Newsletter growth from organic sources can be slow going, which is why the majority of people who reach 10K+ subscribers run paid acquisition.

The cost required to acquire new newsletters subscribers (who actually open and click) varies per channel and campaign, but typically averages $2-4 per subscriber.

The trick to maximise your investment is to earn as much of this cost back, within the first 60 days. And to do that you need a funnel, here is mine:

It all starts with sending traffic from the newsletter advertising marketplace Swapstack:

I pay $3.33 per subscriber to newsletter publishers who recommend my Digital Asset Investor newsletter.

They then get hit by the beehiiv recommendations page where you can get paid to promote other people’s newsletters and earn a similar amount:

New subscribers then reach my thank you page which has a $17 product they can immediately purchase, therefore helping to further reduce subscriber acquisition cost:

These low priced products, from ~$9 up to $49-$99 are called tripwires.

They are designed to get a new subscriber to immediately take action and purchase, and are typically followed by upsells.

You should link to or embed them on your thank you page and also within your welcome email to make passive sales.

I found another place to add these tripwires too…

In order to keep email deliverability high, you need to keep your open rates high by removing people who are not engaging with your newsletters.

I created a segment in beehiiv for subscribers who have not opened or clicked in the last 60 days.

There were 1350 people in it. I then created an automation to add them to:

With this email saying that they will need to click or will be removed:

The email got a crazy high click rate and generated 67 unique clicks:

So where does the red button link go to?

That’s right, the tripwire product where it’s now generating sales at a 1.5% conversion rate.

And of course, I make money from every subscriber by sending newsletters as they are monetized through sponsorship, affiliate links, and my own products.

Once you create a profitable funnel, subscriber growth should become a flywheel.

Brennan Dunn, with his newsletter Create & Sell has tied referral acquisition in with affiliate allowing him to pay up to $33 for subscribers:

Brennan is using the Sparkloop Partner Program to drive leads through his newsletter optin, where he pays $3 per subscriber.

But he has also connected his affiliate account so that partners that drive subscribers who then purchase one of his courses receive 20%.

He gives the full details in this video: