How I Hit 16,000 Subscribers on Substack and Make $2,500+/month

my name is jeric also known as Jerry Lou and I'm the author of The introvert entrepreneur on substack and I have amassed over 16 000 subscribers on sub stack after a couple years writing on the platform which has also translated into 300 as of today 300 paid subscribers which earns me roughly twenty five hundred dollars a month now you can call this Revenue but it's pretty much profit I don't advertise my newsletter it is all organic traffic whether it be from social media sites or organically on substock itself or of course here on YouTube if you don't know what I write about I write about uh one person businesses and the general idea of escaping the rat race and creating your own income on the internet there are a number of different ways I do this I'm not going to necessarily dive real deep into my newsletter or explain what that's about in particular if you are interested in my newsletter I just encourage you go down in the description subscribe to it down there if you are interested in what I just mentioned otherwise I'm going to be specifically talking about how I did this and what I would do if I was starting from ground zero and if I wanted to try to get to where I am today again after everything that I've learned if you are interested in that stay tuned so it has been a couple years and uh the a couple of things I want to mention before we dive into what I plan to talk about is number one the 16 000 subscriber Mark could be much higher if I didn't actively prune my email subscriber list uh what I will do every single month is I will go and filter out and delete people from the actual newsletter list who have never opened an email or have never viewed a post or haven't in a very long time whether it be like three or six months uh this in my opinion is just I like to talk to people who actually want to hear what I have to say plus it's also kind of uh I don't want to say OCD thing but I kind of like seeing my open rate stay higher it's also something that with sponsorships uh they're going to like to see that a lot of people are subscribed to your newsletter are actually reading things it's it's just I want yes you could call it vanity but it's just like a personal thing I would do it regardless of sponsorships or any of those other things and I do want to mention the 2500 a month that I make is specifically for unpaid subscriptions I haven't included anything else in those numbers like sponsorships or digital product sales we're just talking about specifically free subscribers paid subscribers a comment that I got recently on Twitter was something about how uh wow you have 16 000 free subscribers but you only have 300 that sucks okay number one I do not care uh number two I don't know how you would discern whether that is actually good or bad nonetheless like I said it's irrelevant uh I will say though if you were trying to compare that to yourself or you're trying to figure out for yourself if that's good or bad I didn't enable paid subscriptions for a very long time and then when I did I offered very little even though it is still a low price today it was a very low price half of what it is now it was originally five dollars a month now it's ten dollars a month so it's still relatively low compared to some newsletters there are some that are over a thousand dollars a month that I've seen but I have or I originally started that and I didn't really push it it was just kind of optional it got people one extra post per month one extra pay post per month now is that the point where people get roughly two to four paid posts per month that are exclusive to paid members only so uh the rate in which people are subscribing to that has picked up since I would say November of last year but nonetheless uh that's my current system it's probably not the most efficient it's probably not the best but I'm not actually here and I do not write on sub stack to try to squeeze the most money out of the newsletter uh I have other businesses that I run that are much more lucrative than creating content with a written word or of course here on YouTube I do this because in my opinion it's the best way to learn I also like to help people too uh yes the money's nice sure I love the fact that my newsletter and this YouTube channel have the potential to make money like they do but again that's not why I'm doing things and I've turned down numerous sponsors for different things like crypto and other things uh because they don't really gel with what I talk about and in fact I've accepted very little sponsorships in fact um I believe it's only like one or two at this point that I've actually accepted and promoted on the newsletter when I've had the opportunity to do a bunch so with that out of the way uh and enough talking about myself I do want to explain how I did it that's probably why you're you're here the way I did this um there's a number of different ways that I promoted the newsletter to gain subscribers but I would say the most important to that was Twitter now Twitter is an excellent tool because in my opinion the people who are on Twitter are smarter people just in general it's a very broad general statement and it's totally in my opinion they are a smarter group of people even though there is a very toxic side to Twitter in general it as a whole per capita has the most amount of people who want to read things versus Instagram which is very visual Tick Tock very visual [Music] even YouTube I would say YouTube is second but Twitter is number one for people who are actually going to be interested in a newsletter if you're writing about something that that specific person is interested in uh the way in which I promote the newsletter I'm not going to sit here and tell you like my whole Twitter strategy what I would recommend instead could be much more useful is just go down to the description click on my Twitter account you don't even have to follow me just look at the way I promote my newsletter there's a link in my my bio to the newsletter but then you should look at how I actively link it and where in which people can find it in the way I use it on the platform I encourage you to do that if you want to do what I've done is it the best way I don't know but it's what's worked for me uh second to that I would say is YouTube but again if you don't want to create YouTube content I've sucked at being consistent with YouTube content so I totally understand that that's not your jam uh but then I would say just to mix in a bunch of other platforms one that I know is great for a lot of people and I've just never really done well with is LinkedIn that's another great place um because it's kind of like Twitter and even though LinkedIn and my opinion has a lot of weirdos on it uh I think it's kind of similar to Twitter in which there there are a lot of people on LinkedIn who are willing to read newsletters and like to read newsletters so two great options for you there um yes Instagram uh Tick Tock YouTube have kind of helped with it but like I said the number of people who are actually interested in reading on those platforms is very low as you would expect so I think someone could be very very successful in growing their subscriber list specifically from Twitter alone and Linkedin now you could try other places like Reddit and different stuff like that but yeah luck self-promoting on on those websites so that's what I would encourage and again use my account for inspiration but also look up a couple guys like Justin Welsh and danco they're like the All-Stars of Twitter when it comes to growing a newsletters to Hell Bloom being another one those are just three guys I could think on top of my head that I have drew a lot of inspiration from with how they uh lead people to their newsletter I think some of those guys have used paid and ads and stuff like that I haven't but I have heard people if you have the budget for it they've found success in doing that sorry I keep looking over here at like a couple reminders on my whiteboard on what to talk about and I've already mentioned them and I don't know why I keep looking over there so apologies for that um if I was starting over from zero here's what I would do I would do exactly what I just told you I would start a Twitter account I would start a LinkedIn account I would and uh a question that I get when people ask about a newsletter and how they should start one it and and when I give them this advice hey post on social media and leave them to your newsletter people say okay well what do I post about and you're not gonna be able to do any of this if you don't have something to write about this comes first if you don't have something to write about then what are you going to talk about on social media therefore how are you going to get people to even subscribe to your newsletter so number one you need to find something uh to write about and it doesn't need to be a niche everyone talks about a niche the niche is you you are one unique individual who has a very very uh diverse but also interesting and I know this without even knowing who you are because this also applies to me a very diverse and interesting but unique group of things that you care about and that you like to do and that you are good at and so in my case I didn't try to be actively unique I didn't try to think hey I'm going to create a newsletter about something that no one else is doing that was not my Approach my Approach was simply what am I good at and what do I really like to do and how and what can I talk about so for example what do I what am I good at I'm good at online business it's something that I've done for over a decade I've run multiple different businesses mainly revolving around e-commerce so I decided you know what I'm since I'm not super creative about like the theoretical side of things or the philosophical side of running business if that exists uh I'm just going to actively document how much money my businesses make and the different decisions I'm making and the issues I'm going through I'm just going to document I'm going to publish my profit and loss reports for one of my businesses on my newsletter and I'm going to talk about it and that's what I did that's how I started and then from there I also added in something else that I really like to do that I'm super passionate about and this is it's this idea of investing in Legos yes toys uh I'm not the first person to talk about this but this is something that the idea of Legos I'm a 90s child baby so uh I grew up playing with Legos like crazy uh whenever I could get my hands on them and uh it's a very nostalgic thing to me even though I don't build the sets these days at all so the idea of invest in them which is really just a fancy buzzword way of saying you buy Legos you hold on to them for a year or two and then you sell them for a profit but I'm super passionate about that so then I added that also in to the newsletter and I now publish my actual Investment Portfolio of what Lego sets I'm actively holding which ones I'm buying how much money they've made me and different thoughts on the market in general and I've wrapped that all up with this just general idea about me as a person and the way I am I'm introverted I'm very I mean that's why it's called the intro entrepreneur newsletter and I kind of just wrap that up and I I taught I I write with that idea in mind of hey I'm an introvert that doesn't like to work with people I have a one-person business and uh you know this is how I do things here's how my businesses run that's not the other thing I'm not saying that's exactly how you need to do things but if I was starting over that's what I would do I would do what I did which is I would take something I'm really good at and trust me you're a lot of people are going to hear this and go oh I'm not good at anything that's a lie you are good at something whether you found it or not yet if you haven't found what you're good at you need to try a million different things you need to come back a year later and then find out what you're good at but a lot of you are going to know what you're good at and trust me another response I get all the time when I tell people this is well no one's going to want to read that you can't say that unless you have written about it for a year or two and promote it on social media and actually found out okay you're not even allowed to say that also I will say that you it will be interesting you think it's not and you don't think there's a lot many people like you but trust me when I say there are thousands tens of thousands hundred thousands or even millions of people who are interested in the exact same mix of things you are you just don't know it yet or they don't even know it yet but what they might realize they are when they come across your newsletter once you have found that thing to write about I would I would right away start writing for a couple months um whether you publish what you write or not that's up to you I encourage you to publish right away so you can get used to the process but you could also just sit down write an hour or two per day and until you have like 10 20 30 pieces and then go back and decide which ones you like best you know fix them up a little bit and then start publishing them you can do that too but whatever it is you need to write for an hour to a day and you need to start publishing content it's that simple uh forget about social media stuff forget about all that you just need to get used to writing I myself uh was originally an engineer by trade and I was good at math in school I was not good at writing I hated writing trust me when I say you do not have to be a good writer your message just needs to be very clear as long as you're just being very clear with what you're saying you're not trying to be fancy with your words you're not trying to get too cute with things you just be very direct and write as if you're writing for a second grader as long as what you're talking about is interesting someone they will not care how good of a writer you are I'm not a good writer that the results speak for themselves for my new letter uh start writing and if you think an hour or two out of your day is too much or you're in and you don't have time for that you either need to make time or you just need to give up stop watching this because you're just not meant for this if you want it bad enough you're going to make it happen it's as simple as that if you want to make something like this work you have to put the time you have to make the time simple as that I would then get use and get in and make it a habit for after several months to where you can be used to the idea of writing every day and starting to publish content once you are publishing content uh not only if you choose sub stack it doesn't have to be sub stack I'm just telling you what I did sub stack has like an internal system where people can Search keywords and from if they end up searching something related that is in your newsletter they're gonna find it organically so you could actually even get readers without even promoting it so that's a one plus side to sub stack but I would still encourage promoting on social media and here's where you really don't have to do that much you can take your newsletters and you can just take bits out of them like bite-sized chunks out of the newsletter and you can start posting them on Twitter now I'm not going to explain to you how to grow on Twitter I'm not going to explain to you how to get a lot of followers how to get a bunch of likes any of that stuff followers and likes are pretty much vanity metrics they're not that important they don't necessarily translate to how many newsletter subscribers you get um for example I have way more newsletter subscribers than people who have like four times my following because I don't prioritize gaining followers I prioritize getting people to my newsletter you can take bite-sized chunks and if you want to learn how to actually grow on Twitter you're gonna have to go to a different video I'm not a Twitter expert I'm not some Twitter Guru so I'm not going to explain to you how you actually get eyeballs on the things you tweet you're gonna have to look up that what I did in particular was I tweeted about things in my newsletter but I also responded to people with very the people that I looked up to the people I like their content and I respond to them with very what I thought just thoughtful and um something that added the conversation whatever they were tweeting about and my following kind of built from there there's a couple other things you can do but again that's we're not here to talk about Twitter uh same thing goes for LinkedIn again I'm definitely not an expert on that so uh you got to figure out how best to operate on LinkedIn Justin Welsh is another great resource for that and uh you just stick with it and uh you don't get too hung up on the numbers again had I made this newsletter with the intention on getting to 16 000 subscribers 300 Pages subscribers 2500 a month in profit uh I would have given up a long time ago you can't specifically do it because you were trying to make an income or do anything you need to want to write about the things that you are writing about uh like I said to me or like I said for myself uh I love writing and creating content because it helps me learn better I learn better when I can think something through talk something through right you're on the camera or write about it it's just there is an old saying that uh the best way to learn is to teach there's also people who say teachers are people who can't do but I don't I don't believe in that but the best way for in my opinion to learn is to teach so that's why I do it that's why I write about the things I write about that's why I talk about the things I talk about and if you follow this group blueprint I think there is a very very good chance that uh you will be able to find people who are extremely interested in whatever it is you are creating content about that's how I did it that's how I do it if I was starting over if you have any questions leave them down in the comments below that is it for this one and I'll see you guys soon

Channel: Jarek Lewis

Views: 8,960

Keywords: substack, jarrylew, jarek lewis, how to get subscribers substack, how to make money substack

Id: Xu-rQY9Dj4M

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023