The Beginning Is Hard, Is It?

David Perell is known as “The Writing Guy” on Twitter, but did you know his email newsletter has over 40,000 subscribers? Not only that, but he sends THREE newsletters a week… every week! 

In this in-depth conversation, David shares exactly how he uses Twitter to grow his audience, how he maintains consistency with such a high rate of output, and how he’s built an amazingly profitable business by monetizing his newsletters with his breakthrough writing course.

We discuss the top 3 ways for a writer to make money from their work and reputation. Should you: 

• Become a consultant?

• Sell courses?

• Start a company?

David breaks down when each model makes sense, and whether people like Ben Thompson of Stratechery would be better off starting companies instead of selling paid newsletters. 

David explains why new writers should focus on quantity over quality—and when to flip that around. He also covers the small tweaks that turn your articles from flash-in-the-pan to evergreen. 

You’ll learn what to focus on when you’re just starting your newsletter, and the language to use on subscription forms to get people to sign up (hint: it’s not, “Sign up for my newsletter!”) Plus, how David sends 3 newsletters every week with less than 2 hours of work!

Links & Resources

• ConvertKit - Email Marketing for Online Creators
• The ladders of wealth creation: a step-by-step roadmap to building wealth - Nathan Barry
• The Billion Dollar Blog - Nathan Barry
• Pat Flynn
• James Clear
• Paul Graham - Essays
• Tim Urban - Wait But Why
• Ali Abdaal - Part-Time YouTuber Academy
• Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology.

David Perell’s Links

• Website: perell.com
• Twitter: @david_perell
• YouTube: David Perell
• Subscribe to David’s Newsletter
• Check out David’s course, Write of Passage

Episode Transcript

David: [00:00:00] This is one of the things I think a lot of people get wrong about getting more email subscribers is they’ll say something like sign up for my newsletter. No one cares. I say something like you will learn how to take ideas and then turn them into structured writing. Then you will learn how to distribute that structured writing.

And then you will learn how to build a system to do this. It’s very specific and it’s very useful to the reader in so far as you have those three things, your conversion rates will go way up.

Nathan: [00:00:34] Today on Art of Newsletters, I’m joined by David Perell, who has an incredible newsletter that he’s grown to over 40,000 subscribers. We dive into how he uses Twitter to grow his audience. He blows my mind with what he does on Twitter. we had a new, his research processes, how he sends out three newsletters a week really consistently.

And then the biggest thing is how he monetizes list. he just makes an incredible amount of money off of the courses that he puts out there really, really high quality. And I think it’s a great model for anyone looking to build their audience and earn a living from their audience in particular. So with that, let’s dive in.

All right, David, welcome to the show.

David: [00:01:14] Thank you, Nathan. I’m a huge fan of both you and the company that you’ve built. I ConvertKits one of the most important platforms in my life. And thank you very much for all that you do.

Nathan: [00:01:26] Oh, that’s great to hear. Well, I’m excited to share a lot of your story. We’ve known each other.

What? Only a year or two. Maybe not, not that long, but I dunno, we both admire each other on Twitter and you know, I see you post stuff and I’m like, Oh, That’s an idea that I had, but phrased way better. So I’m excited to tell your story and to share a lot of the tips and tricks for building a billion newsletter.

Why don’t we start just tell people about the Write of Passage, your newsletter, you know, kind of like give the high level view of the newsletter and your business and how it all works.

David: [00:02:03] Yeah. So the way that I think about newsletters is that I guess I would segment it into two buckets. The first is the weekly newsletters that I send, which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Monday is Monday musing, sort of a update of my life.

And just the coolest things I’m learning. Wednesday is a email that comes out with every podcast that I publish. And that is quotes from the podcast links to YouTube videos. And then Friday. Is four or five links that I find every single week and that those are really the weekly ones. And then there’s a whole other thing or element to how I think about newsletters.

And I run a writing course called Write of Passage. And whenever we open for enrollment, which is twice a year, we have 10 days to basically take emails and. People who have signed up and said, Hey, I’m really interested in this. And then other people have just been following along. We might be able to tip over the edge and we have two enrollment periods to get them in the course.

And so for that, we use more advanced tactics like lead scoring, which we hadn’t had as native integration, which you have now in ConvertKit. And then also just sending out a very. Detailed and rigorous series of emails, mostly through the sequences tab. And then just through daily emails that we send to people who are interested in taking the course.

So that’s how I really think of it. It’s the weekly emails. And then when things get really crazy leaning on ConvertKit, to make sure that we get our emails sent out to prospective students.

Nathan: [00:03:46] Nice. So if we go and actually, if you wouldn’t mind sharing some numbers, what’s the, like how many subscribers do you have on the newsletter now?

And, and if there’s any revenue numbers, you’re okay with sharing.

David: [00:03:58] Yes. So we have 43,000 subscribers on the newsletter. And then for students, what we do is about 600 to 700 students a year, then the course. Is $3,000 as of now for the premium or for the standard edition and then about $5,000 for lifetime access.

But we also give about six figures in scholarships every single year. And so you can do the math there and it’s also growing so fast that any revenue number I gave now would basically not be valid in six months.

Nathan: [00:04:34] Yeah. That’s a good problem to have. I like that. That’s set up. So let’s go back and. You know, when you’re looking at first starting an email list or first starting a newsletter, what made you go down this road?

What was the spark that said, like, this is a good way to spend my time.

David: [00:04:51] Yeah. Everybody, who I spoke to and trusted, basically said something along the lines of at the end of the day, when it comes to selling products online, everything is in consequential except for the number of email subscribers that you have.

And I took that to heart. I started off on Twitter. Been trying to grow my YouTube channel, but e...