1/ This month, my @SubstackInc newsletter @TangleNews broke 25,000 free readers and 4,000 paying subscribers. I follow a lot of threads about newsletters & growth, and noticed that I've done this differently than other writers have. This is my advice about the advice I ignored:
2/ First, I write a daily, and I ignored the ubiquitous advice to do 1 or 2 newsletters free and paywall the rest each week. Instead, I write 4 free newsletters and put one newsletter behind a paywall. Why? Because I never know which one is going to take off!
3/ From my perspective, the more content available to the masses the more shots I have at bringing in new readers. Several times, I’ve unlocked subscriber-only content that was really popular just to get more eyes on it — and then usef that content as an advertisement. It works.
4/ It is EXTREMELY competitive out there in the attention economy. My own growth is slowing. Ppl really aren’t going to subscribe to read something unless you have the best headline of all-time. They will subscribe if they read something they love and are prompted to at the end.
5/ Also, it’s a moral high ground. We live in a country where a lot of people can’t pay $5/month to read a freaking newsletter. Keeping it free for those folks, and asking the people who can easily chip in $50/year to pay, resonates.
6/ Second, I didn’t go niche. Everyone says this over and over. Go niche niche niche (NICHE!!!!!) I picked national politics, something everyone and their mother writes about. I have a niche format — the right vs. left, etc — but even there I have competitors.
7/
If you have a target audience and you bring a new lens to that audience, you can win. That's it. Good content wins. You don’t need to write a newsletter on downtown Tampa Bay birdwatching to get subscribers. You’ll actually probably fail if you do that. Write what you know.
If you have a target audience and you bring a new lens to that audience, you can win. That's it. Good content wins. You don’t need to write a newsletter on downtown Tampa Bay birdwatching to get subscribers. You’ll actually probably fail if you do that. Write what you know.
8/ Third, I didn’t target “likeminded partners.” This is another thing everyone always says: find ppl in your space and cross promote. This never made sense to me. Ppl in my space are my competitors. Someone reading a politics newsletter may not want ANOTHER politics newsletter.
9/ The two best promotions I’ve gotten to this day were a mention on @MKBHD podcast, which is all about tech, and a mention in @TheHustle, a business newsletter. Those are not people in "my space."
10/ I’ve had partners in the “anti-partisan news world” — like @Ground_app and @braverangels — that have been fantastic partners too. But you don’t HAVE to stay in your lane. Getting out of it is actually a good thing!
11/ Fourth: I don’t keep it short. Seriously. I write whatever I want. Most of my newsletters are 10+ minutes reads, and they’re often 3,500 to 4,000 words. I break them up into sections and people can skip around if they want.
12/ There are enough “TheSkimms” out there. We know Axios brevity works. But we don’t need a dozen more. Everyone always beats you over the head with this nonsense that you have to be curt and short and quippy. People want to learn if you're topic is interesting!
13/ And btw, that rule goes back to the Facebook traffic days, when it was always true that longer-form articles *shared* better, even if they didn't click better.
14/ Fifth, I don’t focus on Twitter that much (sorry @Twitter). Everyone says Twitter is the #1 subscriber driver, and that may be true sometimes. I certainly have had help from my viral thread on election fraud in November (I still get subscribers from that). But…
15/ Meeting people where they are is effective. Using sharelinkgenerator and other sources to ask people to email Tangle to friends has been a great growth driver. I’ve also found that — get this — the in-person pitch kills it!
16/ I know it’s obnoxious and annoying these days to tell someone you have a newsletter… but if ppl ask what I do or we're chopping it up ab politics, you can bet I drop that URL on them (readtangle.com) Guess what? It works! They often sub right there in front of me
17/ The final thing I'll say is this: what worked yesterday is not always going to work tomorrow. You shouldn't reinvent the wheel (follow the advice of those that came before you), but you also shouldn't act like it's a waste of time to move outside that advice
18/ If you're paying attention to your audience you can find fun ways to inspire them to share and spread the word about your product. And it's not always going to be a familiar mechanism. Ignoring a lot of advice has been tremendously helpful to me
END/ Anyway, one thing people do always say that is actually true is that you should end every Twitter thread you ever write with a plug for your newsletter.
Tangle is the bomb dot com. Go read it: readtangle.com
Tangle is the bomb dot com. Go read it: readtangle.com
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