Week 2: Growing your newsletter with FB Ads (as a beginner)

Welcome to second update of my minimum viable newsletter experiment: Be Like Shiva

(See the week 1 update here)

In today's email:

• The numbers after one week of ad spend (as a beginner)

• Spying on the ads of some of the best newsletters in the world

• 3 impactful things I learned about running a newsletter biz this week (one of them that has serious potential for scaling)

Week 2 - First ad campaign numbers + ads

Last week I set up the newsletter flow, shipped the first edition, learned how to create Facebook ads (for newsletters), and launched the first set of ads.

Here are the numbers so far:

222 new subscribers

48.6% open rate and a 10.8% CTR on the first newsletter

How much I’m paying per sub from FB ads

• $2.42 (overall campaign)


• $1.57 and $1.59 from the 2 best performing ads (so far)


Note: these numbers are in Australian dollars so in reality the best performing ads are costing me about $1.05 per sub.

Not too shabby for the first campaign.

If you want to spy on my ads, click here.

What else happened in week 2?

I shipped the 2nd edition of the newsletter, optimized the existing ads a little (turned a few shitty ads off), and rotated a few more meme ads into the mix.

But most of my time this week was spent learning how to create new styles of ads to test over the following weeks.

In particular:

A testimonial style ad - like this one from the TLDR newsletter. I wrote the script myself and ordered the video from Fiverr.

An ‘Apple notes screenshot’ style ad- like this one from The Milk Road. Simple.

And an ‘Imagine its 2023’ style ad - like this one from 1440. Not much too it.

I've created a few different variations of each ad style to test different angles, which I’ll be doing next week.

Something important to mention here:

I ain’t reinventing the wheel.

I got the inspiration for these ads by looking at the ad accounts of the big newsletters.

Thank god for the FB ad library spy tool!

Here are the accounts I’m swiping inspiration from:

• The Milk Road


• The Hustle


• 1440 

• TLDR

• Finimize


3 Newsletter Biz lessons I Learned this week

Here are 3 things I learned this week that will help you build your own niche newsletter:

1) A welcome survey will make writing your copy 10x easier

What's better than using ChatGPT to help write your copy?

Using your audience to help write your copy.

[meme from star wars: you ARE going to ask your audience first right?]

When researching other niche newsletters I noticed that the best ones were funneling new subs to a survey of some sorts.

So I did the same thing and it kind of looks like this:

At the time of writing I have 34 survey replies (from 205 subs, so a respectable 16% conversion rate)

And while 34 isn’t much, it's enough to help guide the copy for ads and landing page tweaks.

For example, one of the questions is:

“What are your biggest challenges or questions relating to being a man, or masculinity?”

And I’m already seeing common themes emerge around topics like: masculine mindset, balancing masculine vs feminine energy, and how to keep calm during confrontations.

I can use this intel to:

• Guide future newsletter topics


• Brainstorm digital product ideas


But the biggest win for now:

These language is helping me write the copy for new ads and the landing page tweaks.

The takeaway: create a survey and ask your newsletter subs what they want.

2) Be intentional about your newsletter format choice before launching

A friend who read my first newsletter asked me a question that struck me:

Hmmm. He has a point. Think about it:

When you’re in your inbox you are not usually in a ‘grab a cup of coffee and have a leisurely read’ mindset. You’re usually in work mode. Do mode. Inbox zero mode or something like that.

This made me realize I wasn’t intentional when choosing the format for my newsletter.

My emails are long (5-7 min reading time). Perhaps I should turn these into articles on a blog, and make the email a teaser to try to get readers to the blog?

For now, my answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is something I'll have to test. But in any case, knowing the format of your newsletter before creating it makes a lot of sense.

The takeaway: learn the 5 different types of newsletter formats and commit to one.

3) Monetize your newsletter as early as possible to offset your ad spend

Let's talk about monetization.

“But you only have 220 subscribers. It's too early you fool!”

Most newsletters are monetized by selling ad space. An true; you need a few thousand subs before it makes sense to start trying to sell ad space.

But I’m not talking about selling ad space.

I stumbled across a thread this week that showed me a way to monetize a lot sooner:

TLDR:

• Join a newsletter referral program like Sparkloop


• When people sign up to your newsletter, you recommend other newsletters to them


• You get paid a commission for each sub you refer

In other words: affiliate marketing for newsletter subscribers!

I had no idea this existed, but what I do know: I’m going to dive deep here because if this works its a path to growing your newsletter much, much faster.

The takeaway: You don’t have to wait until you have 10k subs before you start monetizing your newsletter. Play around with newsletter referral programs as soon as you can!

What's in store for next week:

• Shipping newsletter #3


• Creating an Incentive-based lead generation campaign - which means I’ll need to create a lead magnet. I’m going to partner with ChatGPT and Mid Journey on this one.

• Setting up SparkLoop to see if I can get newsletter referral commissions rolling in


That’s it for this week.

Questions? Feedback? advice? I want it all….please hit reply right now and let me know!