Hi Everyone - Keeping the momentum from hitting 3000 subscribers last week. This week Warren and I are talking about organic content for growth.

This week:

This week we added 219 subscribers, down 9 from last week. I shifted more ad spend to go direct to our website instead of to the lead forms, so this is likely the cause of this. We are still getting a better net cost per new subscriber with this (more on this in the Meta ads section below)

Warren and I are not super happy with our open rates and CTR recently. We believe it is time to make some changes. (1) we are going to send out a reengagement campaign and stop sending our newsletter to people who don’t open it. (2) We are collecting data from our subscribers to see what changes we can make for improved engagement

Our guides are going well. Still very few sales, but we launched another free guide this week in partnership with a sponsor. We are really excited to be able to create free value for our audience like this.

We also made the last big change to the website, which is keeping the weekly calendar there. Pretty excited for this one.

Warren and I had a good debate this week. He is in favor of spending more time, effort, and money pursuing organic content. I’m not opposed to this, and I think we should do it in the long term, but I have some reservations.

The Case for Organic Content:

1) Growth at the cost of only time - In theory, organic doesn’t cost anything outside of the time you put into it. Getting subscribers for zero dollars is pretty nice.

2) A more engaged audience - Our data suggests that direct to website subscribers open more and click through more. Getting more organic audience could increase our quality of readers.

3) Growth engine - Once you get organic, it can build momentum and feed itself.

The Case Against Organic (right now):

1) Organic is increased effort with unclear return - We could spend time and money editing videos, making a podcast, etc. and get zero growth from it. On the other hand, we could spend the same time and money on Meta ads and have clear, measurable return.

2) Divided attention - Are we committed to getting really good at organic? Will this be a distraction from being really good at newsletters?

To be clear, I think to have a successful business in the long run, you definitely need both. We came to the conclusion this week that we would test some different organic strategies, but keep meta ads the main thing.

Ok, I wanted to spend some time breaking down our new subscriber onboarding pipeline. I think this is important for me to evaluate our costs.

For those who are new, we recently switched to sending our readers directly to our website instead of filling out a lead form on meta. There is a little more friction from sending direct to the website, so we were curious what this would do to our costs.

By sending them to the website, we can now send them to Sparkloop, our product page, our affiliate page, and to Beehiiv boosts. All these pages give us a chance to create value for our audience while also recouping some of our advertising costs.

What has this looked like in practice?

Since we implemented this change, our cost per subscriber has been $0.34 more expensive when sending direct to the website. Again, this is expected based on the light additional friction. The ads in the two campaigns are virtually the same.

In order for this to be a good decision for us, we need to either be getting (1) Higher quality subscribers - more willing to open, click, and buy or (2) Be able to actually monetize them more effectively through the website.

Right now, the only way we are really monetizing subscribers through the website is sparkloop and beehiiv boosts. When a new subscriber clicks subscribe, they are taken to a page with recommended newsletters that pay us for new subscribers.

To date, we are projected to make $160 from the 210 new subscribers that have come through the website directly. I think these estimates are high, so let’s say that it nets out to $120 for these 210 people. This is revenue of $0.57 for every new subscriber this way.

This takes our net cost per subscriber from $1.27 to $0.70 which is below what our lead form is (Our lead forms don’t let us show boosts).

Even without a purchase of our products or affiliates, this is a better option for us. If we can start getting purchases on our products to over $0.70 per person, we will be getting our new subscribers for net positive.

This week we are focusing on: