How writers hit 500k subs and make posts succeed

Winning strategies from the best in the world

Jan 06, 2024

(Read time: 3 min)

My 3 weeks of holidays with family has officially finished, so as of NOW I'm officially focusing full-time on my newsletter and yet-to-be-determined business.

I'm getting increasingly excited about this new life:

Learning how to provide value for a newsletter audience feels much more versatile and stable than the increasingly volatile world of software engineering, where frameworks change every few months for no good reason, so people's skills become obsolete continuously.
Connecting with email subscribers directly (rather than spending time on social media) sounds appealing and wholesome to me. 🤩

Quick summary of what I’ve learned recently

I’m studying people who have large audiences (especially ones who grew quickly).

Writers like Tim Denning, Dan Koe, and others mentioned below.

Your readers likely subscribe to LOTS of newsletters. You don't want to be lost in the blur.
Put your publication name as part of your sender name so that they easily associate the 2.
- E.g. “
  Andi Leeman
  from Earn More, Live More, Work Less” is one great example.
Add an emoji to your name. If it catches on, and you “own” an emoji, that’s super powerful branding. E.g.
- “Sam Browne 🦖”
- “Jessie van Breugel 🟣”
- “Dickie Bush 🚢”
- “Geoff Palmer Ⓥ🌱”
- mine: “Ryan Walsh 🟢”
Prioritize attracting readers at least as much as writing.
- The post won’t matter if people won’t read it.
- Don’t spend 99% of your time writing a post and then 1% on a title.
  - I’m so guilty of this, and I haven’t retrained this muscle yet.
- The title, the image, and the first line matter a hell of a lot more than that.
- Instead, you might focus on those first and spend only 50% of your time writing the post.
- You must stop the scroll and attract a click!
  - This is true both for your existing subscribers and for people who haven’t subscribed yet.
- Practice scrolling through images and posts quickly to see which ones catch your eye. Use those types of images and titles.
How often should you publish, and on which days?
- Publish at least 1/wk. You need your list to remember who you are and continue to care.
- It's great to have more touchpoints with your audience (and if you'll eventually be selling ad placements, you'll have more inventory available if you publish more frequently). E.g. 3 to 7x per week.
- If you’re capable of publishing high-quality, valuable or beautiful content more often (e.g. 7/wk or even more), go for it.
- If your content is more business-related, you might want one of your publishing days to be a weekday, but in general, it doesn’t matter much which days of the week you choose for your publishing schedule.
Train your readers to click links
- Merely tracking “opens” is unreliable due to how images get handled.
- Derek Sivers doesn't even include the body of his post in his email. Readers NEED to click a link to go to his site to read.
Add a new unique header image to each post/email (and other images throughout, ideally)
Add a photo of yourself, maybe in the corner of your header image (or footer, like Kieran Drew) so that readers can start to remember your face and associate it with your great content.
Add a Subscribe button in the top 1/3 of the post
Add 1-2 other cards within the post to advertise other relevant posts of yours.
Make your content clear and easy to read (and ~1,000 words)
Write guest posts and cross-post them to your own publication.
Tag relevant publications
At the bottom, after your main article, include other sections. They will allow your readers a more intimate window into other aspects of your life, enhancing their interest. Some will help attract clicks. Examples:
- Favorite quote
- Product of the week
- Caught my eye this week
- Song of the week
- Mind-bending fact of the week
- Transparency report (financial, emotional)
- What we learned in recent posts
  - A section of links to other recent posts of yours. I learned this from
    https://www.thebrink.me, which is so beautifully done.
Include at the top of your post a hint like “Read time: 3 min”

General principles:

Make friends. It’s way more fun.
- There is an epidemic of loneliness. Everyone wants more friends.
- Doing things for friends is an energy multiplier.
work hard, and don't expect shortcuts
follow through on commitments
encourage interactions. e.g activities with paid subscribers.
respond to every comment with care
experiment
be brave, and also remember that fewer people notice your failures than you think
Be raw. Do what scares you. You don't need to be confessional or more intimate than you want, but you do need to have your own voice and unique story.
Focus on what you have a blazing passion or insatiable curiosity for. It's infectious.
pay for help
don't spread yourself thin (don't worry too much about Chat or Notes)
Spend time in alignment rather than resistance.
- You will succeed if you don't burn out, and you won’t burn out if you make quicker decisions rather than wasting energy where it doesn’t matter. Keep flowing.
- Sometimes you'll see conflicting advice. Follow your intuition and instinct rather than fretting and getting stuck.
Being a perfectionist (worrying too much about typos etc) is a form of beating yourself up, which will cause you to burn out, which is the worst outcome.
be generous (e.g. help / promote others who aren't as far along)