly sort of on Instagram or you know to some extent Tik Tok or YouTube a lot of YouTubers that we worked with with the idea that the thesis that if we can help them monetize just 1% of their existing audience the numbers make a ton of sense and so you know we're working with creators who had 400,000 600,000 maybe a million followers across different platforms so it's quite a lot of subscribers or followers was not newsletter we didn't work with anyone

00:06:32 - 00:07:37
with newsletters but they all had YouTube channels and Instagram and things and uh anyway worked on this company for about a year and a half um I actually raised a small amount of funding uh an angel round of investment for that business and we were able to hire Chevy as uh as our content writer as our growth marketer as uh you know um someone who could help us with the sales side of things cut a very long story short that business actually didn't work out very well because what we realized

00:07:04 - 00:08:09
was that people who were getting free content for years and years and they'd followed these creators for free didn't really get excited about paying for Content um even if the content that we created we basically created these like these courses these really high quality courses um but they didn't sell very well so you know our estimate was 1% of audience we would convert into paying we ended up converting about 0.1 or 2% of an audience into paying customers so after working with a couple of creators

00:07:37 - 00:08:43
we decided not to go ahead with that particular company but one absolutely wonderful thing came out of building that company which was uh that Chevy and I realized we can work together and in fact we love working together you know we're just a great team we kind of have very complimentary skills you know I was focus on the business development side of things Chevy's really focused on the marketing side of things and I would say we're both focused on the product/ content side of things although Chevy is

00:08:10 - 00:09:25
a much better copywriter than I am I would say but but in any case you know I I I have a background in working as a product manager so I have a a particular interest and and I would say unique skill set in talking to customers talking to real users understanding sort of what people want and pain points and all those sorts of things so we're just a really good team um we decided after you know honestly banging our head against the wall for like a year and a half trying to make this previous company work um we decided

00:08:46 - 00:09:52
to uh change direction entirely and we thought both Chevy and I uh not bad at copywriting I mean he was he was really good at writing I was not bad at writing um we both you know actually we were looking at our slack you know we had all these different channels marketing and business development and and product and all these different things and we had this one random Channel which was just like web 3 and we looked at our slack messages and there was like a team of four or five people who I worked on in

00:09:20 - 00:10:25
the previous company and just that web 3 channel was just crazy all the time you know everyone was excited about like the things that happened in crypto V yeah yeah exactly you know and like you know like the marketing channel was like crickets you know there's nothing going on the sales Channel you know as but the web 3 Channel and crypto Channel there's always interesting exciting new things that we wanted to talk about and and and chat to you know to each other about so we're like all right we have a passion

00:09:52 - 00:11:05
in this space we like the idea of you know uh building a newsletter and the and the really important thing and the uh the big Insight from the previous company was that instead of building an audience and uh sorry instead of just building a product and then trying to find an audience to sell it to what we wanted to do with web 3 daily was build an audience and then figure out what products they would ultimately want to buy or what products you know would be valuable to them in the future um so yeah so we basically built our audience

00:10:29 - 00:11:50
and we decided to focus on uh starting web 3 daily and uh yeah I guess uh the rest is history yeah and you touched upon a very good point with the web three Channel you know lighting up like a Christmas tree as compared to the other channels coming up which is pretty much the state of the world today in thatb 32 in 2024 but even if you think about web 3 in general uh going around the the industry or the niche in which you you were focusing on was not very inclusionary to speak of like people don't really understand what stable

00:11:09 - 00:12:25
coins are what do Hodel mean I mean you and I we probably speak the language but a lot of people feel alienated because there's not a lot of Education going around was that kind of a good draw for you folks to step into for that matter yeah you you sort of hit the nail on the head in that so we had this idea that uh language seems to be a big barrier so we truly truly believe in blockchain technology especially the crypto crypto space um like the crypto use case for blockchain I think nfts and and smart

00:11:48 - 00:13:10
contracts and things are very interesting but I really believe in the crypto use case and um and we believe longterm you know not like tomorrow or next week or in a month but like in five years 10 years 20 years and Beyond I really do think that it has a you know the crypto space will have a massive impact or continue to have a huge impact on the financial system um but so because of that fundamental belief we thought that it's important for people to actually understand the space and we thought that uh a lot of people sort of

00:12:28 - 00:13:40
got scared of the space and decided not to jump in literally because they didn't understand language around it so you know as soon as you start talking about a wallet or a protocol or you know nfts like what is that like just like random letters you know people don't understand like what that actually means and so we thought the scams were not helping I guess well exactly then you've got that it just compounds so you've got this kind of in different language and then you've got the media and a lot of you

00:13:03 - 00:14:19
know uh sort of familiar people you know Instagram celebrities and stuff uh going on going to court for promoting these scams and and whatever and it's not not a really a helpful and productive um uh I guess way for people to start understanding the crypto space or it's not not not very positive for the industry itself but you know we sort of could see through those in that the fundamental like the underlying technology is extremely valuable it's really about and and and the more people

00:13:43 - 00:14:57
that actually have a better understanding we thought the the less people that will actually get caught up in these scams and so we decided to use web 3 daily where if you and you can go back and look at our whole sort of past catalog of all of our articles and everything they're still still available um but we would use been an early adopter of web 3 daily from probably the days yeah yeah I know from probably a couple of months in maybe two or three months in like you would very very early subscriber so thank you um but yeah we

00:14:19 - 00:15:36
we would use a lot of analogies examples and things that people already understood so instead of you know explaining protocol or like um you know layers like layer one layer 2 layer three in terms of in like vague terms we would use something like the iPhone and you know the the actual phone itself being like a layer one the App Store being like a layer 2 and then apps being layer three essentially and so you know we would use examples that people already understood to explain these supposedly complex Concepts um in plain

00:14:58 - 00:16:03
English and uh and using language that everyone understands that's amazing and I I've been like I said I've been reading it through the early days it was a refreshing breath of fresh air beyond all the crypto language jargon heavy that I used that was the other thing that was the other thing and there they probably appealed to a different target audience which has been in the ecosystem understands the language going ahead but tell me this so you and Chevy decide okay there's a huge white SP in

00:15:30 - 00:16:47
educating and bringing non-believers into the crypto ecosystem and you decide to start writing about it but wasn't writing daily like a grind I mean how did you folks manage to stay consistent and stay you know motivated to put out content daily yeah so [Music] um it wasn't that much of a grind in that like we were excited about it every single day and I still love I love reading you know milk road now and just you know other media Outlets um I just find the space just fascinating and I and I and I

00:16:09 - 00:17:23
love reading about the innovations that are happening in the space um as well as sort of you know making my own predictions about the market and seeing how that uh you know is accurate or inaccurate based on what you know what happens in the world big world which milro does that now too with its I think the bar of exactly exactly um but the so so that's that's sort of like the the the very short answer but but the much longer and probably honestly more helpful answer to your audience is that

00:16:46 - 00:18:03
through all of our previous businesses and especially my Airbnb business which I um which I again I I ran it for about 5 years the the most important thing and something that I I realized very very early was the power and value of systems and processes so we developed a system that would allow us to produce really high quality content pretty quickly um and certainly very frequently I mean literally we we wrote three original articles every single day well Monday to Friday um we published three original

00:17:23 - 00:18:36
articles Monday to Friday and we had a A system that would allow us to sort of create high quality content quickly um we broke our every single email down into the same structure every single day so it always had uh something that was cool and kind of like interesting like a new I don't know new game or something that had come out or something just something interesting then we had the important article which was you know there's usually one or two top stories per day um in the crypto space things move very very quickly so

00:18:01 - 00:19:13
you know uh sometimes it's a super positive thing like a Bitcoin ETF being approved sometimes it's a super negative thing like you know the SEC shutting down exactly Al researching FTX or SEC some news but either way there is always like some important thing and then then we would have an advertisement which I'll talk about in a second and then the Fourth Article was a um which was our third original article was called educate so it was some interesting story that we could write about where we could

00:18:37 - 00:19:42
teach our audience about some area of crypto so it might have been like you know ZK rollups or something like that which probably doesn't mean a lot to most people but we could explain you know that this company is using them in this particular way and now even though ZK rollups means basically nothing you know you could see the application of it and and hopefully get a better understanding and and over time if you read our newsletter for 6 months or 12 months you really will understand these

00:19:09 - 00:20:25
these weird sounding terms and um and hopefully get excited about the space yeah I I tell you this because I always look forward to the term definitions in your way because I always thought about okay how are you going to show me stable coins and talk about it in a I should prob even if I were not in crypto I did not invest and those used to be really hilarious look forward to the Daily News setup but you and shev we make it look like a cakewalk I'm sure that in spite of you being motivated and you having a

00:19:47 - 00:20:58
great system or Sops in place uh it must have seemed like quite a bit of work because you're not writing you're also launching and Publishing it and sending it out to least 10 ,000 subscribers and more so did you eventually just it was it just the two of you or did you have a team for research or for assets we so it was really really cool one of the amazing things about having a building an audience first company um which is pretty much every newsletter type of business I guess some some companies

00:20:23 - 00:21:22
have you know the company first and then they build the newsletter but we went the other way around um um something which is really cool is that people sort of feel like they know you and because they feel like they know you they feel like they they uh are able to email you just out of the blue like code email and it's easy to do you just literally press reply which is cool um I was I was grateful for that you know most of the feedback that we got was super positive and exciting some of it was a bit

00:20:52 - 00:22:02
critical and and and you know honestly constructive um but the really cool thing was that we had a ton of people I mean probably uh I mean it was maybe one or two a month at a minimum um and in certain times significantly more than that reaching out to us being like hey I love what you guys do like can I work for you can I can I please write articles for you can I please help with your you know Business Development can I please help with research or some other product or whatever that you know that

00:21:26 - 00:22:30
that that we have going on yeah um so we worked with I and I ended up I would almost always jump on a call with someone if they responded to an email and they said we love what you guys are doing and I'd love to work with you or contribute in some way you know help manage your social media or something like that I'd almost always jump on a call with them um and then we would have like a 30 to 60-minute um conversation I'd just get a a feeling for who they are and what type of person they are and

00:21:59 - 00:22:58
then I I most of the time I would add them to our sort of internal slack group um so we had a slack Channel which had maybe about 15 or 16 people in the end of just just random readers who had you know got in touch with friend of web three daily kind of thing yeah like really like exactly it was like the Inner Circle and it was really cool cuz we would be able to uh throw out ideas and be like hey we're thinking about launching this random like course type thing or what do you think like how

00:22:29 - 00:23:39
would you feel if we worked with this as a this company as a sponsor and we'd get like some really really like honest feedback as opposed to you know having to go out to 50,000 people and and asking them we would just go to 15 people um so anyway we ended up working with the team in the end was myself doing mostly focus on Business Development Chevy mostly focused on growth marketing so getting more subscribers and he was the head of content we had an amazing writer um and we went through a couple of different writers

00:23:03 - 00:24:15
but we had uh one she was a contractor and she was absolutely great um uh and then we ended up having a social media manager who was also amazing he was based out of India but he was and he was just just so good he worked like around the clock he was just constantly online sound like me though yeah yeah exactly exactly so I don't know what I'm Z you guys working but uh but it was but he he was just so so awesome and then um and then we also had some some sales guys uh we had two two sales guys who were also

00:23:39 - 00:24:40
contractors um and they helped us a lot from the business development side of things that's amazing and we're going to break down the next couple of questions Into You Know Your Role and how did sponsors or collaborators reach out to you from the Enterprise side of things to get sponsorships collabs you know which one might be the case and then let's also try to break down how did you and Chevy end up talking about marketing how did you grow it to 55,000 subscribers like you described so so

00:24:10 - 00:25:41
let's take the first part how how did sponsorships come about did they come right away or did they you know did it take a time to come so we had we had an interesting situation the crypto space what I didn't realize and what I didn't foresee um but uh it it worked out um okay for us in the end was that building a crypto newsletter essentially means that you are betting on the market and our newsletter was entirely tied like the revenue um was basically tied to the market so in other words we launched our

00:24:54 - 00:26:05
newsletter in March of 2022 by May 2022 we had like 6,000 subscribers and Luna crashed by October September October FTX crashed we had about 14 half th000 subscribers FTX crashed and at that point we kind of had like a pivotal decision it was you know do we keep going and and just keep powering through or do we change tact I mean we've only done you know six or seven or eight months or something worth of work at that point so it wasn't a huge loss um but but we really really I mean it came

00:25:31 - 00:26:53
down to a couple of things firstly we believed in what we were doing secondly we loved doing it and thirdly even though the market seemed to have sort of crashed um I mean it did crash um we still had the mindset that the crypto space as a whole as an industry would continue to grow exponentially over the next sort of probably 10 or 20 years and I I'm not sure if you know I'm not sure if we had planned to continue to work on the newsletter for 10 or 20 years but we could have and uh and and either way we

00:26:12 - 00:27:44
we knew we really truly believe that the the industry would bounce back I say this because um even when we only had 6,000 subscribers before the Luna crash we started getting like reach out like in inbound requests for from companies asking to sponsor our newsletter um so that was that was really really cool and then um we I I kind of tried to figure out the the strategy and and the system that I could put into place to start doing a lot more sort of outbound um uh like Outreach to different companies right and then when

00:26:58 - 00:28:02
FTX crashed it actually didn't impact things immediately it actually took it had about a 4 to six month lag there was we were still getting quite a lot of sponsorships over you know the end of that year um 2022 and would this be sorry to interpret you but would this be the protocol companies or are these the exchanges coming through yeah all sorts of different companies um we basically tried to work with companies that had some sort of relevance either to web 3 or to the finance industry it could be

00:27:30 - 00:28:32
traditional Finance because a lot of our readers a lot of our audience was interested in investing and personal finance and traditional Finance but they were obviously also interested in the blockchain space in web 3 so we had some you know some games we had protocols we had um we we we had pretty strict requirements around who we would and wouldn't work with um because we definitely didn't want to work with any sort of like you know pump and dump schemes or like nft projects that would

00:28:01 - 00:29:02
just literally like steal everyone's money like we and we and I'm very happy to say that we actually never ever did never once I think every single company that we've worked with is still in business which is great and um and and the the bigger the companies the better sort of in general and we ended up working with some really really cool companies um I mean there was uh you know mythical games is a big web 3 um gaming company they were awesome we worked with TechCrunch for their um

00:28:31 - 00:29:49
their crypto sessions we worked with you know consensus and and a bunch of the crypto conferences and and um and conventions that was cool um bunch of protocols all sorts of stuff um but very very two I want to say two super important things number one and this is probably like one of the the the biggest insights of that I could ever give to any news Builder anyone who's even interested in building a newsletter is that while building you know figuring out how to get subscribers is helpful figuring out how to get sponsors is is

00:29:11 - 00:30:27
helpful and that'll keep keep you know keep things going um if you don't have a great product like if the writing part itself is not interesting like nothing else matters literally nothing else matters so you know it'll either be become too expensive to to acquire subscribers because you'll get so much churn you'll get so many unsubscribes or you know you won't get um repeat customers in terms of companies paying for ad space um and that just becomes uh I mean it's impossible to run a business if you

00:29:48 - 00:31:18
if you don't have at least some portion of your your the companies you work with being repeat customers um and so the other thing that was the first point which is like honestly the most important Insight like the product is everything like you have to have a good product as a baseline that's table Stakes right and the second thing I was going to say is that um from a uh a business development perspective you should have some some sort of um like Target audience or some sort of uh group of companies that you

00:30:33 - 00:31:46
decide that that you will work with and a group of companies that you decide you won't work with we we made the decision very very early on that the crypto space in itself might be tainted by you know people like Sam bankman freed and the FTX and and whatever but we as a company were not going to be you know we had a high reputation and we would only work with companies who had held themselves to an equally High reputation and standard exactly and so um so that was very very in very important for us and

00:31:10 - 00:32:23
uh and we said no to a lot of companies um plenty of companies wanted to advertise with us and wanted to give us you know 10 or 20,000 and we're like I'm sorry like I would love to take the money but it totally goes against our I mean we can't promote you know a random nft project that we have never ever heard of the Twitter was account the Twitter account was created you know 2 weeks ago and like what are the chances this is a long-term project basically none um so I think that was that was really important

00:31:45 - 00:32:57
for us and our growth um and uh yeah I mean it worked out well for us in the end that's amazing because I tell you this because we come across several newsletters which is usually content Shilling Shilling Shilling content Shilling again and it it's tough to make a business especially when you are less than 10,000 subscribers I get it know it it gets to you uh to get to that 10,000 subscriber Mark and probably after that it gets easier maybe it it so but until you get that any source of income is

00:32:23 - 00:33:24
going to be great and especially in the crypto ecosystem true it's hard to trust people because all of them seem trustworthy until they turn out otherwise and it's a short span of time to actually build the trust too and I I totally get you know when you said that you probably turned away more than you know you accepted so that's that's great to know and let's come back to the writing part that you talked about the writing is key and being able to distribute that writing of course

00:32:53 - 00:34:06
newsletters are a great source and by the way which network where you focus on where you on be be yeah we started on convertkit and then we moved over to beehive um about uh about a year before we sold any any specific reasons there said yeah we um you know I had the belief that uh well behive I don't think existed it it might have like just launched um when we started our newsletter so so and and I didn't want to bet on a company that had just launched I mean it was it was ultimately our platform right is like the thing

00:33:30 - 00:34:43
that um that uh if it went away I mean that would have a a fatal impact on our company and so uh so we started with convertkit which was tried and tested and you know um they accepted crypto newsletters because there were some platforms out there that didn't um understand yeah exactly and I I loved the idea that convertkit had um you know grown like being somewhat bootstrapped like mostly bootstrapped or they hadn't gone down the Venture fund you know they might have taken Angel invest investors

00:34:06 - 00:35:22
but they hadn't gone down the Venture Capital path um and anyway so we started with convertkit and honestly it was it's a pretty good platform and we had really high average open rate we had a much higher average open rate on convert kit than we did when we moved over to beehive um I I don't know if that's because of the deliverability or if that's because of how convertkit you know what they called opened compared to what beehive called opened like there's a lot of like blackbox things which are

00:34:43 - 00:36:01
not very clear um but going talk about those in a separate episode with with the next too so that's great that's perfect that would be a really interesting episode um but the Beehive side of thing so we moved over mostly because of the analytics that they provided and um they were able to provide much more valuable analytics for us um and uh and it was also significantly cheaper um you know it was it was way cheaper on beehive compared to convert kit and over time you know a year and a half into our journey beehive

00:35:23 - 00:36:45
had become a lot more mature and uh they offered more functionality um um you know interestingly so my biggest fear in moving over to beehive was the idea that they had taken Venture Capital funding because you know that is a dangerous game in other words uh you know I've been I've worked with companies startups who have taken tens of millions of dollars in in Venture funding and their objective at that point is to get to $100 million you know or even a billion dollars and they'll do everything they

00:36:04 - 00:37:22
can to achieve that yeah exactly and so I was a bit nervous about that because I know over time and this is not a not a slight on on beehive at all like you know good on them you know if that's the game they want to play you know they should continue to build they they've built an amazing product um and I'm sure that eventually the the founders and the board and whoever else will get a great great outcome if that's the the direction they want to go but uh I was nervous about that because if they were

00:36:42 - 00:37:46
to sell before we sold our company and the purchaser was sort of like a private Equity Firm who didn't actually know anything about running you know uh email uh software or anything like that it could have really really impacted us like could have impacted deliverability could have impacted just our business as a whole and so I was a bit tentative to move over to beehive um but ultimately that uh you know the the pros outweighed the cons um in terms of the analytics and stuff that they provided and also

00:37:15 - 00:38:23
it's like a better user interface like there's a lot of Pros to to beehive convertkit was a good platform I'm not uh I'm I I don't think it was a bad platform but um I would say we almost like essentially like outgrew it um and it was so much cheaper on beehive and so you know amazing yeah because I'm yeah we are on convert kid yeah we are on convert kid too and I feel that the way and again this is not choosing one platform against the other but the speed at which beehive has been

00:37:49 - 00:38:59
shipping amazing isn't it it's very impressive amazing yeah Tyler and his team are on fire especially in the last few months so yeah but but that's a good point so so yeah so let's let's actually get down on the path if if you're talking about beehive and it's capabilities to promote how did you and Chevy end up promoting and growing it to to 55k how did that look like yeah so that's a good question this is probably the other big Insight um for for anyone any of your audience to to take

00:38:24 - 00:39:45
away as I said sort of at the start of the episode we we decided to build an audience and then figure out what they wanted and you know with the idea to ultimately do the same thing as what you know the same mistake as our previous company which was you know you know how do we monetize a free audience right but the the value the advantage we had was that we owned the audience and so we ultimately you know could monetize their attention as opposed to the them our our audience so we did have some B Toc sort

00:39:04 - 00:40:28
of um consumer products paid products that we we developed but mostly like 90% or more of our Revenue came from ad space from from selling ads and that was B2B so companies would purchase ad space within our newsletter and so uh the interesting thing was that we had set out to build a free audience and then monetize our free audience but we stumbled Upon A Better Business model which was build a free audience and then monetize their attention and sell to companies you know B2B sales is generally easier um or

00:39:46 - 00:41:02
higher ticket than than b Toc um certainly was in this instance and so we um yeah I mean I I think that we we figured out our system in terms of how to sell and what the package we played around with the packages a lot and they it's complicated because they do change and evolve like our list changes the market changes you know maybe our audience demographics you know we we'll have a a a focus on a particular area of the world and you know then our audience demographics changes and like different things like

00:40:23 - 00:41:39
that um uh can can really impact your uh the the the way that you you sell the ads um but yeah we we figured it out in the end it was really good awesome and and where did you acquire most of your subscribers was it Facebook ads was it yeah so we had a couple of different things I mean in the early days we tried everything we did you know cross cross promotions yeah exactly like like probably like honestly at at least 20 or 30 different tactics we did like cross promotions we did giveaways we did um

00:41:02 - 00:42:08
you know uh you know purchasing you know of course like Facebook ads we tried Reddit Twitter you know Kora um like in fact we tried to do like an organic growth strategy around like Reddit and Kora where we would just like respond to every single you know question about like what is a wallet or what is a whatever protocol or something like that right um um and then we would just at the very bottom like have a thing saying oh by the way like we have a newsletter so if you're interested you know check

00:41:34 - 00:42:52
out web 3 daily um but uh in the end um there were sort of two main things that worked number one you know the the simplest thing ever I mean in terms of most straightforward and typical is just Facebook ads Facebook and Instagram I mean those that meta has so much data on people it is unbelievable um it's it's crazy uh you know way way better for us than Google ads way better for us than than Twitter or or anything else um and the second thing the other yeah what do the other channel yeah the second thing which um I

00:42:15 - 00:43:18
I can't go into too many details about but ultimately but I can tell you at a high level was basically like a partnership that we did with a big crypto app and we would develop like crypto specific content for them and then they would uh release it to their audience and then they would you know basically have like a little field where it's like oh by the way like if you want to stay up to date with crypto news sign up for web 3 daily and we would pay for everyone who ended up subscribing to web

00:42:46 - 00:43:54
3 daily through that app and that was amazing that was like the the biggest growth hack for us um that's probably like an evolved form of guest content or sponsored content as it used to be exactly exactly it's it's it's similar to that um but uh the the and and if we were to continue to grow and if we were to have raised you know funding and stuff like that I would have put all of our money towards these growth Partnerships and tried to figure out tried to connect with every single

00:43:21 - 00:44:27
crypto app that I possibly could on the App Store um and and try to be there like educ ation arm or their content arm or whatever um for free but the catch is they have to have this little you know by the way sign up you know sign up for web 3 daily if you want to want to hear more um that was the best growth hack for us but I mean that partnership probably took about 6 months to develop I mean we were on calls it it was a um essentially like an Enterprise sort of partnership and uh and they were sending

00:43:53 - 00:45:08
us a a lot of subscribers um and we were we ended up pay them um you know quite a bit of money over over a period of time but that was our best growth hack for sure um and yeah I mean we were we were well set up in the end which is I think uh one of the main reasons why we were interesting to to milk Road um and and the guys who ended up acquiring us awesome and so so let's talk about the quick timeline so you start in March 2022 would that be right and and it got sold pretty recently I guess August 24

00:44:31 - 00:45:43
yep y right so that's I would say two and a half years and years that's I would say that's exponential growth for a newsletter considering that you went off the beaten route on a niche which is again very unconventional riddled with a lot of misinformation so doing education and doing the right thing about getting the sponsorship with the most most ethical players in the space which is going to be hard to vet considering the changing conditions of the market so I think that's all in all it's Quite a feat on

00:45:08 - 00:46:17
the Distribution on the sponsorship on the subscriber acquisition side so it it to me at least and I'm in the newsletter space and I feel that that's quite remarkable but if let's say you were to start today I know there's the ad Networks on newsletters are far more evolved there are way more I would say formal Partnerships for newsletters to collaborate and cross post from each other so is there anything that you would want to tell our viewers on what they could do today if they were to

00:45:41 - 00:47:08
start web 3 daily themselves yeah yeah definitely so I would say um I would say the ad networks are amazing I mean definitely start out with them and we used some ad Network companies um um uh especially in the early days but even even in the later days whenever we had you know available ad space which wasn't purchased in a flat fee model um I would say and maybe this is a bit of a hot take but um related to the companies that you work with not all companies are going to get the same results so as a company if you're

00:46:26 - 00:47:51
looking to sponsor a newsletter just be aware of that for us B2B companies actually didn't do as well as Betto C companies betc actually got ended up getting way way way more signups or you know connect your wallet or whatever it was whatever the call to action ended up being for our audience BTC was was more valuable but for other companies you know B2B is they should focus all of their attention on B2B companies so it sort of depends on your list but I would say sort of I would call attention to the idea that uh be if

00:47:08 - 00:48:13
you're a company looking to sponsor a newsletter be aware of what you're looking to do right because the really valuable thing about newsletters is that we can tell a story so we ended up doing a minimum of 3-day ad spend but usually people would do at least 5day or the our best selling uh package was 10day we also had a 20-day and uh and and and larger than that but but the 10day one was the typical one that we sold because we could tell a story you know the first 3 days was awareness like what is this

00:47:41 - 00:48:37
company this is the very first time I'm hearing about this company you know I'm not going to buy from them but I'm interested to hear about them and then the next like 3 to 4 days was like the consideration it's like oh okay like I know about them now what can they do for me like you know where 's the value for me and then the last sort of like 2 to three days depending cuz we would do 10 days like Monday to Friday and then Monday to Friday the last like probably Wednesday Thursday Friday of that that

00:48:09 - 00:49:11
that second week would be the you know the um we would have the call to action um and that's the conversion portion of the campaign and over those three pieces of content we'd be able to tell a story and we would be able to like really like help our users understand like who is this company what do they stand for why do they exist and and and what can they do for me because in the end like that's what everyone wants to know like what what can they do for me you know why should I give them my money why should I

00:48:41 - 00:49:59
give them my time or my attention or anything like that um so uh yeah I I think that you'll definitely like depending on the company companies usually get a cheaper sort of um you know CPM like cost per you know thousand subscribers or whatever um through or signups through Facebook or Instagram but maybe you can get like a more engaged uh sort of User Group through an email newsletter um and marketing through a newsletter I think there's I think it really depends on the company and for some companies newsletter

00:49:19 - 00:50:26
marketing is amazing and other companies I wouldn't even try it um so unless you find a very very niche and and valuable newsletter who has exactly the audience that you're going after right and then that's that's actually pretty telling because it totally depends on how saturated the niche is in getting right adjacent newsletters in the space which probably not be competition or probably not be doing the same thing that you do do so it's always going to be an exploratory phase but I think there are

00:49:53 - 00:51:06
way more options now than when you started I believe like and yeah I think so in terms of like ad networks and and stuff like that you mean or yeah and AD networks too for that matter because I don't think beehives ad network was as a vault as as we see today um compared to that so one last thing though if if uh now that you know you have probably how's your current status like so Chevy is still working at milk Road I believe as head as head of content yeah exactly yeah so he moved over to

00:50:30 - 00:51:30
the head of content for milk road which is amazing um and he's he's loving it and uh yeah he gives me the updates and uh he's very excited to be working there which is which is awesome and there's like a a a significant team you know maybe 14 or 15 people or something over there at the moment I don't know if they've grown or um at this point but that you know they're a big a much bigger team than than just the the small you know him and I or him and I and a rer or you know even with the social

00:51:00 - 00:52:15
media guy and the sales people like that's still like six people you know um and so work so Chevy's working at milk Road I am no longer involved with milk Road or or or web 3 daily obviously um in in any extent um but uh you know I'm also kind of happy about that I've got some some big things happening um in my personal life um so I'm about to become a dad for the first time in January so that's uh that's super exciting and uh just bought a house as well so doing some Renovations and we got I got a lot

00:51:37 - 00:52:47
of I got a bunch of things that I'm focusing on uh outside of of crypto and web 3 and newsletters and and and all that stuff but uh yeah I know yeah and and congratulations on the news I hope uh thank you I hope everything works out well and congratulations on the house as well I I guess there's probably a parent downtime you might need to make sure that you're able to cherish those memories too but despite what's coming up your way SE thank you so much for sparing the time uh this has been a

00:52:11 - 00:53:01
great series of conversations Snippets insights that we have had from web3 daily and I'm glad that you actually took the time out to talk to us about it absolutely yeah thanks for having me really appreciated thank you and this concludes episode one of the L attack podcast we'll get back to you with more episodes with more engaging content like these stay tune