Week 4: Revenue! + easy conversion rate win + whats next

Welcome to the 4th update of my minimum viable newsletter experiment: Be Like Shiva

(See previous update’s here)

In today's email:

• More Facebook ad results (including the type of video ad performing the best for growing my newsletter so far)

• Revenue! (which feels too good to be true)

• 3 impactful things I learned about growing a newsletter biz this week (one being a lesson I keep learning about online biz)

• The 30 day time constraint on this experiment is up. What now?

But first… a quick look at the numbers and what happened last week:

Week 4 numbers

I’m revealing the standard numbers this week (subs, CPAs etc) but also showing you revenue and expenses since the 30 day time constraint has arrived

Lets start with subs…

1034 total subscribers

660 new subs this week!

I upped the ad spend from $40 to $80/day and launched a new campaign that is doing pretty darn well (I talk about that below)

3rd newsletter numbers:

49% open rate and a 4.6% CTR

Around the same numbers as last week, which I’m happy with.

How much I’m paying per sub from FB ads

• $1.24/sub from the best performing ad in my standard campaign (which sends FB traffic to my opt in page)

• 62c/sub from the incentive based lead gen campaign that I launched earlier this week! (i’ll talk more about his below)

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

Something frustrating:

The 2 “user generated content” style videos I was so excited about are not getting impressions, and I don’t know why.

If you have any clues can you reply to this email and let me know?

Revenue?

$842 last week!

…Maybe

Yes that’s right, after less than 30 days the newsletter is generating a revenue.

Well…a projected revenue.

Remember last week how I talked about setting up the SparkLoop referral program?

Well, it looks to be exceeding my expectations so far. Here’s the numbers after just one week:

Keep in mind:

• Rejected referrals are simply subscribers from non US countries. And since my subscribers are coming from US, UK, AU & CA. Most are rejected.

• Pending referrals are all that counts. If a user subs to one of my recommendations, the publisher sets terms to qualify these leads - eg they must open 2 emails.

• And these figures are all projected so far

But…this is only the beginning.

As you can see Sparkloop is telling me I’ll earn $1.42 per subscriber with their program.

And I’m already getting subs for $1.24 so I suppose I’m in the green.

Wild.

But I’m not getting excited just yet. I want to wait until those pending subs become dollars in my bank account.

So here’s how I’m looking at it for now..

This referral program allows me to get a “refund” on some of my ad spend.

I’m averaging 50 pending referrals per day at $2/referral. I don’t expect every pending referral to be approved, but if I assume 50% of them will be approved?

I should earn $50/day revenue.

Not bad, considering this cuts my CPA by about 50%.

Lets see how it looks after another week

Expenses for the project so far

$1395 so far, on:

• Domain (Namecheap) - $10

• ConvertKit subscription - $59

• Facebook UCG video ads - $190

• Kapwing (content creation tool for ads) - $24

• Facebook ad spend - $1112

What else happened in week 4?

The regular stuff. I shipped the 4th newsletter + made and tested new ads.

But I also..

I finally launched the FB incentive lead gen campaign

Which took longer than expected, but I’m happy I did it - lead are coming in at 62c already!

Here’s how I did it:

• Made a simple PDF on masculine mindset as the lead magnet. (Why? because this was the most popular topic in my welcome email survey)

• Used ChatGPT and Midjourney to create the lead magnet.

Here’s the ad

And here’s the lead magnet:

The inspiration for launching a campaign like this comes from this post here.

I also got my newsletter referral program up (well, almost)

I’m talking about the kind thing that Chenell Basilio has at the end of her newsletter Growth In Reverse (great newsletter if you’re into newsletters)

I got mine live using SubShark.io but was severely unimpressed about how it looked once live, so I canned it and now I’m exploring other options.

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) Thought experiment: should I work ON the biz, or IN the biz…

This is a reflection which reminds me of an important and very cliche truth about building an business that I keep learning.

Do you want to work ON the biz, or IN the biz?

I’ve been enjoying growing the newsletter much more than I have enjoyed writing the newsletter.

This was the same reflection I had when growing my 7 figure content portfolio. I wasn’t creating the content myself; I was hiring others to do so, and I focused on growth and running the business.

So its probably time to start thinking about removing myself from the publishing side of things.

So the question that I’m pondering over here is - how soon should I delegate the content creation for my newsletter?

Takeaway Though experiment - Do you want to write a newsletter? or do you want to build a newsletter business? You don’t have to create the content for your niche newsletter unless you absolutely want to.

2) Quick win: Boost your opt in conversion rate by removing the ‘name’ field from your signup forms

A few veteran newsletter creators hinted this is one way to boost the conversion rate, so I tried it.

Well, it worked. Easiest 30 second conversion rate optimization improvement of your life.

Takeaway - Simplify your opt in page to get more subscribers

3) Growing your newsletter with SparkLoop…

I spoke about the revenue I’m earning through SparkLoop by recommending other newsletters to my subscribers as soon as they sign up.

Lets take a moment to consider those newsletters who are paying me.

They are spending $10k-$50k/mo on this platform, usually paying $1.5-$3 per qualified referral

And they only pay for those subs if they fulfill certain conditions. For example, most require a subscriber to open X emails, meaning they only pay for quality subscribers.

And often times these partner require the subscribers to be from the US to qualify (if they are from another country, they referral is auto rejected).

But here’s the thing..

If I’m sending them subscribers from Canada, the UK or Australia

(and I am)

They get these subscribers for FREE.

So if their referral commission is $2, but only half of the referrals are from the US, they are paying $1 per sub in reality.

And here I am, spending $1.5 or so per subscriber via FB ads.

And I’m constantly having to test new ads, rotate news ads in and out, and figure out the ropes.

Takeaway - If you’re growing your newsletter with ads, consider using SparkLoop as a partner, not as an affiliate.

So…whats next?

I set constraints of 30 days and $3k for this experiment.

But I’ve only spend $1400 so far.

So I’m going to keep this experiment open for another month while I spend the amount committed, and so I can try a few more things.

Things like:

• Keep testing ads - I want to get subs for under 50c

• Try out SparkLoop as a partner (aka use it as a traffic source)

• Pre-sell a digital course to see if I can get another revenue stream going

What else would you like to see me test?

That’s all for this week.

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