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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 - Ryan Carr
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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 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 pod by Ryan Carr. Listeners may know Ryan as the. Former Growth Lead for the Hustle's Daily Newsletter. Now he's the founder of Blakely Digital, an agency he founded to help newsletters grow their audience in revenue. [00:01:00] Ryan, I am super excited to chat about what's working for you and your clients when it comes to newsletter growth in 2023, but first, How did you end up in the world of newsletters?
Ryan Carr: So I started kind of in the newsletter world because I was working growth at the Hustle. So basically leading acquisition for the Daily Newsletter, and then Trends, which was brand new at the time, had just launched when I joined. So really, Had a cool opportunity to be on the ground floor as one of, you know, the the first big newsletters out there started to monetize through premium subscription.
So got a lot of experience in both growing a free list, growing a premium list, and then was at the hustle all the way through the HubSpot acquisition. Stuck around a HubSpot for about a year, then wanted to get back in a startup world, and while I was working as head of growth at a different startup, Basically found an opportunity to start consulting with newsletters as this whole ecosystem has really opened up over the last coup couple of years.
[00:02:00] And yeah, so now that, now it's what me and my team do, we, I do what I was doing at the hustle, growing free lists, helping with monetization strategy, but just for a, a wide variety of, of newsletter and media companies. Awesome.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. So tell me about some of those, those companies who, who's the kind of client that you would work with?
Ryan Carr: Yeah, so really we usually work with clients with larger lists and a lot of the clients that we're working with are, are really focused on monetization. So I would say, you know, lists of 50,000 plus and are focused on building out a premium subscription or monetizing in house. But also growing that, the free lists as well.
We consult with some smaller newsletters as well. But in terms of our managed growth service, we, we tend to work with larger media companies, larger newsletters.
Louis Nicholls: Are there any names you can throw out there for people who are, are wondering?
Ryan Carr: Sure. Yeah. Fantasy Life, which is Matthew Berry's Fantasy Football Newsletter.
Bankless, which is a big crypto web three newsletter, working with Scott Oldford and Wisdom Media. [00:03:00] He's got this. Awesome vision. This huge newsletter ecosystem that he's been building through, through newsletter acquisitions. So yeah, those are some of the bigger ones. There's a lot of smaller folks that we're working with as well,
Louis Nicholls: so it's nice to talk to someone who is.
I, I guess, a little bit of a weirdo in the same way that I am in that I'm not building a newsletter of my own. Well, we, we write our own one at sparkly, but it's not our main job. But we get to see inside lots of different newsletters and see what's working for them. So a question I always like to ask when I meet someone like that is, you, you see inside all these different successful newsletters, they're all different in, in their own unique and wonderful ways.
What do you think they have in common that makes them more successful? What's like the, the common thread that they have between you?
Ryan Carr: I mean, the easy answer is good content. Like really, I mean, that enables growth more than anything else. You can add people to a list. You can have great ads. You can have a great diversified growth channel mix, but you're not going to [00:04:00] grow in the ways that count retaining subscribers, organic growth, that just comes from word of mouth and people sharing it, whether you have a referral program or not.
Just kind of the natural growth that occurs when you're writing good content. I mean, essentially what you're selling at the end of the day or what you're, what you're providing to people is content and information. So I find that the, the, the newsletters that I really enjoy working with and the newsletters that just grow the fastest work the best are those that really put an emphasis on the quality of their content.
Louis Nicholls: Sure. And what, what does that look like? I mean, Is that something that is, is inherent, is that something that can be changed and, and, and learned? I guess what's, what does quality content mean, I guess?
Ryan Carr: So curation is a big trend nowadays, and so I think that people that are really plugged in to the, the niche that they're act, that they're, uh, because a lot of [00:05:00] people nowadays are saying, oh, this is a cool and maybe a profitable space to get into.
The newsletter space, but they pick a niche that they say, oh, well I think this would be cool because it would be easy to grow. Or I think it would be cool because it would be really easy to monetize or there'd be a lot of sponsored interests. But I think where the good content comes from is it has to be something that the individual that's writing it or the team that's writing it is one really interested in, and two really plugged into, I think like a genuine obsession with the kind of content that they're providing or the niche that their newsletter is placed in. I think that that really comes through. And then there are all sorts of, Structural components and, and formatting things that, that the best newsletters do Right. As well. But yeah, we happy to get into that as well.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. I mean, let's talk a little bit about sort of, I guess, newsletters that are coming to you, especially on the growth side. They are presumably doing that because they're struggling, either struggling to grow themselves or they, they think there's opportunities to, to grow faster. Right. [00:06:00] They, they, if they're looking to make a change, it means they're not quite.
Doing it themselves. Right. When someone comes to you like that, whether they're, you know, already successful or struggling a little bit, what are the first things that you are looking at to try and figure out why they aren't already sort of hitting the, the goals that they want
Ryan Carr: to be hit? Yeah, I mean, the first, one of the first questions that I ask is, do you have a baked out l t v for, for any free subscribers that you're bringing through the door?
Do you have a, do you have a model for understanding how much a subscriber is worth? And if they don't, in a lot of cases they don't, we'll help build that model for them.
Louis Nicholls: For anyone who, most regular listeners will know what LTV is, but we should just say it anyway. It's it's lifetime value of a subscriber.
Right. So yeah, it's theoretically, I, I guess how much money you will make from a subscriber on average over the, the lifetime of them being subscribed to the newsletter effectively.
Ryan Carr: Exactly, yeah. And it's, it's a, a calculation that you can back into for a newsletter specifically [00:07:00] based on. What kind of CPM you're charging sponsors the open rate of the average subscriber or the the subscriber, uh, within a certain cohort that you're trying to understand the lifetime value of.
And so that's a model that we help the folks that we work with build in a lot of cases. So that's a good starting point. You know, in a lot of cases it's. We've been growing organically, we've been growing using this one channel. We want to put some more fuel on the fire. We want to diversify the channels that we're growing through, and that's where we'll come in.
Help them build out those channels, manage those channels, optimize those channels, and then in a lot of cases, either be a thought partner and a strategic partner in better monetization. And that could mean. You know, let's, let's think through how you can better monetize this newsletter, this media asset that you have, or you already have a way of that you're monetizing.
Let's optimize or build out a funnel to get more free subscribers to that premium membership, [00:08:00] to the product that you're offering, et cetera.
Louis Nicholls: Awesome. Yeah. There's a couple of things I want to dig into there, but one question I always have is, I, I like how you focus on the ltv. At what point, when someone comes to you, what ltv?
Are you sort of, or is it even based on ltv? That you would be saying, okay, let's focus on growth, or maybe, you know, we should figure out some ways to monetize more effectively. First before we start thinking about growth. What's the sort of cutoff point for you? What are you looking at that? Yeah,
Ryan Carr: I don't know if there is a hard line.
I, I haven't really, I haven't really approached it from the perspective of saying, Hey, based on this data, I mean, unless they're just not monetizing at all. I think there are always ways, I mean, with the tools that are out there now, Like, you know, plug for spark loop. But with the tools that are up there now, like you can basically set your CPA right and, and bring folks in at a cost that's most effective for you.
So I don't know if there's really a. A hard line where I would say, let's, let's like focus on monetization more. Although I would say that it's like a holistic [00:09:00] approach, right? So like at the same time that we're trying to grow at the current ltv, we're also saying, let's find ways to better monetize.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, definitely.
I think it's always an interesting thing that something we see a lot as people come to us and they'll say, look, we really we're paying. I don't know, $3 per engaged subscriber at the moment, and we really want to, you know, can you help us find a way to get that to two 80 and yeah, I have to kinda say, look, well, we probably can get you to two 80, but it's a lot more difficult to go from three to two 80 than it is to increase whatever the value of a subscriber is by.
More than 20 cents. Right. That's the, the sky's the limit on how much a subscriber can be worth, but the amount that you can reduce the cost of acquiring subscriber down to is, is effectively zero. It's, it's a much smaller range of, like, you have much less flexibility.
Ryan Carr: Yeah. And, and especially, you know, a lot of the, the clients that we're working with, like I mentioned, have bigger lists, so they're trying to scale spend.
And it's really hard to stay in the neighborhood. A lot of folks use [00:10:00] $2 as, Hey, like $2 is where you should be for to acquire newsletter subscribers on paid channels. You can get to $2 pretty quickly. You can get it under $2 pretty quickly. But when you're scaling to thousands and thousands of dollars a day in ad spend, you're gonna have to find ways to either mitigate the increase in, in cost per subscriber or better monetize and, and make any difference in.
Cost per subscriber worth it in the long run.
Louis Nicholls: For sure. When you have people coming to you at that stage where they want to either to grow or to some help with monetization and scaling the growth side of things, what's an indicator to a, a newsletter operator that it's sort of the right time to start thinking about, about that?
Reaching out to. An agency like yours?
Ryan Carr: Yeah. I would say if you're, if you're looking to start paid ads, for example, you can start running tests, you can start seeing what the interest is. You can focus on one channel and really kind of lean into that with a small team. I think where we would step in is when and when.
I think [00:11:00] reaching out to an agency, a newsletter, growth agency like ours helps. Is looking to really scale growth rapidly, looking to put fuel in the fire. If you have ad budget, for example, if you're starting to bring in sponsorship revenue and you want to. You know, basically turn that into to newsletter growth, turn that into list growth and really invest there.
That's what we do well, is we say, okay, let's test these channels. Let's see where we find the best efficiency and, and really, and really just start to, to turn things up on the growth side.
Louis Nicholls: Got it. And, and why would a, a newsletter operator or a media brand, why would they come to a, a third party agency like yours?
To, to do this for other than trying to, to do it in house.
Ryan Carr: I think just ex expedited efficiency. We, and also just expertise we see, we work with so many newsletters at this point that we see what works well on the paid ad side and also we just bring that knowledge from all these different clients that we're working with.
One thing that I like to [00:12:00] tell folks that we work with is, sure we're handling the implementation side of whatever you bring us on to do, but we also like to a act as just a strategic partner. And, and you know, an advisory partner as well and say, Hey, here's what we're seeing. And it's fun for us. Cuz I, I get to work on some really interesting, uh, problems across all these newsletters and, and bring, you really start to connect the dots across the industry when you're working in so many different verticals and niches.
Louis Nicholls: Well, what are those, some of those things that you, you are seeing working at the moment? Then what are some of those things that you're sort of learning from, from the multiple clients on the growth side and. Implementing right now. What's like the, if you are in 2023, summer of 2023 and you want to scale your newsletter growth on the free side, paid acquisition for your free newsletter, like what's the, the quick win?
What's the first thing to do
Ryan Carr: if you're, if you're investing in paid acquisition? The channels that I would be testing now would be Facebook ads, which is the obvious one, kind of meta ads, Facebook, Instagram. But kind of [00:13:00] more recently, I think Twitter ads has started to play a bigger role in folks. Growth channel mix. That's something that we started testing with one client. We saw great results. We started basically bringing that knowledge of real efficiency to other clients. And now we've really started to scale up Twitter ads as part of our operations just within the agency. So, I mean, Twitter ads is a great place to start for newsletters also because there's just so much interest in newsletters on Twitter currently.
Uh, there's basically like newsletter Twitter almost. So that's a really, uh, that's kind of a newer development, but, you know, also there're same, same time and not trying to plug too much. But there're, there're also just there are tools out there, like something like Spark Loop, some o other referral tools that are out there where you can basically set your price monetize right away. And we see a lot of folks starting with, with those tools as well.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Twitter ads is a really interesting one because it's not something we've talked about much on the podcast before. It was, I think the [00:14:00] last time we were talking to someone who was more on the, the paid social growth side of things.
It was, it was Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, tiny little bit of LinkedIn and maybe some Quora and Reddit in like weird circumstances. But I've also heard a lot of people doing, Or you know, investing more into, into Twitter ads in the last, I mean for me it's really been the last like 60 days or so. I haven't really seen too much before, before that.
And then all of a sudden my entire feed is feed is is newsletter ads. And you can tell a lot of them are following the same inspiration cuz it's essentially worded the same. It's slightly
Ryan Carr: different. Uh, uh, might be a lot of us. The same guy.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, should be. But I mean, they, they, they're compelling. Like they work, the reason they stand out is I'm like, oh, that's actually an ad.
Like, I didn't even think that was gonna be, I thought that was just a new newsletter that I hadn't discovered before. And, oh, of course it's, it's an ad. So I, I guess what's the, why is Twitter interesting now? Like what is, what is unique about Twitter compared to to Facebook? One of the things that I heard was that it's apparently very good at like [00:15:00] targeting.
The audiences of specific profiles and and other brands. Is that a thing? It's not, you know, it's not something we're, we're experts at.
Ryan Carr: Yeah, absolutely. Couple reasons. First, I'll start with the reason that you mentioned, which is the targeting, really unique targeting capability where you basically choose Twitter accounts and.
In the same way with that, with Facebook, you can create lookalike audiences for custom lists or, or folks that interact with your ads or your site in a certain way. You can create lookalike audiences based on profiles that you designate. So you can basically create a list of, Hey, here are Twitter influencers, or Twitter personalities, or just accounts that really match the demographics that I'm trying to target.
Create a list of a bunch of them and Twitter goes out and finds people that look like, or that act like, or that have the same interests as the audiences of those Twitter accounts that you've, that you've defined. So really interesting targeting capabilities there. The other reason is that the ads, [00:16:00] just to your point, look native, right?
They look like they're just tweets. Unless you see the little promoted thing at the bottom, you wouldn't know that it's an ad necessarily. And you know, you run them ideally from. The newsletter author or the newsletter personalities account. So it looks very native to the platform.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, for sure. And are you seeing the, well, I guess we can talk a little bit about the content of those ads as well, but are you seeing them performing best when you are sending people through to.
It's your page or is just, just for, you even have the functionality to let people opt in on, on Twitter. I don't even know. I should have, should have asked that in advance.
Ryan Carr: I'm actually not sure. What we usually do is send them to the landing page. You send 'em to the page. Yeah. We have like a, an optimized for most clients, just a paid landing page that we send all the paid traffic to,
Louis Nicholls: which is again, not to plug spark loop but is the advantage of that, which is what we recommend on Facebook as well as obviously you.
Can, can monetize by the, the paid recommendations, right? So you can, you can earn some of that back, which is, is nice. Very cool. So what about on [00:17:00] the, the content side? So you've already mentioned that one of the advantages is it looks very native into the, you know, along with you, the organic, the non-paid content and it's, it's coming from the, the creator or the newsletter operator's, personal brand themselves.
So there's a lot of social, social trust there, but the actual content and sort of format of an ad, what are you seeing performing better? Is it text, video? Images? What, what are you saying?
Ryan Carr: Yeah. To be, to be honest, we haven't, we haven't tested a lot of video yet, just because I think in terms of really, I guess, expediting the process of getting them converted, we, we think just like that, the hypothesis is just that the image.
An image asset will, will work best. But that being said, I mean, really the, the focus and where we've seen make the most difference in terms of performance is the text. Because that's, I mean, that's what the tweet is essentially, right? And if you're, if you're really trying to, you're trying to capture somebody's attention on Twitter, what they're used to doing is reading and reacting to what [00:18:00] they're reading, you know, whether it's ad copy or a tweet.
So where we've really put a lot of effort into testing is just in, in the copy of the, of the tweet. Got it. And
Louis Nicholls: is there like a, a format for that? Like a, do you need like a hook and then, uh, I don't know, what's the, like the, the text format that seems to work? Is there like a, a blueprint that people can follow?
Ryan Carr: Yeah, I mean, what I would say is hook as with as with, just like if you're looking to get engagement on a normal tweet right on, on just like a, an organic tweet. Definitely focus most of your time on the hook. And then, I mean, it's really just copywriting at that point. It's just really focusing on making it readable, making it snappy, and then ending with a cta.
So ending with a call to action and saying just like it's all in the free newsletter. Like subscribe to the free newsletter. So really kind of making the next, the next step very apparent as well.
Louis Nicholls: Very cool. And what kind of newsletter does Twitter perform well for, do
Ryan Carr: you think? [00:19:00] Really what we're starting to find is that, Wherever there's a niche community for, for the subject of the newsletter on Twitter is when it performs well.
And the kind of, the beauty of that is there's almost a niche community for everything on Twitter. It's about identifying and with the targeting capabilities that I mentioned. You can really tap into just that niche, which makes it a really unique channel. So for example, like we have a fantasy football newsletter that we work with.
We've seen a lot of success just targeting fantasy football influencers, business interests, so entrepreneurship newsletters and investing newsletters. There are big communities for that on Twitter. So it really gives you an opportunity to tap into specifically the audience where you're gonna get the best reception and ideally the most engagement.
Louis Nicholls: Got it. Okay. And I guess if you're, if you're larger, if you're already spending on, on paid growth, then you'll have some of these things down already and then you'll be, you know, be looking to an agency like yours to, to help you test this out. If you are on the [00:20:00] smaller side though, and on the newer side where maybe that, that doesn't quite make sense yet, but you, you still wanna play around with testing up Twitter, maybe with a smaller budget.
At what point would you say give, you know, give it a go, and also like, what are the, the steps to get started?
Ryan Carr: Well, if you're monetizing already and say you're getting through like these recommendation widgets, you're getting a $2, you know, revenue per sub already. There's no reason why you can't reinvest that into growth now.
Like people have different models that they're business models that they're following. They might wanna focus more on just kind of the revenue side and growing organically. But if your focus is on. Fast list growth, then you can basically just take that revenue per sub that you're already generating and reinvest it and just know, and, you know, have confidence that you're essentially growing for free at that point.
Which is wild. It wasn't like that like a year ago. So it, it's pretty insane. Yeah,
Louis Nicholls: for sure. If someone does want to start off today, [00:21:00] and they are at that point where, you know, how, how would they get started? And I mean, you know, we don't need to do the, the breakdown of heres how to set up a Twitter account and heres how to, you know, click here and all that stuff.
But like, what are the. Then maybe the not obvious things like high level, like what should you not, not
Ryan Carr: do? Yeah. I, I mean, easiest way to start for somebody who doesn't necessarily have a ton of experience in running paid ads is create a Twitter ads campaign. Create a lookalike audience, or, or, or an ad group.
Like basically target like 25 influencers that match the demographic that you're looking for and just create some ads. You'll see some of the best ads that perform well, and this is true across the board. It's, it doesn't take high production quality, high production value. You see some of the best ads that we've tested, some of the best ads that.
Other marketing agencies and, and some of the biggest brands in, in the newsletter space right now are running with for a long time. They're just creating the notes app, or you create, you create them in Canva [00:22:00] and it takes like 10 minutes. And so really if you're, if you're, if you're wanting to test, I would say the importance is really outlining the value propositions to the newsletter and the creative.
Do that, write a tweet with a hook with a call to action and run it to folks that match that kind of lookalike audience that you're, that you're building. Got it. And
Louis Nicholls: is there like a minimum budget, at which point, like it just doesn't make sense to be testing this
Ryan Carr: kind of stuff? I would say a, a budget, a good budget that we start with usually to test is like a hundred dollars a day.
You could test for less than that. Like really, I mean it's just about learnings. It's about how quickly with a lot of these ad platforms they have like a learning phase, and the faster you get outta that learning phase, the better results are so, If you starting at a hundred dollars a day, you'll get out of that pretty quickly.
But yeah, that would, that would be the only kind of delineator there is. You want, you want to get outta the learning phase quickly. And
Louis Nicholls: I guess piggyback on from that, like what are, if, if you're talking to maybe a slightly smaller newsletter operator, like what are [00:23:00] some of the things that you're seeing working really well on the growth side for then at the
Ryan Carr: moment?
Yeah, I would say building, building organic distribution. So really focusing on consistent posting on Twitter. A and also, you know, recommendation tools, opting into tools like that because that, those are, those are the kinds of things that weren't necessarily available a while ago or even very recently to be honest, where you can just set your price and also monetize immediately.
So I think more and more folks are leaning into, into tools like SparkLoop, and similar re recommendation widgets and really starting there with growth. But I would say just like building an organic presence is probably the most important. Because then you get a highly engaged list and kind of evangelists, right?
You get folks that are, that are your day one fans and came to you organically.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah, for sure. And what are some of the, the most common mistakes that you're seeing people making on the growth side of things? That's a good [00:24:00] question. Well let, let's open it up. Not even on the growth side of things, just newsletters generally, like what are the, the mistakes you're seeing people making, they're coming to you and you're like, oh, why?
Ryan Carr: Yeah. I would say, and this kind of goes back to what we were saying prior, which is really thinking that it's as simple as just like, you know, putting very little effort into writing something. And sending it out to men, you know, to people and growing as cheaply, as fa as possible. Not focusing on engagement, like engagement metrics or something you should always be keeping a very close eye on because there's a lot of your listeners will know and as, and I'm sure you know, it's just deliverability is just like a killer for, for email-based businesses if, if it goes wrong, especially coming into this space now, it's easy to be hyper focused on, on the numbers and kind of the sexy metrics of.
List size, you know, growth rate, but really focusing on the basics and making sure that you're investing time into creating good quality content [00:25:00] that people are actually gonna stick around for. You can bring as many people on the list as you want with nice looking ads that convert well. But if they're not sticking around, if you're not retaining them, your list isn't gonna grow anyway.
Louis Nicholls: How, how important are you finding for that, for the last part, how important are you finding like, welcome emails and welcome sequences that, do you spend a lot of time on tweaking those or do you have like a set thing that you recommend?
Ryan Carr: Yeah, I think a welcome email is important and, and it's, it's particularly important in setting the tone for the email, right?
I think it's a really cool opportunity to do that and start to build that relationship that leads to. Retention into engagement. One thing that I recommend all clients do and just really any newsletter, is immediately get them engaged with some of your most popular content. So give them an opportunity to hop in right away before they even start reading the email.
Give them kind of the greatest hits, and then even start introducing not in like a really pushy, [00:26:00] salesy way, especially up front. But hey, if you're looking for something deeper, We have this premium newsletter as well, you know, check it out. We have a welcome offer that we give to, to new readers. So there are a lot of ways that you can utilize a welcome email outside of just increasing deliverability, which is what, you know, the primary focus should be.
But you can also increase retention. You can increase engagement.
Louis Nicholls: Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about premium newsletters, actually. Cause it's something we haven't covered in, in a while. On, on the podcast. They obviously, they, they were huge and it was all, everybody could talk about. What was that, three, four years ago, roughly?
Yeah. And then since then, it seems to be they've, they've fallen a little bit out of popularity, at least, maybe only in sort of in, in the discourse. Maybe not in in real life, but people are definitely aren't talking about them as much anymore. And everybody's talking about advertising revenue and, and all that stuff at the moment, or they have been at least over the last year or so.
Are you bullish on, on paid subscriptions for
Ryan Carr: newsletters? I'm definitely bullish on paid components to media companies that have newsletters. I think [00:27:00] a premium newsletter is becoming a. Increasingly harder to sell. And the reason for that is that people are offering so much value in free newsletters and, and really a big, because newsletters have become so, it, it's, it's, the space has just exploded.
And so people have limited attention, right? So if you offer them one more thing to read, It's gonna be a harder sell unless it's just like absolutely packed with, with niche specific or industry specific value that you're not offering in the free newsletter. In which case, go for it and test it. What I would say is that there are.
Different ways to monetize that might be easier to scale and more attractive to a free subscriber. Stuff like communities, stuff like tools that you build in some cases or discount libraries that, that we've seen people put together as well. There are different approaches to monetization that I think might be easier and also lower lift for the com for, for the organization, [00:28:00] building them right.
If you can build something once and sell it a bunch of times, that's gonna be a lot easier on you. And actually you can add a lot more value over time to those things. A lot easier than just another, another, another newsletter that you have to get out the door every week or two weeks or whatever your cadence is.
Louis Nicholls: It's, it's funny, it's, I see a lot of resistance to that, even though it, it makes sense and I, I, I totally, totally back that. I see a lot of resistance to it from, from newsletter operators, especially the ones who are coming into this more from like the journalism side of things. Okay. Where they, they really just, you know, they, there is no distinction between the newsletter and the business and, and the revenue streams.
It's just, I want to write newsletters and I wanna get paid for writing newsletters, and that's what I wanna do. And anything else is, is a distraction. So how do you, well, I guess, what are some good examples of, of people who are driving paid revenue, paid subscription revenue from their audience, but not through?
A paid newsletter directly.
Ryan Carr: I think, um, Bankless is a good example. They have a great [00:29:00] community that's specific to their premium membership. They've also added like a discount library and a bunch of tools that you can only access through through their premium membership. So I think offering like a tool set like that.
Where there's a direct line from why you're signing up for the newsletter, the kind of content, the niche that you're interested in, and hey, here's all this value that we're providing. I think that that works really well. Yeah, a lot of community based and, hey, honestly, I've seen premium newsletters that work really well as well.
I, I subscribe to some premium newsletters, and I think the differentiator is that the premium newsletter is almost the product at that point. Like it's, it is the front end product versus a free newsletter being the main focus. For example, there's this, uh, executive coach. Her name's Dr. Julie Gurner.
She's a big presence on Twitter. She has a newsletter called Ultra Successful, I believe. Her free newsletter is, is basically like kind of curated links and, and, and, and tweets and things like that. And then to get the real content, it's a premium newsletter. I subscribe to that. It's one of my favorite [00:30:00] things that I read.
So I think that, yeah, it, it's really, it's really dependent on where the focus is. If the, if the free newsletter starts as the focus and kind of the main value driver, it's gonna be harder to provide as much value as you might need to upsell them in a premium
Louis Nicholls: newsletter. Yeah, no, for sure. It, it's one of the funny things that I, I often say is that I, I think most people who have a paid newsletter, especially if it's not from a business, if it's from a personality, I think they often.
Overestimate the, let's say like the, the quantitative value of the, the content that's in the paid thing, and they underestimate how much people just want to support them and help them keep going effectively. Right? They're like, it's, I'm not necessarily paying this, this 10, $20 a month for. The, the actual, that one specific extra edition that I get each week that's paid.
It's more so that you keep writing and so that you know that I support you and so that I can access the community. And maybe you see that on Twitter. Oh, it's one of my paid subscribers. And, and so, [00:31:00] and I think people don't quite, or they would maybe, maybe they would prefer to think, oh, it's, it's all just because this, this one newsletter I write is so good that I'm, I'm getting paid for
Ryan Carr: it.
Yeah. It's almost like a Patreon model at that point. Right. And yeah, we've actually, we've worked with newsletters like that. Where they were experiencing a lot of churn, and it was as kind of economic times were getting a little harder and they were experiencing a lot of churn. So they put out this survey and they were like, oh my gosh.
Like, why, why are people churning from, from the premium subscription? And the feedback they got back was love supporting you guys, but, you know, like can't really afford the membership anymore. It, it had nothing to do with the, the quality of the content that they were putting out there. And. Ultimately, to your point, the reason why they subscribed didn't necessarily have anything with the quality of the content.
It was more just, we love you guys, we love the free subscription. We want to support you and keep you in business. So
Louis Nicholls: yeah, we, we just want this thing to exist. Right. Is, is a totally valid and I think underrated reason. So [00:32:00] let's say we're talking about newsletter operators and there are a lot at the moment who've been.
Monetizing purely through, through ads and, and sponsorships and affiliates and stuff like that, where it's, you know, it's free for the audience and they're just doing it that way. If you were talking to someone like that who is considering adding in a paid component of some kind and doesn't quite know what that looks like yet, what would you be?
Walking them through. Do you have like a, an approach you'd take to that where you, the questions you'd ask, what does that look like?
Ryan Carr: I think it, it is gonna be very niche specific in a lot of cases, and it also has to do with the capability of the, the client or, or the partner or the company. But I think a really, and I think this will be maybe controversial because a lot of folks say, you know, you should build with, with the vision first.
But if you, if you don't have the vision necessarily, come up with like five or six ideas. And if you have an engaged audience, which you're gonna need to monetize anyway. Just ask your, ask your audience, put it out in a survey. We have a client that we're working with that just did [00:33:00] this, and they were really leaning in the direction of one option where they were saying, I really think that this is what they want.
And the feedback that they got was overwhelmingly for a different option. And so they built in that direction. Now they're seeing some success. A place that I would start, if you have no idea, is let's brainstorm some ideas that seem doable, seem feasible, that aligned with your audience, and let's pitch it to the audience and see.
You know, what would you most likely pay for? And I think that that'll translate to higher conversion rate from that free to premium. Yeah, I love that.
Louis Nicholls: So, I mean, we're coming close to the the end. I, I wanna be, be mindful of your time, but I do wanna finish on, on two questions that I really like and one of them is, again, we.
A slightly unique and weird in that we see a lot of different newsletters and we see sort of what's happening with them and we're obviously thinking about where, you know, where are trends going in the future. So I, we really started at sparkly thinking about newsletters in probably 20 18, 20 18. 2019 was like the [00:34:00] first time that I started really getting exposed to, to newsletters and.
Not really that much change between 2019 and I wanna say 2021, end of 21. Really like the, you know, the things that were working in growth at the beginning were still working pretty much at the end. And I mean, there were shifts happening, but it wasn't like, you know, there, there wasn't anything new and, and really dramatic that was happening.
And then in the last year, you've had. Free recommendations, paid recommendations, all kinds of different stuff that's just kind of exploded out of nowhere and has really just completely changed the the game. Where do you think sort of the newsletter industry will be in, let's say the end of 2024? So like 18 months from now?
Ryan Carr: Man, I would say one thing that I'm seeing a lot of now, I mean it's funny cuz you have this kind of unbundling that's happened with. With just all of these different newsletter niches, you know, all these different creators. [00:35:00] I think one trend that we might start to see is more rollups of newsletters where people buy up newsletters and build media companies with, you know, and, and, and basically kind of own properties from, from one niche or, or a variety of niches.
So basically just kind of an almost rebundling of this unbundling that's occurred. That's something that. We're already starting to see happen in, in a couple ways, but I think it'll start to accelerate in the coming years for sure.
Louis Nicholls: Interesting. Yeah, I mean there's, there are a lot of compelling arguments for that, right around the, the pooling of resources and newsletter operators, not necessarily being experts in every different thing, and maybe they.
You know, it'd be very useful for them to have someone with a playbook who can go out and do that. And I mean, we've seen all kinds of different attempts at that from morning grouping, bringing sort of creators in-house to work week, trying to take the opposite approach to their all different kinds of ones now.
We have every, has their own sort of collective approach. And I know you work with, with Scott who's doing some interesting stuff there and, and building out a little sort of [00:36:00] group of, of media businesses. It's gonna be a, an interesting time for for sure. Absolutely. And then my, my last question I guess is, you know, we've had you here for about 45 minutes or so now, and we've talked about all kinds of different things around newsletter growth and monetization, but you've been doing this for years and years, and I guess the one question I always like to end on is, what's a question that I should have asked you but I didn't.
Ryan Carr: Hmm. Honestly, I think we covered a lot of ground and I really appreciate kind of the thought that you put in into your questions and. Yeah, it's been, it's been great to meet you, Louis. Awesome.
Louis Nicholls: Well, likewise, Ryan. Where can people follow along with what you do? Where can they check out the, the agency, if they are interested in maybe scaling up some growth and talking through, through monetization streams and stuff like that?
Where can they, where can they get in touch?
Ryan Carr: Absolutely. So on Twitter, I'm at Ryan Boat, that's at Ryan Boat on Twitter. I talk a lot about kind of the same [00:37:00] stuff that we covered today, just newsletter growth and monetization. And then if you'd like to work together, you can either shoot me a DM on Twitter or you can check out our website, which is www.blakely.studio.
And the link is also on my Twitter there. So yeah, would love to speak to anybody that's looking to really scale up their newsletter growth.
Louis Nicholls: Awesome. And both of those, those links obviously will be in the the show notes as well. Well, Ryan, thank you so much. It's been really great, super interesting, especially the Twitter stuff.
Really glad we had a chance to to talk about through as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great rest of your day. Fantastic. Thanks again, Luis. Thanks 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.
Number two, email or DM me with some feedback with your questions or with suggestions for future episodes. And finally, number three. Share your favorite quote from the episode on [00:38:00] social media and tag both me and our guest. All of the links for that are available in the show notes and whatever option you choose.
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