✈️ From Zero to 100K Subscribers: How to Grow Your Newsletter

Inside: Matt McGarry's Growth Playbook

Author

Yong-Soo Chung
August 16, 2023

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

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Trivia Question: Who was responsible for the growth of these successful newsletters?

  • Milk Road

  • The Hustle

  • 1440 Media

  • The Daily Upside

  • The Publish Press

Matt McGarry.

Fun fact: He’s also an everyday carry gear nerd, like me.

I sat down with Matt to chat all about newsletter growth.

He literally gave me the playbook on how he would go from 0 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers.

Here are a few juicy excerpts from today’s episode to get you flowing:

The Growing Potential of Newsletters: "The behavior of reading newsletters every day or every week is still rapidly growing. There's really not a lot of big newsletter companies out there. So there's lots of room for growth, and everybody's still using email. It's not quite crowded yet" — Matt McGarry (06:53)

The Impact of Deep Expertise on Newsletter Success: "The newsletters that I see that grow the fastest and that have the most success are usually started by people who have deep, deep expertise." — Matt McGarry (08:28)

The Benefits of a Weekly Newsletter: "Weekly newsletter is really the way to go for 90% of people out there. The reason is that when you're first starting out, you need to focus on growing it. You need to focus on distribution. And that distribution usually comes from posting on social, posting on Twitter, and LinkedIn, going on podcasts, and connecting through your network." — Matt McGarry (11:03)

Honestly, this is the episode I wish I listened to when I first launched my own newsletter. I’m not joking.

If you have a newsletter, I promise you that you’ll be scribbling down notes until you break your pencil. Yes, it’s that good.

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

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🏷 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!

📝 Yong-Soo’s Weekly Journal

Each week, I reflect on lessons learned growing my newsletter & podcast — the good, the ugly, and everything in-between in raw, unfiltered, free-form writing.

How I Got 1,000 Newsletter Subscribers in 3 Hours

Last Wednesday, I was interviewed on Charles Calzia’s podcast.

3 hours later, I checked my newsletter stats and I couldn't believe my eyes...

I had 1,000 additional subscribers on my newsletter.

My immediate reaction was... there's a bug, I better email Tyler Denk.

But it turns out, it wasn't a bug... these were real subscribers.

How did this happen?

Let's dig in...

First, I want to tell you what happened when I posted this on X (the blue bird app):

As expected, I got a lot of replies.

Interestingly, I also got a lot of private DMs.

Everyone was curious. How?

But others were… almost turned off by my post.

They claimed that these subs would be low quality... yada yada yada.

But, I tell you why I don't don't believe they are low quality subs.

Let me explain...

Last week, I signed up for Sparkloop.

For those who aren't familiar, Sparkloop is a marketplace of other newsletters who are either looking for subs (and willing to pay for them), or looking for newsletters to promote (to make money).

Sparkloop vets out every single newsletter so there won't be any spammy fake newsletters.

When you put your newsletter up on its marketplace, Sparkloop will automatically match you up with audiences that you specified.

I got a few matches right away.

When I came back 3 hours later, I had over gained over 1,000 subs.

Initially, I was nervous. I am paying $2 per sub... did I get scammed?

Upon further investigation, it turns out that one of my Sparkloop partners had coincidentally sent out a newsletter to their huge list with a magic link (one-click sign-up) to my newsletter.

This caused a huge uptick in my subscribers in a short period of time.

The best part? I set a filter for United States only subs with 2 opens per 15-day period.

That means that I won't pay for any of these subs unless they're from the US and open at least 2 of my emails within a 15-day range.

What happens to the rest of those subs? They stay on my list.

I can unsubscribe them at any time and I don't pay for them.

Win-win, if you ask me.

So who subscriber-bombed me with 1,000 subs in 3 hours?

I won't name any specific newsletters but here's their Sparkloop profile:

According to Sparkloop, they have “Exceptional referral quality.”

Also, I checked the emails and they were mostly university emails (.edu) and work emails, which indicates to me that that the sub quality is high.

So I'm fairly confident that these subs will be high quality.

Only time will tell.

But for now, I’ll take those subs any day of the week!

If you haven’t checked out Sparkloop yet, I highly recommend that you do.

And if you have any questions, just hit reply and ask away!

🎛 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: 7,666

  • Open Rate: 38.2%

  • Click Rate: 3.1%

👍🏻 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: 7,518

  • 30-Day Downloads: 2,661

  • 7-Day Downloads: 614

👍🏻 Recommendation: Best hosting platform for your podcast? I use and recommend Buzzsprout. Get $20 when you sign-up using this link.

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✈️ 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

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  2. Get In Front of My Audience:

    • 20k+ Twitter followers

    • 12k+ Podcast subscribers

    • 7,000+ Newsletter subscribers

  3. Work with Me:

    • Broader strategies on a particular topic

    • Dig deeper into specific tactics on a topic

💬 Final Word

I’m speaking at the inaugural Solo Creator Summit run by my good friend Dennis Geelen where I’ll be talking about all things newsletters!

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s free to sign up.

Hopefully, I’ll see some of you there!

See you next week.

Yong-Soo Chung — Serial Entrepreneur, Podcaster

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