S01E47: Coaching Session: Tips from a Newsletter Pro — with Josh Spector of For The Interested
— A one-paragraph newsletter shows you simple, proven ways to use writing to grow your business based on how others have done so.
1hr listen
How Creator Wizard drove $593k in revenue with <30k subscribers.
This week we’re featuring a newsletter that grew to nearly $600k in revenue in 2 years with a subscriber list that’s only recently reached 30k subscribers.
Justin Moore writes the Creator Wizard newsletter—a 3x weekly newsletter sending sponsorship opportunities (and more!) to content creators.
In this Friday Feature, you’ll learn the strategies Justin and the CW team have used to achieve all this—and how you can steal them. We're exploring...
- Diversifying revenue streams
- Delivering “crazy value”
- Desirable + attainable rewards
#1 - Diversifying revenue streams
There’s more to a newsletter revenue stream than *just* ads.
Diversifying revenue streams for a newsletter can be a mix of…
- Ads & sponsorships
- Subscriptions
- Memberships or communities
- Product sales
- Course sales
- Services
- Affiliate sales
And smart newsletter operators — like Justin at Creator Wizard — know the value and importance of diversifying.
🧐 Why it’s awesome
More revenue streams = more stability + more revenue.
Financial stability → Being 100% reliant on one revenue stream is risky. When you’re earning income from sponsorships AND product sales, a revenue dip in one can be buoyed by the other. Smart newsletter operators understand the stability diversified revenue streams offer.
An offer for “everyone” → Newsletters with multiple revenue streams do a better job of capturing value from subscribers based on their individual willingness to pay (WTP). This means creating a monetization opportunity for your entire audience. Some call this a product offer ladder. The way we like to think about it is the Rule of 10s (more on this below).
🙋 How Creator Wizard does it
Creator Wizard has earned $593k since its launch in early 2021.
And they didn’t get there with just a 1-2 revenue streams—they did it with 5(!!) main revenue streams.
They got there with…
→ A diversified product offer ladder. Creator Wizard’s offer ladder is a great example of diversified revenue streams. It includes:
- Newsletter ads & sponsorships: 2 ad slots per edition (Free to the reader)
- Gifted to Paid: a self-paced online course ($500)
- Asynchronous coaching membership community ($1000/mo)
- Brand Deal Wizard: 3x annually cohort-based course ($3000)
- Sponsorship Coaching: hourly 1-on-1 coaching with Justin ($1000/hr)
→ Segmentation & personalization. New subscribers fill out a brief survey so the CW team better understands its subscribers—and better personalizes their messaging and pitches. This segmentation is key to making sure the right offer is made to the right subscriber—at the right time.
✏️Steal this for your newsletter
Last year, we polled our readers asking how many revenue streams they had.
The results?
Over 50% of respondents told us their newsletter only had 1 or 2 revenue streams.
If that’s you, it’s time to consider adding more.
Not sure what to offer?
→ Consider the Rule of 10s. Roughly speaking, this distribution of subscriber willingness to pay follows the rule of tens: Every time you increase the price by 10x, you're reducing by 10x the number of subscribers in your audience who would pay that price.
Here’s how that might look for a niche or B2B newsletter:
👉 Bonus: Listen to Justin explain his product ladder and how he monetizes in our recent chat with him →
#2 - Delivering “crazy value”
New content creators struggle to find sponsorship opportunities. “It’s very overwhelming”, Justin told us.
So it’s no wonder that when Justin decided to send these opportunities out for free—his subscribers were stunned: “I started surfacing those in the newsletter and people just went crazy.”
Delivering “crazy value” is going to help set you apart. And it’s been exactly what Justin & his team are doing with Creator Wizard.
🧐 Why it’s awesome
Delivering “value” is table stakes at this point in the newsletter economy. It’s the low bar.
Delivering “crazy value” helps you win the battle for inbox eyeballs & clicks. When you deliver an unexpected or “crazy” amount of value, subscribers are more likely to…
→ Open & engage with your newsletter – this can lead to higher ad revenue, more product sales.
→ Know, like & trust you – which can lead to significantly more revenue down the road.
→ Share your newsletter – this increases free, organic word-of-mouth growth. It can also bolster success with referral campaigns.
🙋 How Creator Wizard does it
New content creators are “overwhelmed”. Figuring it all out on your own is hard and time-consuming.
Creator Wizard reduces the overwhelm by providing structured content, advice, and curated sponsorship opportunities — for free.
They do it in 3x weekly editions:
→ Mindset Mondays: helping with mindset around negotiating, pitching, pricing, etc.
→ Take Action Thursdays: the sponsorship digest with opportunities to “take action” on
→ Strategy Saturdays: an evergreen nurture sequence pulling the best content from the archives
PLUS: Giving away this level of “crazy value” has a bonus effect.
When it comes time to launch a product, course, or service — subscribers trust you to the point where the sale is 10x easier. Given what they’re getting free, what you’re charging money for is bound to be worth every penny.
It can be tempting to put content behind a paywall/subscription. But Creator Wizard is proof that free, “crazy value” content with backend offers can be very lucrative.
✏️ Steal this for your newsletter
Take the Creator Wizard content framework and make it your own.
→ Find & solve a pain point. What are the biggest pain points, question marks, and unknown obstacles readers in your niche regularly face? Find them, solve them, and share them.
→ Curate. Creator Wizard started curating sponsorship opportunities in their newsletter—and readers went crazy. Find your version of this. It could be a job board, a database, a report, deals, coupons — something that rounds up and presents valuable information that’s difficult or tedious to acquire.
#3 - Desirable & Attainable Rewards
Creating a SparkLoop referral program with rewards that are both desirable and attainable increases the likelihood of success.
There are 3 main hallmarks of a successful referral program:
#1 – the first reward unlocks with one referral making it SUPER attainable
#2 – it's visible within the newsletter itself, signaling to the reader there's something there to achieve & unlock
#3 – the reward is something that's genuinely valuable to the reader
That’s exactly what the CW team does—with the help of a SparkLoop Referral Program—and it’s worked:
→ Creator Wizard was at 1.8k subscribers at the beginning of 2022. They’re at ~30k subscribers only 18 months later.
🧐 Why it’s awesome
A referral program with desirable & attainable rewards works because…
→ It’s low friction – anyone can refer one person — which significantly increases the chances of converting.
→ It's low-cost – this doesn’t have to be an expensive reward, but it has to be valuable enough for a subscriber to share. It’s all about the perceived value.
→ It's high FOMO – in CW’s case, other subscribers are getting access, and “You’re missing out!”—the FOMO is strong.
🙋 How Creator Wizard does it
New Creator Wizard subscribers will see a “locked” section of the newsletter.
The only way to unlock it is to make ONE referral via their SparkLoop referral program.
Here’s why it works:
- Grab attention: they ask a question that 99% of their readers will unequivocally respond “YES” to (“Want more sponsorship leads?”)
- Tease content: listing the researched brands and info the reader could be getting
- Inject FOMO:
- subtly letting the reader know that 446 others have already unlocked the info
- Using words like “secret”, “exclusive”, and “VIP”
- Not-so-subtly including a lock icon with bolded text “You’re missing out!”
- Make it easy: readers easily understand they need to “refer 1 creator” to unlock the content, and include the referral link.
✏️ Steal this for your newsletter
Before jumping into your SparkLoop account and firing up a referral program, be strategic with your desirable + attainable reward.
Ensure it’s…
- Free to reward
- Desirable
- Easy to understand & achieve
Once you’ve figured it out — hop into SparkLoop and set it up!
Adding it up…
$593k in revenue in 2 years is impressive.
But that figure is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, the CW team has put in a lot of work to build a newsletter that delivers “crazy value” — and then strategically turn that “crazy value” into entry points for various lucrative revenue streams.
Here’s what to check out next:
- Check out Creator Wizard if you haven’t already →
- Listen Justin Moore share all this info and MORE in our chat →
- Question: what newsletter is doing something different and innovative we should feature next? Email me or DM us and let me know!