Your 1X weekly newsletter is the engine of your entire creator business online.
Or .. it CAN and SHOULD be.
Here's what I mean:
Your 1X weekly newsletter is NOT just an email list.
Your 1X weekly newsletter IS:
- Your blog articles and SEO.
- Your website growth/CTA flywheel.
- Your resource hub for your audience.
- Your entire social media growth flywheel.
- Your base for the paid products you make.
- Your evergreen paid acquisition growth funnel.
- ... where more than 90% of your revenue will come from.
Your newsletter is everything.
So for this deep dive I'm going to be taking you through examples of how each of these things takes place stemming from your newsletter as the engine.
90+% Of Your Creator Business Revenue
First things first...
It's easy for me to just say your newsletter is going to generate 90+% of the revenue in your entire creator business.
But I'd rather prove it...
I collect newsletter quotes from the world's top creators for this exact reason.
Here are five of my favorite newsletter quotes:
- Kieran Drew: "I have 240,000 followers in my audience. I have 35,000 subscribers for my newsletter. I’ve made $841,000 in 3 years. 90% of the revenue has come through email...."
- Codie Sanchez: “Newsletters print money. Never stop growing your email list."
- Matt Gray: “Email marketing has proven 3500% ROI. In other words, starting your own newsletter is perhaps the most important growth lever you could pull for your brand.”
- Nicolas Cole: "Once you’ve built and are running a digital business you realize your newsletter is everything. The whole business."
- Alex Cattoni: “I don’t care how big your social media following is. If you haven’t built an email list from that community, then you are really, really leaving money on the table.”
And there are far, far more where that comes from.
Your [Website] Blog Articles And SEO
In the past we had a deep dive discussing exactly how your newsletter should interact with your website, and this is the first piece of our newsletter engine.
Our newsletter content gets published to our website and will be used to:
- Land on Google with SEO.
- As a Resource Hub for our audience.
- A growth and CTA flywheel for subs and sales.
And I will break down each of these a bit more below.
But let's keep it simple to start.
When you land on my site you can do a few different things:
- Read my About Page.
- Subscribe to the newsletter.
- Read through my Deep Dives.
- Go through my Recommended Tools.
- Purchase The 2-Hour Newsletter System.
That's about it.
But guess how many hours you could spend on the site?
Many.
Because each one of my newsletters is a deep dive on the site, hosted as articles that are indexed by Google and used as a hub of resources for creators like you to come and go through whenever you have newsletter questions.
Which means my newsletter is what makes up the LARGE majority of my entire website.
The first piece of our newsletter engine.
Newsletter -> Website Content.
NOTE: I write my newsletter on my website and then send people to the deep dives as a link within my email because my deep dives are so long and include a lot of images. BUT, even if your newsletter is sent directly inside the email, without linking to your website, it should still be hosted on your website.
Which brings us directly to our next section.
The next piece of our newsletter engine.
Your Resource Hub(s)
Not only does your newsletter power your entire website, but it also becomes the hub for all the resources you share with your audience.
For this section I'm going to be breaking down a few examples of how creators like me and Justin Welsh use our newsletter as a resource hub.
Justin Welsh
In a recent deep dive about building the best Welcome Sequence we saw how Justin Welsh's entire sequence was a single email (shown above) sharing additional resources that he has written in the past.
This email is sent 3-7 days after the original Welcome Flow, and shares his top 5 most popular newsletter issues, and 24 more articles on his site.
He's able to do this because he publishes his newsletter content on his site as evergreen resources.
Creator Newsletters (Me)
In that same deep dive I also shared how I use a similar tactic to Alex Garcia and send out 5-7 of my top newsletter deep dives over the course of a week (a new deep dive in each email).
This helps me gauge engagement when I'm using paid ads to grow my list, and it also allows me to take new subscribers through what essentially becomes an email based course of newsletter awesomeness.
I also compile all my resources into a big resource bank and crash course for my subscribers, curating the deep dive knowledge and piling on even more value.
Because of that I'm able to share endless resources and deep dives that drive people to my website.
Then I optimize my CTAs for both newsletter signups and paid offers, and the flywheel continues.
Which brings us to the next piece of our newsletter engine.
Newsletter -> Website -> Flywheel #1.
Your Website Flywheel
The next step in your engine is the flywheel that your website creates.
While being powered by your newsletter content, your website is a place your audience goes to get massive value.
It's the hub of all your resources and the value you'll provide them.
So, naturally, you want to send them there as often as you can.
(AND they'll eventually [hopefully] be landing there directly from Google as well.)
Which means when they get there you have the opportunity to make a couple CTAs:
- Growth for Non Subscribers: CTAs for new newsletter subscribers.
- Monetization For Subscribers: CTAs for your paid offers.
If you check out the image above you'll see Justin Welsh making a header bar CTA for his LinkedIn OS program.
Below that he has a CTA for visitors to subscribe to his newsletter, or share the article with others - driving more growth.
NOTE: I collect 300-500 newsletter subscribers completely organically from people visiting my website every single day on Superhero Jacked.
There are tons of other CTAs you can use on your website to collect more leads, but some of my favorites are:
- Quiz Lead Magnet
- Download Specific the Article
- Newsletter Is the Lead Magnet
And while we're talking about flywheels, we can add another one in for the next piece of our newsletter engine.
Newsletter -> Website -> Newsletter Growth.
Your Organic Growth Flywheel
In a more advanced deep dive I can teach you exactly how your newsletter becomes your paid offers, which become tripwire and evergreen offers, and in turn make your paid growth completely free...
But for this one I want to start by sharing how your newsletter is going to become your organic growth flywheel (grow on social media).
Here's the simple flywheel:
- Write your newsletter.
- Repurpose newsletter to social media.
- Make CTAs on social media to grow your newsletter.
And in the image above you can see how one of my newsletters got repurposed to a SuperThread on Threads and a LinkedIn carousel.
In a past deep dive I showed exactly how creators like myself, Dan Koe and Justin Welsh use our newsletter to power ALL of our organic growth:
- How To Create A Newsletter Content Flywheel For Growth
- How Dan Koe Repurposes His Newsletter To 8 Different Places
THIS is how you create a system that allows you to write 1-2 hours a day and power your entire creator business.
After you repurpose to social, the next step is growth, and the cycle continues.
And if you need some help with the growth part you can start with my deep dive on the best CTAs to grow your newsletter organically.
Newsletter -> Social Media Posts -> Newsletter Growth.
Your Lead Magnets
Before I blow your mind with the fact that your newsletter even becomes your entire value ladder of paid products, I'll start by teaching you how it becomes your lead magnets.
In the deep dive I linked to above discussing the best CTAs to use to grow your list I discuss some of my favorite ways to use your newsletter AS the lead magnet.
And in my deep dive on the ultimate guide to lead magnets, I take it even deeper.
But guess what...
Your newsletter can power ALL of your lead magnets.
Here are FOUR of the easiest ways to use your newsletter as lead magnets:
- No Lead Magnet: The newsletter becomes the lead magnet by simply explaining just how much value you provide in each of your editions.
- Direct Link To Newsletter On Website: Another great way is to link directly to your past newsletter articles AS the lead magnet (as long as your newsletters are in depth lessons that provide tons of value!)
- Newsletter Repurposed To PDF: Another simple way to use your newsletter as your lead magnet is to repurpose a deep dive/newsletter edition directly to a PDF document and use that as the magnet.
- Email Based Course: One of my favorite ways to get incredible engagement is by using your newsletter as a lead magnet by turning it into an email based course. I do something similar with my Welcome Sequence, and it's very easy to do when you consider your newsletters should be teaching exactly what the goal of your course(s) should be.
And speaking of your newsletter being exactly the same goal of your paid offers...
That brings us to the next piece of our newsletter engine.
Newsletter -> Lead Magnets -> Newsletter Growth.
Your Base For All Your Paid Products
Your audience will pay for:
- Curation
- Personalization
These two things can come in multiple formats.
But at the end of the day: everything you're teaching is again being repurposed directly from your newsletter content.
Here's what that can look like:
- Newsletter Content - Value in deep dives and articles.
- Social Content - Repurposed to base level content.
- Low Ticket Offer - Curated value from newsletter. (Ex: eBook)
- Mid Ticket Offer - Curated with easy delivery (Ex: Video course)
- High Ticket Offer - Personalization (Ex: Group Coaching)
That is your entire value ladder from free to high ticket.
If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not...
Take a look:
- What is the goal of this newsletter?
To help you launch, grow and monetize your newsletter so that a 1X weekly newsletter becomes the engine of your entire business, allowing you to make 6-7 figures writing just 1-2 hours a day.
- What does The 2-Hour Newsletter System teach you?
How to you launch, grow and monetize your newsletter so that a 1X weekly newsletter becomes the engine of your entire business, allowing you to make 6-7 figures writing just 1-2 hours a day.
-
See what is going on there?
And if my audience wants to start with something before the course, I have eBooks and text-based mini courses that save them tons of time by curating the exact lessons they need related to very specific tasks.
Examples would be an eBook on the 5 steps to launching your newsletter (or even course launch), a mini course on 11 ways to grow your newsletter organically, and so many more.
From there The 2-Hour Newsletter System 5-Week Sprint, Coaching Cohort and Async Coaching all offer personalization at different levels (and price point).
Your newsletter is your engine from value to growth and all the way through your monetization.
Your Newsletter Comes First...
If you were to start blogging, what is the first thing you would do?
You'd start a blog.
If you were to start a podcast, what is the first thing you would do?
You'd start a podcast.
Your newsletter is the same thing.
You don't start by going out and trying to build a following on social platforms, you start your newsletter and your website to be the engine of all of your growth.
There's a reason why Alex Cattoni says:
“Start your email list now, even if you have nothing to sell. I started my list about a year before I ever had anything to sell."
And why Dan Koe says:
"I recommend writing a newsletter first, even with 0 subscribers.”
Your newsletter is everything.
The engine of your entire creator business, from website to growth flywheels and even paid products.
So regardless of whether you're thinking of just getting started with your online business or have already been building a following online, it's time to start treating your newsletter as the engine it can become.
Then, and only then, can you start building the system that will allow you to grow to 6-7+ figures in 1-2 hours of work a day.