In this episode, Louis shares how to effectively monetize and scale your newsletter business. He also talks about diversifying revenue streams beyond ads and subscriptions, calculating lifetime subscriber value, and aggressive paid acquisition tactics used by the largest newsletters.

Key timestamps:

00:27 - Intro to Louis Nicholls and Spark Loop

02:45 - Louis talks about the payback period and subscriber lifetime value and how they interplay.

06:51 - What are some common ways to decrease the payback period?

11:44 - The 2x2 matrix for revenue streams

13:12 - How do huge subscriber lists under-monetize?

16:30 - Would you encourage having both donations and subscriptions?

19:57 - How do you categorize different revenue streams?

23:08 - The difference between donations and tips vs subscriptions?

25:14 - Intermission questions

28:41 - What are some products or services newsletter operators sell that you've seen really take off?

37:04 - Do you think publishers should diversify into more products/services?

41:41 - How would you monetize the top 1% of a publisher's audience?

45:50 - How is newsletter advertising different from website advertising?

47:18 - Best practices for optimizing and getting more revenue

Show Notes

SparkLoop

Upscribe

Chiz Media

James Clear

Techcrunch

Vox

Clearbit

Why We Buy

Substack

Guest

Louis Nicholls - Twitter

SparkLoop

Host

Lesley Sim Twitter

Lesley Sim Website

Stay in touch

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Twitter

Sticky.fm Website

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