✈️ Newsletter Growth: Don't Make These Costly Mistakes

Inside: Lessons Growing My Newsletter (This One!)

Author

Yong-Soo Chung
June 14, 2023

First-time traveler? Welcome aboard, Friend! 👋🏼

Before we take-off, there’s one thing you should do:

Join 3,000+ entrepreneurs by subscribing here.

Welcome to First Class Founders, your favorite destination to learn proven strategies to grow your business.

Today, I am sharing my learnings growing my newsletter. Yes, this newsletter.

I'll reveal five key lessons from my journey to getting 3,000 subscribers in just 5 months for the First Class Founders newsletter so that you don't have make costly mistakes.

I lay out specific and actionable tips about:

  • 💰 How & Where to Spend Your Money Wisely

  • 🐝 How to Grow via Beehiiv’s New Boosts Platform

  • 🔁 Cross Promotions vs. Swapping Recommendations

  • 🥇 How To Be Consistent in Your Branding & Messaging

Jetsetters, you know what time it is… let’s get down to business!

📢 Presented By: Riverside

Jetsetters, I’m excited to introduce Riverside as our sponsor for First Class Founders!

I love using Riverside to record all my guest interviews for my podcast. My favorite feature is how each recording is done locally to ensure that the sound quality is the best that it can be.

If you have a podcast, do yourself a favor and check out Riverside.

It’s 100% free to start.

Get 20% off using code FIRSTCLASS.

🏷 Lost & Found

Did you miss these? Each week, I round up all sorts of interesting things I found on the internet that you missed. Enjoy!

🎛 Metrics Dashboard

I'm building First Class Founders in public. Each week, I share my numbers exclusively through subscribers of this newsletter only.

Newsletter:

  • Subscribers: 3,235

  • Open Rate: 35.5%

  • Click Rate: 4.9%

👍🏻 Recommendation: Thinking of starting a newsletter? I use and recommend Beehiiv with powerful features like boosts, recommendations, segmentations, automations, and detailed subscriber metrics.

Podcast:

  • 90-Day Downloads: 6,652

  • 30-Day Downloads: 2,045

  • 7-Day Downloads: 497

👍🏻 Recommendation: Best AI tool for podcasters? I use and recommend Castmagic for show notes, transcripts, and excerpts.

📢 Sponsored By: You?

Want to accelerate your brand affinity among ambitious entrepreneurs, creators, founders, and CEOs?

You’ve come to the right place.

Our audience consists of:

- SaaS founders
- Published authors
- Partners at VC firms
- Creators building brands
- Bootstrapped indie hackers
- Employees at Apple, Google, Meta

Interested? Let’s chat.

Email me at [email protected].

💺 Passenger Spotlight

Growth Currency is a newsletter about… newsletter growth. Perfect timing with this week’s newsletter podcast episode! (I didn’t plan this, I swear!)

Run by my friend Dylan, Growth Currency breaks down newsletter growth tactics so you can be on top of your newsletter game.

Here's the pitch:

"Become a part-time Creator. Earn a full-time income. Growth Currency teaches you how to Start a newsletter → Get subscribers → Earn an income. Join 4,000+ readers learning how each week."

You can subscribe here.

✈️ Travel Further With Me

Here are 3 ways I can help you:

  1. Join First Class Founders Membership:

    • Early access to new episodes each week

    • Uncut extended guest interviews that never aired

    • Private ad-free podcast with bonus episode segments

  2. Get In Front of My Audience:

    • 17k+ Twitter followers

    • 12k+ Podcast subscribers

    • 3,200+ Newsletter subscribers

  3. Work with Me:

    • Broader strategies on a particular topic

    • Dig deeper into specific tactics on a topic

💬 Final Word

Josh Spector is a creator I've admired for a long time.

Not only are Josh's insights pure gold, he's one of the most generous creators out there!

Well, he just launched a new Newsletter Social Playbook Skill Session… and plugged in my auto-DM template as part of the session!

Check it out when you have a chance.

That’s all for this week!

Thank you for reading. See you next week!

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

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