Starter Story - the first 1,000 subscribers

Hey there,

This is Pat, founder of Starter Story.

This newsletter just hit 120K subscribers (120,179 to be exact).

Every time I see this number, I have a moment of gratitude AND a moment of terror...

This newsletter changed my life. It allowed me to quit my job and it's generated $1,000,000's of dollars (both directly and indirectly).

But, on the other hand, going from 0 to 1,000 email subscribers was like chewing glass and staring into the abyss (shoutout Elon).

For me, it took 6 months. 6 months of blood, sweat, and tears. I tried everything.

But when I hit that sweet sweet number (1,000), I unlocked something.

After that, hitting 10,000 felt effortless. And hitting 100,000 felt like a sure thing.

BUT this was all 6 years ago and just my own personal experience.

And as you know, Starter Story is all about crowdsourcing data from thousands of successful founders around the world.

So I started asking other people with HUGE newsletters how they did it.

I went down the rabbit hole and spent the past month studying how the biggest newsletters in the world got their first 1,000 subscribers.

I really wanted to uncover how they got their first 1,000 subscribers, not what their doing today!

(IMO unless you're running a big newsletter, that's not relevant)

Who were their first subscribers? And how they got them to subscribe?

What I found surprised me...

There are basically 5 approaches that all newsletters use to get their first 1,000 and we're going to break them down here today.

I put all my findings into a 4,000+ words deep dive and spreadsheet full of data.

Want to read the full report? Click here.

This is all too long to put in one email, but I will include the first section below, and you can click through to the full deep dive

Read the first section below:

The 5 Strategies To Go From 0 to 1,000 Subscribers

Here are the 5 strategies (which we're going to break down with further examples):

1. 10x Content: This strategy centers around newsletter operators who create content that is 10x more valuable than anything else you can find online. This, in turn, establishes the creator as an authority, builds trust, and converts readers into loyal subscribers.

2. Inner Circle: Most newsletters kickstarted their growth by tapping into their personal and professional network to acquire their first few subscribers - this includes friends, family, colleagues, mentors, neighbors, and classmates.

Leveraging your network can be done both online and offline, but online is the most common approach.

3. Community Heist: A community heist involves identifying where your customers hang out online, providing value to them, and sending them directly to your platform.

The most common channels are (1) Product Hunt (2) Reddit (3) Indie Hackers (4) Hacker News (5) Facebook Communities.

4. Collabs: This method involves engaging with other audiences to grow your subscriber base. The four most common approaches include writing for other publications, utilizing retweets and shares, getting featured in other publications, and engaging in swaps or collaborations with other newsletters.

5. Paid Acquisition: This tactic involves utilizing paid placements and ads to reach a wider audience. Although we found this to be the least common approach, it’s an effective way for newsletters to target specific demographics and promote their content to potential subscribers who may not have discovered it organically.

Strategy 1: 10X Content

10X Content is content that – no matter the format – is at least ten times better than anything else available online on that topic.

The obvious benefit of this strategy is that it is, of course, great for SEO; but also establishes the creator as an authority on the topic. People will pay attention when sharing something.

According to our research, 30% of the newsletter operators that we studied found early success thanks to this blueprint: great content comes first, newsletter comes second.

There are two main approaches to this strategy:

1) Convert traffic into subscribers: Write amazing articles -> Grow SEO -> convert traffic into subscribers.

2) Convert followers into subscribers: Create amazing content → focus on one platform → build a fan base → convert them into early subscribers.

The primary channels for this approach are (1) Twitter and (2) Linkedin.

Here are a few examples:

1. Marketbeat: Articles on stocks

MarketBeat is a newsletter and website that empowers stock investors to make better trading decisions. Its numbers today are insane:

3.8 Billion emails sent
3.2 million email subscribers
11,243 premium subscribers
140 million website pageviews
$22 million top-line revenue
14 employees

And the craziest part is that it started out as a personal finance blog in a college dorm room back in 2006.

How Matt created 10x Content (example)

The first thing Matt did was...

Click the button below to read the full deep dive, including a spreadsheet with all data on how 50 newsletters got their first 1,000 email subscribers.