More creators reveal their #1 growth hack
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Hello from Denmark! I’m here to speak at a media conference about how publishers can take their podcasting and newsletter operations to the next level. Luckily, the jet lag made it extremely easy for me to wake up super early to put together today’s newsletter. More creators reveal their #1 growth hackLast week, I reached out to several successful media entrepreneurs and asked them all variations of the same question:
The responses I got were amazing — so amazing, in fact, that I decided to break them up into two separate newsletters. Last week I published an article titled “8 creators reveal their #1 growth hack.” Today, I’m adding five additional responses to the mix. Let’s jump into them:
Let’s start with some context: Cassingham launched his newsletter in the early 90s, before email service providers like Mailchimp existed. That meant he had to manually send out each newsletter and then also manually remove email addresses from his list that bounced back. Once his newsletter hit over 100,000 subscribers, this work became enormously time intensive. To relieve this burden somewhat, he only sent out the free newsletter every other week, and on alternating weeks he syndicated it to paying print newspapers.
In other words, Cassingham decided to launch a paid version of his newsletter. Under his new model, free subscribers received it biweekly, but paying subscribers received a weekly version. This was 20 years before the invention of Substack.
Under this new structure, subscribers to the paid version got an expanded version of the newsletter that contained additional content.
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Older messages
15 local news entrepreneurs walk into a Zoom call
Friday, November 11, 2022
Luckily for you, I recorded the entire discussion.
8 creators reveal their #1 growth hack
Thursday, November 10, 2022
"Content is really just showing up every day and producing something valuable.”
Twitter has never understood the Creator Economy
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
The real incentive that keeps creators glued to any particular platform is its ability to help them make money.
What is the exact optimal time to publish?
Friday, October 28, 2022
By giving yourself a weekly publication deadline, you're less likely to fall off that bandwagon.
You should be surveying your audience more
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
You basically have your own homegrown focus group just waiting to be unleashed.
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