Transcription
What would you do in the first 90 days of being on Substack to set it up for a 100K year?
There are amazing newsletter writers out there, right? But we should be thinking like founders, not like creators.
For someone looking to monetize their Substack, what how would you recommend them navigating what monetization strategy to choose or choose first?
I would turn on pay subscribers straight away. You there's there's no magic number on what you can charge. Only you can know that but just put a price on it so you get like the first bit of traction. So that's the first monetization: turn on pay subscribers straight away. The second is [Music]
For today's episode, I am joined by Olly Foresight, who is the creator of New Economies, a very popular Substack newsletter with over 75,000 subscribers, and today we will be talking all about how to make your first $100,000 on Substack. Ollie, great to have you here today on the podcast.
Hey, thank you so much. It's been a long time coming and I'm glad uh we're finally here and we get to meet each other.
So, over the past year, you've generated more than $100,000 in revenue with your Substack, but what are the main ways that you've monetized your Substack newsletter?
Yeah, so maybe to give some context for the audience. So, um, I use, well, I spent my um career working at venture capital and I guess still do a little bit. Um, so the idea of the newsletter was, why isn't there like a technology newsletter which completely focuses on, this is the next big trend in tech? And when I um started leaving or started thinking about leaving my last company, I was like, it was just like that Eureka moment, like this is it, like there is there has to be like a media source or a media company for the latest trends in tech. I was like, okay, let's just launch it and see what happens. Um, so we actually started monetizing pretty quickly. Um, we turned, I think we turned on paid subscribers like pretty much from day one, which I recommend to all um, uh, Substackers or kind of newsletter writers. And then maybe it was um, 3 or 4 months in when we started getting like um, sponsors and people started wanting, you know, to to collaborate with us. And then initially it was, okay, we will partner with anyone because you're a startup and if someone's offering you money, then you're going to take it. Um, but now we're like, we're pretty strict on like who we want to partner with. So that's how we started monetizing: like pay subscribers, um, partners, and sponsors.
So what's a bit of the ratio in terms of revenue between paid subscriptions and sponsorships?
Yeah. Um, I would say it's probably 50/50 right now, give or take. Um, the, so there are two sides. The the the sponsors and the partners are pretty good because there's capital up front and there's a lot more capital than kind of the the pay subscribers, right? Um, but then on the pay subscribers is guaranteed revenue or at least, you know, recurring revenues, subscription revenue. So there's a high, hopefully a high likely chance they're going to subscribe the next year. Um, but now, you know, the focus is, you know, just growing both of them at the same time, and we have a couple of like new products we're looking to launch which will drive the revenue as well.
So let's let's first talk about the paid subscription, right? Um, you have a very successful paid uh tier to your Substack. What do you think makes specifically your paid tier such a success? Uh, and then like in general, what makes a paid Substack tier irresistible?
It's a good question. Um, the way I think about creating a paid subscription is, what can you get where you can't get it anywhere else? What can you own um that hopefully, you know, you cannot get elsewhere? And that's how we think about like the paid subscriptions. Um, so right now, as a paid subscriber, you can do the usual, like join our community, but you're getting exclusive insights into the next big trend in tech. And typically, what we do is most of our content is completely free. So you can read all of our content, but if you want access to the actual data of all of the content which we write, which, you know, most of our data we've collected ourselves and that takes a lot of time, then you have to pay and you become a paid subscriber for that. Um, so yeah, from the paid subscribers, I think it took us uh 121 days or something along those lines to reach our first 100 paid subscribers. And then the idea is hopefully you just keep getting your next hundred and next hundreds after that quicker and faster um and you can start increasing the prices and so on. So that that's that's basically what we did. Um, now we're looking to see, okay, how can we launch a paid subscription um which is much more effective and it's almost like a no-brainer for anyone to subscribe to.
So it sounds almost like that most of your content, let's say your information that's for free, but then if you really want something like completely else, a different type of uh in your case like data, right? That's when you have to join the paid tier. And in that way, it sounds like you don't just run like a paid newsletter in that sense, but it's almost like a subscription product in it of itself, right? Like a membership product of itself.
Yeah, exactly. Like I mean, I think the the the easiest way to think about it is a straightforward subscription, right? Um, to to New Economies and um, yeah, like um, it's going pretty well. Like there, of course, like all of us, we've we've got challenges and so on, but um, we've been super surprised on just like how quickly we've grown and um, how we've managed to uh, diversify our revenue, which I think is important for newsletter writers.
It reminds me a lot of how we at Ride Build Skill treat our paid Substack as well, where it's like most of our content is actually for free, and it's like, um, basically like an ordinary newsletter, right? But then the paid content, it's a different type, different format of content. So it's usually, let's say, mini workshops, or it's an ultimate guide, or it's actually GPT prompts, or it's a downloadable of some sort, like some sort of workbook. So I think in that sense, also from a subscriber's perspective, it's really difficult if you're like, okay, so I'm already getting free value from you, and if I now pay you, I'm getting like more of the same, like that's not really a clear value proposition. But if it's like, oh, the free stuff, it's it's your ordinary newsletter, I'm already loving it, but the paid tier, it's like completely different types of content I'm getting access to. I think that makes it easier to sell as well.
Yeah, exactly. Like we're we're always um trying different things. Um, but I think what's great now is anyone can now be a creator, or anyone can now be a, you know, a newsletter writer. I just think anyone who's looking to launch like a paid subscription, um, it's almost like just, what can you own that nobody else can do or replicate?
How about promoting your paid tier? How do you approach that with New Economies?
Yeah. So, what we do in the each newsletter edition is um, we have maybe two to four call to actions on, become a paid subscriber now and you get access to this, or um, at the top of each newsletter, we say, okay, for free subscribers, you get this, by by becoming or by becoming a paid subscriber, you get access to this. Um, and I think just making it super clear, 100% transparent, which is super important to us um, and for just really easy to sign up, do um, that's that's like the simplest approach we do. Um, that's our main distribution right now and getting new paid subscribers. Um, and, you know, some days you'll have like a whole flurry of new subscribers, which is always super nice. Um, but most of the most of the time, we just, you know, publish and uh, promote for our content.
So basically, every newsletter you send out, at the top or at the bottom, there's a call to action to the paid tier.
Yeah. Exactly. So I think we we normally include at least three of them. So one at the top. This is again, like what you get as a free subscriber and what you get as a paid subscriber. Um, our content is normally like quite in-depth. So if that's the case, we'll have like one also like halfway through the middle, and then at the end um, you can include a paywall option. So to get access to the data, click this and then have the paywall, and then underneath, if you become a paid subscriber, you can access the data immediately.
Do you also do like any big promos from time to time?
Not really. Um, in terms of like um, promotion, in terms of like discounts, you mean, or?
For example. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, yeah, we do those. Um, that that that works quite well. Um, and I I think those are good to at least get your like first few hundred subscribers. Um, and then after that, it's figuring out, okay, how do you best position it? What do you how do you price the newsletter? Um, and also like just again, what can you own in this space that nobody else can do?
Let's let's talk a little bit about pricing, actually. How did you guys decide on on pricing your paid tier?
So the way um I thought about it is, okay, for $200 a year, this is what you get access to. And if you subscribe to a similar like data platform, you're paying $10, $15,000 a year. So, we're like, okay, I'm pretty sure like a couple hundred, that's okay. People can do monthly. We have another subscription which is slightly more, but on the whole, you know, we think that's pretty valuable. Um, and for us, it's like, we don't want to milk every single opportunity and make as much money as we can from these people. That's just not us. We want to be 100% transparent. This is the value you get. We hope it's super valuable, and if we can make any improvements, then fantastic. Um, and I and I think that's just like the best approach, and I think it's really a fair way to do it.
Yeah. And I think also with with pricing, at least what we decided to do, um, is really make the annual tier far more attractive than the monthly tier, because I do see on Substack that there's a lot of people also, you know, trying out your paid tier for one or two months, then leaving, then joining again. And it's a bit of a hassle. Um, rather than just locking them in for an entire year, where you know, for an entire year, they get your exclusive content.
And also, I think like if you have other monetization options on top of your paid tier, it makes sense to lock people in that annual plan, right?
Totally. Yeah, it's a good point, actually. So um, again, full transparency, we our annual plan is much more attractive than the monthly plan, and for good reason. Like if if churn is high on some months with the monthly plan, then it's just annoying, right? Um, you want to get as many paid subscribers as you can on the annual plan. So I think we say something along the lines of, if you become a paid subscriber um, based on like the annual plan, you can also um, gift a subscription to a friend of your choice. Um, so it doesn't cost us anything. It's a free gift for you. You can do what you like, and that that works quite well. Um, yeah, I'm a big fan also of just keeping it really simple. Just do annual plans. It's not that much money anyway, and hopefully it works.
What's uh, what's one common mistake you see a lot of Substack creators make when they just like think about creating their paid tier?
I think they overcomplicate it in terms of they offer too much. I think like one thing we've learned is you have to know like what you're worth or what the newsletter is worth. If you start creating all of these offers, you get all of these different perks, it becomes like almost too confusing for also the readers. So I think just keeping the offering really simple. Um, but also your subscribers will also have different options on who they wish to subscribe to and become a paid subscriber to. So I think it goes back to my point earlier around um, if all the offerings are basically the same, it's quite hard for you to stand out. So, how can you as a newsletter writer stand out by again, owning that one thing that nobody else can do? Um, I think that's really important and not enough people think about it.
Yeah, let's dive a little bit more into that. Like, how can someone make sure that their Substack publication really stands out, and in particular their paid tier stands out, because like you said, that's key in in yeah, you know, driving more paid subscribers. If if everything is the same, a similar offer than other paid Substacks, it's going to be really difficult for someone to choose, right? So you need to stand out.
For sure. Okay, so let's say like your newsletter, for example, what I would be doing, there are similar newsletters like you guys already out there, right? So right now, for your paid subscribers, what do they get in return?
For us, they so they get access to a live workshop once a month, and they get access to a library of...
I would say by now it's like dozens of hours of video workshops, for example, mini courses.
Nice. Okay. Like one thing I would do also is um, create the largest Substack news uh, the largest Substack community of fellow newsletters, newsletter writers. We're all in the same boat. We all want to meet new people. And for an additional whatever it is, $50, $100 a year, um, you can access to this amazing community. And if you can own that and it's the biggest, subscribe to that. Um, and again, I think it's like just creating things like that. Like we're looking to launch one thing which I can't talk about yet, but if we can do it, I think that would be like so impactful for so many people, especially like founders. Um, and I think it's just thinking outside the box. Like there's so many newsletters, there are amazing newsletter writers out there, right? Um, but we should be thinking like founders, not like creators. If you think like a founder and you want to build the best possible product, you know, however you describe it, um, I I I just think more people should be thinking like founders.
I think that's really interesting, thinking more like founders than creators. Um, I see this a lot because in the creator economy, it's super easy to get started, right? You just create your Substack account and you start writing about whatever you want, you're creating. But that does not necessarily mean you're going to monetize, right? That requires more thinking like a business owner, thinking like a founder. It requires thinking, hey, what would actually sell and where does the money come from? Um, and I think that's really important that yes, it's easy to get started as a creator, but if you want to monetize it, it's not just, okay, what do I find cool to create? What do I find interesting uh to write about? What am I passionate about? Right? It's really the eye perspective. No, it's like, what do other people want? What does my audience really struggle with? What's a pain point? What keeps them up at night? What can I create that's unique that will help them solve some of their problems? And now you're thinking way more like like a business. And I can imagine Ollie, you with your your background, you've probably approached Substack from day one with a founder's perspective, right?
I think so. Um, we have like we have three principles. One is, how do we build the best best possible product? We become the go-to newsletter for all the latest trends in tech. We're here to make a business at the end of the day. But if we can make those things work, there's a whole flywheel effect, right? People will start recommending us to their friends. Um, a proportion of those people will become paid subscribers. If you build an amazing brand, then sponsors and partners want to work with you. And then at the end of the day, like we're here to build the biggest, you know, media company which focuses on the latest trends in tech. If you can build that and you can build that narrative, then the sky's is the limit. You can do all kinds of things with that in the future.
So, let's talk a little bit about um newsletter sponsorships. How do you land new sponsorships for your newsletter?
Yeah, so the first couple um, the first couple came to us. Um, and like I said, full transparency, they were they were amazing people, but look, like would we partner with them again now? Probably not. Um, it's just, is it, they're cool companies, but we just don't want to promote them, right? Um, but now it's like um, obviously 50/50. So half the companies come to us and half half the companies we reach out to them. So let's start with someone, people who are looking for news, you know, for sponsors. There are a couple of tactics which we've used. One, how do you get to sponsors without going to them directly saying, hey, give me money? So one of the things we do is like our um, you know, kind of acquisition channel is we do these big market maps. So we'll do like a whole big deep dive on, let's say, um, the AI startup landscape for marketing tools. So we'll map out all the tools in the space. The piece might get 50, 100, quarter of a million reads, and all the startups in that space, and then what we do is we make a big effort to get to know every single one of those companies, the founders, the heads of marketing, the heads of go-to-market, and we just say very informally, um, hey, we have a pretty big media channel. I think we can collaborate in some way, informally or formally. We're totally transparent, like we would love to work with you in some way. And I think if you can like give them value before going to them and asking them for something in return, it's a much better way to build, you know, good relationships. Um, and then I would say the companies which come to us, on the whole, most of them are pretty good and we would like to work with them. Um, and then some which just don't, you know, it doesn't feel right. Um, and then how do we price? Um, so we price on a bundle base package. Um, we do like four newsletter editions. Um, our prices have have uh, relatively actually stayed the same. Um, but we do four newsletter editions and as a hack, like if they buy today, you can always say, like, we'll give you five newsletter editions at the same price. Um, and from like the whole setup, it's very simple. We just create a Notion doc. We say, like, these are the things we need from you, like the graphics, the contents, and so on, and we share all the stats. So again, we're super transparent.
I think this is a really interesting way to monetize your newsletter. Something that us at Ride Build Skill, we have not really looked into that uh often. We've mostly monetized with like digital products or coaching consulting offers, but I think the the cool thing about sponsorships is that it also just allows you to create content, have the you know, the sponsorship in the content, and that's it, right? Because you cannot continue to make an ask in every single newsletter. You cannot sell a product or coaching offer in every single newsletter. I think your audience will get tired of that, right? You'll have that fatigue in that sense. So, this could be a really good way to also diversify your your income streams, right? Maybe you already have digital products, maybe you already offer coaching or a paid tier. This could be another thing, another way to monetize your your newsletter. And I really like how you're approaching it, approaching those companies first um without asking them anything. You're more building that connection first instead of directly pitching, hey, here's a newsletter slot, this is what it costs. You're first building those connections. Um, what would you recommend that someone who has a relatively small audience do in terms of newsletter sponsorships? A, would you even recommend that they do it? And if so, what's the process like?
Yeah. So I think only the creators can decide if they're if they are at the appropriate stage to go and look for sponsors. And the way I see this, there are two sides. One, you can have a super small newsletter, let's say it's 5, 10,000 people, but it's very niche. It's like AI engineers for marketing who are based out of France, for example. Um, but that's like a hyper niche newsletter, but it's super impactful because you probably got massive distribution for that like niche audience, and you're probably like incredibly well well respected. Um, but then you have the flip side where it's like a mass newsletter. There's not much of a concentration. Maybe you don't quite know who your audience are. Um, and that's a bit more scatty. So I think even if you are relatively small, I don't think there's any harm in trying to find sponsors. Um, how do you go around it? Well, again, it's like, what can you build for them? Building that relationship first before you go and basically approach them to ask to partner with them. Um, what, you know, if you can figure out a way on how you can do that, maybe you invite them to your live podcast show, you do a you feature them in one of your newsletter editions. As soon as you feature them in like one newsletter edition about talking about the product, for example, just send a note to the founder and head of marketing of that company. Just say, "Hey, look, massive fan of your company, X company. We just featured you in our in our newsletter. We'd love to collaborate." Um, I think that's like the easiest approach. And then we're big fans of a company called Passionfruit, um, who who I've known for a long time, and they are essentially a sponsorship marketplace. Um, we get a couple of really good deals from them. So anyone who's who's listening, I definitely recommend signing up. Um, that that's a really cool platform as well. And um, I think apart from that, it's pretty um, it's straightforward, but then it's hard work.
What you said earlier about like first mentioning the product or the company maybe in your newsletter and then reaching out reminds me of a story of one of our clients. And he, his newsletter was in the mental health space. It's pretty difficult to monetize mental health with digital products or coaching because you likely have to be a licensed therapist. Um, what he did, he mentioned like a few online uh therapy sites like BetterHelp, for example, and he was just like, I really like what they do. Some of my friends have used it. And he was just linking to the product. He was not like overly selling it. He he truly like um believed in BetterHelp and found them valuable. But then he sent them a message like, "Hey, I just shouted you guys out in my newsletter. Um, that's what I really love what you do." That's it. And then he actually landed a sponsorship slot because of that message. Cuz they were like, "Oh, you're already like mentioning us and we love what you do as well. What if we take this to the next level and we have some sort of partnership out of this?" So rather than looking at like the transactional lens, you can already look at what products or services am I already using in relation to my newsletter niche um and that like use that as a starting point to get more uh sponsorships.
Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. I I think there's also like um like how do you I always find like how do you find these sponsors? That was always like a massive pain point for us. Um, and I think a really simple way to actually begin is go to your favorite newsletter uh writers who are in your space. You can go go through all their content and just look to see who sponsored them in the past. That's a really easy way just to like figure out who is sponsoring creators right now. Um, and, you know, at least you get a sense of uh, the types of companies who are looking to partner with creators. And then what you should do, just literally send a LinkedIn message to the head of marketing um at that company and the founder, just say, look, I saw you are looking to sponsor creators. We'd love to chat. Um, we just like to build this is just for us, but we like to build, you know, those relationships before we reach out um, or there's any like conversation around, you know, sponsor sponsoring.
Yeah, yeah. In the same way, I think like using YouTube or a podcast as a research for this because in in many cases, these companies, they do newsletter sponsorships, podcast sponsorships, and YouTube as well. So, uh, you see that a lot of YouTubers, right? They're sponsored by the same type of companies over and over again. So, that is a clear signal. Okay, this company is partnering up with creators. Use that to to reach out.
Great idea.
Ollie, let's let's let's make a little bit of a a growth plan here. Let's say someone is starting out on Substack. They're excited and they're really looking to monetize this and take it seriously. What would you do in the first 90 days of being on Substack to set it up for a 100K year? Now, I'm not saying make 100K in 90 days, right? But setting it up for a 100K year.
Okay. So, I would think about first thing, which category are you going to focus on? And again, what is your newsletter going to be focused on? And how do you own that space? If you cannot own that space, honestly, I actually wouldn't start it. Um, so you have to be able to own that space because that will create like a huge amount of value long term. Um, so that's the first thing, like brand positioning, have a really good name that everybody can remember. Like almost think, I know it's like quite hard when you're just starting out, but in the next one or two years, can you see this becoming like a really well-known brand that you're going to love and talk about? So that's kind of like the first thing. The second um, I would build relationships with um, 10 to 50 like fellow Substackers who are all at different stages and get all of them to recommend you. Like that's been a really impactful way for us to grow as well. Um, so as soon as you hit the ground running, like in the second week, if you have 10, 20, 30 Substackers recommending you, fantastic. Um, the first thing I would be doing is joining a some form of like Substack community. There are a couple of like free ones out there. We actually run a free one um, which anyone can join, like within reason. Um, but there are also some slightly more targeted and um, concentrated ones, right? So I would definitely recommend like joining one of those if it's free or paid, recommend joining one as it's um, it's good like value short and long term. Um, and then just like just start publishing. Like if I look at our first pieces now, when we first published, I'm like, why did we publish this? Like it's so bad, but you don't know then, right? And then then you like just start to iterate. Like the visuals are bad, just it's okay, like it's a good piece of content, but it doesn't look amazing. Um, and now we're like, we have a really, hopefully we have a a good and up-and-coming brand. Our brand visuals are like passion fruit orange. So as soon as you see any visuals like throughout Substack and it has a passion for orange, hopefully you can, you know, resonate with us. Um, uh, turn on pay subscribers like straight away, as you don't know who's, you know, willing to support you. Um, and just find a way on how you can get your first 100 paid subscribers as quickly as possible.
So, you mentioned um recommendations. That's been an important growth feature for you. Um, and I really want to emphasize this because I see that a lot of Substack creators, they really take the solo approach. They post notes, they post their long form, but they never really connect with other creators on the platform. And then it's like it's like kicking to a rock, and that won't move. Uh, you're really putting in time and effort, maybe creating high-quality content, but if you don't have that network of other creators recommending you or engaging with your work, it's really going to be difficult to escape that like creating in the void space. Um, so I really want to emphasize this that it's an important growth feature. We see we see it for us as well, like 45% of total subscribers are from recommendations. So that's a massive growth engine. How do you approach other creators um to have this newsletter recommendation exchange?
Yeah. So when we first started out, we um, anyone who seemed appealing, who weren't too big, but we knew we had like a or had a pretty good like inkling that, okay, hopefully they'll say yes, then we would reach out to them. Um, but then as like time progressed, I'm like, what more can we give to these people apart from just giving a recommendation? So um, probably six months ago, we started a Substack community, and this was um, mostly newsletter writers in tech um, who are still even just starting, some of them are bestsellers, doesn't really matter like what age are ads, but if we wanted to recommend them, we would also say, look, we've also got one of the biggest Substack, if not like the biggest Substack community made up of fellow writers. We would absolutely love to help you. We would love to collaborate if you just come and join us. Um, and then you can say, "Okay, would you like, should we recommend you?" So, again, like it goes back to my point around offering something before like you actually take something. Um, I just think it's a really simple approach and and a really good way to build amazing relationships. Um, and now, yeah, we've, I actually don't know the exact number, but um, we've got some like the best Substackers recommending us.
That's amazing. Yeah, I think I saw like a screenshot in one of your latest articles that said like over 33,000 subscribers through recommendations. Is that correct?
Probably something like that.
Yeah, that's that's amazing. And that that really shows the power of collaboration. And again, >> starting with that, >> not starting with like, okay, I'm I'm going to reach out to someone and get this newsletter recommendation, which is a very selfish way to look at it, but first just build some rapport with someone, maybe give them value first, right? And really build a relationship and make sure it's like genuine, that you genuinely enjoy what they do, what they write about. Um, I think this is so important, and this you can even start doing this by engaging with other people's notes, right? Just leaving a like, leaving a thoughtful comment, leaving a restack. Now, you're helping them already in a very easy way. Takes maybe a minute or two max. Um, but if you do that for a few days, they will know who you are, right? And if you then reach out saying, "I really love what you do with your newsletter." Um, maybe there's a I think we have audience overlap. Do you would you be willing to do a newsletter recommendation swap? Nine out of 10 creators will say yes, especially when you've built that rapport first.
Yeah, exactly. I think that's a really good way of looking at it and um, you know, follow them on Twitter, follow them on LinkedIn. You can even just drop them a message just to say, hey, loved your content. Um, keep up the great work. We'd love to collaborate at some stage. Um, and not everyone's going to respond to you. Totally. Okay. Um, but like now with our Substack community, for example, I think we have 70, 75 like fellow Substackers in there. You know, we're all sharing each other's content. Um, a lot of us are like recommending each other already. So again, like if you're listening to this and you just want to like join the community, go and find one. Um, I just think it helps so much. And being a creator is hard. You know, you you mentioned the um 30, 30k like subscribers which we gained from recommendations. Like, you know, we're working 18, 19 hours a day, 7 days a week. Like we have a very core mission. We want to be the biggest technology newsletter for the latest trends in tech. And I just think for anyone starting, like you should just have that north star and just keep going until you don't >> until you make it.
That's actually a great point because it's like yes, recommendations are very effective, but you're not magically going to get 33,000 subscribers, right? It means you have to first build a publication that's worth recommending, especially by some of the biggest accounts out there, like you have done. Um, which means, okay, first, like if if your branding isn't on point, if your content isn't on point, if you lack those fundamentals, you can ask for recommendations all you want, but it's not going to be as effective, right? So first get the foundation right and do the recommendations at the same time. Now, um, recommendations aside, what are some of your other most effective growth strategies for your Substack?
Yeah, so uh, a couple things. So, I mentioned these like big market maps we do. Um, though those do really well. Um, and again, it's thinking like a founder, but also thinking, how do I make my every single piece of mind go viral? Like that's how we think about it. Is this, would we be happy if this newsletter edition was shown on the biggest front page newspaper in the world, for example? Um, those normally do really well. Um, we do a big annual creator economy report and AI report. Um, those do super well, and for us, actually, a lot of it is luck. Um, we did the first generative AI market map literally two days after ChatGPT came out. This thing had like a quarter of a million reads in a week. Um, if you go to my LinkedIn, it's the most popular one which has been shared. It had like a million um impressions on LinkedIn or something. That got us a lot of subscribers. Um, so if you can just be like quick to react on like big trends happening, or whichever like niche you're focusing on, then that's how you can also get paid subscribers uh and like, you know, free subscribers. Um, and at the end of the day, like I think it's quite basic. If you write really good content, people want to support you. They're going to subscribe. Um, and yeah, I think that's I think that's pretty much it. It takes time though. It takes time. And I get it. It's a lot of work. You know, you you probably know this as well. It's like you thought you have a really good piece of content and then you got like a few subscribers. You know, you're going to, that's just how it works. Um, but I think also it's important to think about long-term, how do you future-proof your newsletter media company, however you decide to frame it. Like for us, um, one of the things I think about is, are people going to read newsletters in the next one to two years, or is it just going to be AI summaries? Well, I have a I had a small hunch, like not everyone's going to read newsletters anymore, right, in the future, but maybe they want video content. So, like let's launch video content now. We've got the distribution, so let's just do it. Um, and I think like you should always just be thinking ahead. If you can think ahead and you can be one step ahead, one step kind of ahead of the curve, then you'll be okay.
That's also I think why Substack really uh promoted their their podcasting feature. And I think they do a great job at the podcasting feature. Um, would you say that looking ahead, right, especially with the changes in AI, that's really why you started the podcast, uh, which is both audio and in video on on YouTube?
Yeah, exactly. I was like, thinking about like, yeah, are people going to read newsletters in the future? Um, or is it just going to be kind of all these AI summaries? And honestly, we don't know yet. Um, but even if the even if people do continue to read newsletters in the future, it's a good gamble because we can also build a huge news a huge new kind of audience on video. Um, in the meantime, better relationships like with our fans. We get to speak to like the most amazing entrepreneurs who've been there and made it. Um, and again, like you can utilize that kind of network at some point in the future. Yeah, it's been one of the main reasons why we started a podcast as well, and we focused more on on YouTube as well, because it's like, I do still believe that in the next year, next two years, people will continue to read newsletters, but with so much AI generated content, if you only do writing and you never show your face, you are never on camera, and you're never speaking, I think it's going to be difficult to really stand out in this ocean of AI generated content, because it will like only get better. People will get better at creating content with AI, and AI gets better, right? So, it's going to be very hard. You can have completely fictional characters, I think, creating newsletters, writing newsletters, but it's all done by AI. So having that component of, okay, we're now, you know, on camera, on audio for 40 minutes, 50 minutes, where you can show more personality, it can be more nuanced, people can have this different connection with you as a creator than just the written word, I think is going to be more and more important over the next few months already.
I agree. And I I think like for anyone starting, it's um, if you're if you're interested, like just launch, like you should just be launching whatever you need to do, right? Like don't wait for people to say no, yes, no, yes, like only you know, right? Um, like just launch your newsletter, launch your podcast show, whatever like you're thinking you're creating. I think people should just do it. And there's nothing to lose. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Um, like we've had a bunch of things that we thought would work, but just didn't work. Um, and just trial and error. But I think like the the biggest opportunity for us create for for us creators, kind of short and long term, is distribution. If you can have a massive distribution channel, that's going to lead to different kinds of things.
So for someone looking to monetize their Substack, what how would you recommend them navigating what monetization strategy to choose or choose first?
Yeah, I would turn on pay subscribers straight away. You can, there's there's no magic number on what you can charge, only you can know that, but just put a price on it um, discounted it initially so you get like the first bit of traction, and then at some point, you will get paid subscribers as long as like it's not crazy expensive and uh, the offering is not just bad, you know, you will get paid subscribers um, so that's the first monetization: turn on pay subscribers straight away. The second is start, you know, scouting out, okay, who could be a potential partner for us? Um, in terms of sponsors. Um, and then once you have like a rough idea, maybe who your first five or 10 sponsors are, again, back to my point here, think about it a way on how you can engage with those people. Uh, first, you know, first by delivering value and then provide something to them in in return. Um, I think that's a really good way on at least starting to get to know like who these people might be. And then just like think like a founder. Like if you are building the largest tech newsletter for French AI, you know, developers as an example, what do these people want? They're always going to be looking for new jobs. Similar to what you're doing, right? You're helping writers build and, you know, build, you know, big companies. You know, I'd be thinking about, okay, how do I build the largest newsletter? How do I build a large community for uh, newsletter writers? Um, how do I help these newsletter writers expand internationally? So right now, we're only speaking, we're only writing in our native languages, right? So English, but I can imagine like New Economies probably has a huge audience like in China, India, and so on. But right now, we don't have those features available, right? So how do you start educating those people to go um, outside? And I I just think like there are so many opportunities that us newsletter writers can create outside those sponsors and pay subscribers. That's what I would be thinking about.
Yeah. One one of those methods that I would really add to this is especially in the beginning, have some sort of high ticket offer like a consulting offer or coaching offer ready, especially with let's say your most uh active and engaged subscribers, whether free or paid. Like get into conversations with them. You don't have to even come up with the offer yourself, but first get into conversations with your most active subscribers. See what they want, see what they need, see what their pain points are, and then see if you can help them solve it in exchange for uh, you know, as a high ticket offer. It doesn't, you don't have to spend weeks or months creating something upfront. You could set this up in a in two hours, right? Set up a Stripe link basically, but really dive into conversations with your audience so you pinpoint exactly, this is what's going on in their head. This is what they need. This is what their goals are. Not only will that help you in getting a high ticket coaching or consulting client, but it will also help you make better content because now you know exactly what your audience is looking for. So, I would really add that on top of like paid subscriptions uh and newsletter sponsorships. I think this is one of the fastest ways to get started as well. I would I think it's a good idea. The only thing I would say is if you start having hundreds of paid subscribers, which hopefully is going to happen to everyone at some point, that consulting call, you're not going to want to have that then. How do you replace a consulting call without you needing to be in the conversation, right? You can't scale that. Um, we talked about that a little bit. It's almost like these service-based types of companies, how do you remove yourself away by still adding a high value ticket item? Um, maybe it's like a pre-recorded like course for example, where you don't need to be present, it's already recorded, and for a few hundred, you can get it. Um, but I think for the for the first, you know, 10, 20 subscribers or even for the first 100, you know, you should um, just, you know, add in, you know, offer as much as you can within reason um, and adjust your pricing if if people just aren't buying it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's actually a great point, right? The moment you see that uh people are looking for the same solution, uh that's the moment you should no longer just offer that one-on-one, which is not scalable, but turn it into um like an asset, right, that can sell on autopilot, like a course or or workshop. I think that's really important. Then you know that there's actually demand for it, and now you can turn it into something that's highly scalable. That's really where the the real power of an internet business is.
Exactly. You know, I think um another really good way to grow, monetize, and like look for new opportunities is actually to partner with other creators. If you can partner with other creators who are maybe at the same kind of scale as you already, they also want to grow. So, if you can bundle subscriptions together, or if there are like cool collaboration opportunities you could do, then I think it's amazing. Um, one thing we haven't touched upon is like guest post. Like I suppose they're quite good for like the early days, but it's more of like a one-off thing, right? Or maybe you won't do it twice. You're not going to be appearing on like someone else's newsletter like every month. I doubt. Um, so I think just also managing that. But if you can get a couple of those in the early days, that's also helps just like grow the brand and grow your brand presence. Um, and the third thing I would mention is around, you should be deciding if you want to build a newsletter as a personal brand or as a business. If you want to build a brand, if you want to build a newsletter as a personal brand, your name should be like there, you know, this is this newsletter hosted by this person. Um, but if you, but I think I would encourage, and this is how we think about it, to build a newsletter as a business. Um, because at some point, if you build the largest tech, if you build the largest newsletter or podcast media company, whatever you want to call it, this category, someone will probably want to buy it from you.
Ollie, one last question for you, and this is a question I ask everyone on the podcast. If you could go back in time to your younger entrepreneurial self and share three pieces of advice, three lessons or insights, what would it be?
Um, wow. Go back in time. Um, wow, good question. Um, I should have started the newsletter sooner. Um, would be number one. I thought about it for just even if it was for a few months, I should have just launched it like as soon as possible. Um, I wish we created a better brand identity earlier on. Um, but again, like when we're building, you're not too sure like where this is going to go. So, I would say like, we started creating a a pretty strong brand identity 9, 10 months in. That's when we started to say, okay, these are our brand colors. This is our brand identity. This is who we are and so on. Um, and then the third is I would just keep, like we just keep looking for new opportunities on how we can expand and how we can, you know, um, build like just the most amazing brand that hopefully everybody loves.
Awesome. Uh, where should people go if they want to learn more about you and your work?
Hey, yeah. Uh, come and be a subscriber. NewEconomies.co and we'd love to have you as a subscriber.
Yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes so people can can check it out. Um, Ollie, I really want to thank you for uh, sharing all your insights here with us today. It's been super valuable, man.
I loved it. Thank you so much. And anyone who is listening, just start. Turn on those paid subscribers. Go and get hundreds and thousands of free subscribers. And if we can help you, feel free to reach out to me. I can't wait to see everyone.