How To Use Your PS Section To Sell In You Newsletter

One great thing about newsletters is the fact that you don't have to try to sell in every single email you send.

Dan Koe tweeted that when he changed his approach to his newsletter and stopped "hardcore marketing", his revenue 2-4Xed.

He wrote:

"Because that's what happened when I switched from hardcore marketing where I didn't feel like a used car salesman."

Katelyn Bourgoin, who writes Why We Buy, a newsletter we see in a lot of deep dives (and one we'll take a look at in this one as well), discusses this topic a lot as well.

She said this on the SparkLoop podcast:

I had been subscribed to, over the years, probably hundreds. And they all follow the same playbook. They were often these long meandering stories from whoever the author was…I wouldn’t be reading newsletters, I’d get stuck in email funnels. You sign up for X freebie and suddenly for the next 2 weeks you’re going to get this drip sequence that’s pushing you towards buying a thing. And I was like I don’t want to buy your thing, I just wanted that cheat sheet, or I just wanted that PDF. So I was subscribed to many, and I was reading almost none."

Which is truly one of the big differentiators between a newsletter and an email list.

But, if we're not selling in our newsletter then how do we make money...!?

We ARE selling in our newsletter, but we don't have to push the sale in every single email we send because the newsletter is the value.

The newsletter is building the trust, expertise, and authority.

Which means a gentle nudge and a couple launches each year are generally more than enough for a newsletter to do extremely well.

Note: Keep in mind that another big difference between a newsletter and an email list is the fact that newsletters have the power to monetize with sponsorships as well.

A potentially massive revenue stream that email lists don't have. We learned about this in our deep dive on newsletter business models.

In this article we'll be doing a deep dive of how top creators use one of the most effective spots to sell in the entire newsletter: The PS Section.

In The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy he writes:

“Every sales letter needs a PS—do not consider your efforts complete until you have composed one. The PS can make or break your letter.”

To take that a step further, Ray Jutkins, a copywriter specializing in direct mail says: 79% of donors and prospects tend to read the PS section FIRST.

And, one final layer to wrap it all up: every single creator that had a digital product (or service to promote) that we analyzed in our deep dive of the top sections of a creator newsletter had a PS section in their newsletter.

📬 Justin Welsh's (Saturday Solopreneur) Newsletter PS Section

Justin Welsh makes over a million dollars a year from course sales without having to rely on opening and closing courses, running cohorts, or even leading you to a high ticket call with tons of sales tactics.

So it's only obvious why we'd be starting with the GOAT of Creator Newsletters in our deep dives of the newsletter PS section.

If you take a look at Justin's PS Section above you'll notice the copy is extremely "gentle".

We've done a deep dive on Justin Welsh's pricing and strategy, showing off some of his marketing psychology tactics - but this is yet another nudge we see him master.

Here's what we're analyzing:

"Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you."

It doesn't get much better than that.

No pushy sales tactics.

It's as simple as: "I'm here to help. And when YOU are ready, here's how!"

But we can actually analyze this a bit further.

Here's the order of his PS Section:

1. The Creator MBA - Signature Course - Highest Ticket - $897
2. The LinkedIn Operating System - Low-Mid Ticket - $150
3. The Content Operating System - Low-Mid Ticket - $150
4. Newsletter Sponsorship - Not for most of his audience.

Some other creators might opt to go UP their value ladder, but Justin actually starts with his higher ticket item and then works down through his other two courses, with sponsorship coming in last (which definitely makes sense in this case).

But, in true GOAT fashion, Justin takes it another step further...

He actually segments his list so that his PS Section is custom based on what you have purchased.

Here's an image to wrap us up, which is what I see in the PS Section of my emails, having purchased both his lower ticket courses:

When you have a list the size of Justin's (215K+) and parts of your audience all at different stages, segmentation becomes an extremely powerful tool.

We'll be taking a look at how creators are segmenting and using surveys to optimize in a future deep dive.

📬Katelyn Bourgoin's (Why We Buy) Newsletter PS Section

The next creator we'll be analyzing is Katelyn Bourgoin with her newsletter Why We Buy.

We did a breakdown inside our larger deep dive into newsletter business models about how Katelyn has more of a Hybrid Newsletter - which is one of the reasons I want to highlight her here.

Katelyn is extremely transparent about her income (very similar to Justin Welsh), so we were able to take a look at a deeper breakdown of her revenue streams for her newsletter, which look like this:

• Un-ignorable: 44.8%
• Sponsorship: 36%
• Digital Products: 11.4%
• Private workshops: 4.6%
• 1:1 strategy calls: 3%

And there's a couple things there that we're going to want to dissect as we look at Katelyn's PS Section.

The first note I want to make is that Katelyn was also just recently on Justin Moore's podcast (another creator we see pop up in our deep dives, who runs the Creator Wizard newsletter), where they discussed the potential of Katelyn making upwards of 1 MILLION on sponsorship revenue alone...!

That said, "Un-ignorable" on that list above is not shown in her PS Section.

This is because it is a cohort that only opens up at specific points of the year, and also a partnership that she has with Demand Curve.

You very rarely see Katelyn promote it in Why We Buy, and it's not something you'll find in her emails often - yet it's the biggest chunk of her income.

What we instead see in her PS Section is:

1. Wallet-Opening Words - Low Ticket Item - $129
2. Sponsorship - Not needed for most, but a driving force of Why We Buy.
3. Strategy Call - High Ticket - $750

I'd have to ask Katelyn to know for sure why she uses prime real estate for the strategy call if she does so little of them, but I have a feeling it's some kind of price anchoring.

📬Mike Romaine's [Me] (Creator Newsletters) Newsletter PS Section

The next PS Section I want to look at is my own, specifically to show you that you could TECHNICALLY have TWO PS sections.

If we think back to what I mentioned from Dan Kennedy and Ray Jutkins, the PS Section is extremely important, and often times the FIRST thing people read.

For that reason, you might opt to have a section like the ones you see here in this breakdown, and sometimes even an extra PS Section.

As you can see above, I was asking my audience for a response to help me work on an upcoming course launch, so I added an extra section to nudge something a bit more important than my normal PS Section.

Note: "Regular" PS Sections are also extremely powerful, and you can utilize them in a ton of different ways, but this breakdown is to show you how Creator Newsletters specifically take advantage of the PS Section we typically see.

I'm going to skip going through my specific items in the following PS Section because the item I want to highlight is one we'll see from our next big creator: Jay Clouse.

📬Jay Clouse's (Creator Science) Newsletter PS Section

Coming in next among the top creators on our list is Jay Clouse from Creator Science.

Jay takes a different approach with his PS Section in his newsletter and offers a ton of free resources and no paid options.

We saw that Jay Clouse uses his sponsorship section to sell his own products sometimes (in our top 5 sections of a Creator Newsletter deep dive), which is unique (and extremely smart, if I might add), but he doesn't take advantage of this section for selling.

One reason is because Jay has a A LOT of courses, being in a very broad niche.

Here are some of the products in his offer suite:

• Build A Beloved Membership - $499
• Podcast Like The Pros - $199
• The Freelancing Masterclass - $199
• Newsletter Masterclass - $99
• Creator Catalyst Workshop - $40
• Community Building Crash Course - $40
• Memberships & Advanced Community Building - $40
• Annual Planning Workshop - $40
• Sovereign Bundle - $599 (5 Course Bundle)
• The Lab (Community) - $699 yr / $1999 yr / $2999 yr

And he also has an upcoming product launch next week for his first non-course (or workshop style) release.

In a recent podcast episode he discussed his own value ladder and how he envies creators who have their singular "Signature Course" to revolve their content and brand around - and it would definitely be hard for him to fit this entire value ladder at the end of each email.

That said, here's what we find on his PS Section instead:

• Professional Crash Course - Free
• Personalized Offer - Free (Survey)
• Full Gear List - Free
• Sponsor The Newsletter

As we can tell: Jay opts for tons of value! 

But he's also gathering information from his survey as well.

📬Kieran Drew's (Kieran Drew Newsletter) Newsletter PS Section

Last, but certainly not least, on our list of top newsletter creator's PS sections is Keiran Drew's newsletter (called the Kieran Drew Newsletter).

I love this example for two reasons:

1. It shows how simple this section can be while still being highly effective.
2. It shows off Kieran's uniqueness.

Kieran only has one thing to sell you in his newsletter, and that's his High Impact Writing course.

So that's exactly what he has in his PS Section, which reads like this:

P.S. If you want to grow your brand and business by writing online, you'd love High Impact Writing. This is for you if you want to do content right. Come see why 1,800+ happy customers have taken the course here.

And while most creators use a branded signature section, with an image of themselves that is identical to the image you're likely to find on their discovery platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.); Kieran is unique in that he shares a new picture of himself with a message in every single email.

📬 Do you NEED a PS Section for your newsletter?

It's hard to say anyone NEEDS any specific section within a newsletter, and there are [of course] outliers that can get big wins with or without some of the top sections.

That said, the PS Section is extremely powerful, and likely shouldn't be overlooked.

If you have something to sell, you should be taking advantage of your PS section.

If you don't have something to sell, you can still use it for other things (updates, surveys, learning from your audience, and so much more), but it might not be AS necessary.

If you have a smaller value ladder, ranging from as little as one product or service, you can immediately start taking advantage of this.

And, if you have a product suite of 3-4 products and services you can even consider throwing your whole value ladder in this section like we see from someone like Justin Welsh.

Either way, make it yours.