How to Get Your First 1000 Email Subscribers
And what to do next.
I’ve been writing a newsletter for about 3 years, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that building a newsletter is harder than it looks.
The big guns in the writing world seem to find a way to make everything seem easier than it actually is.
They say things like “write a newsletter for a year and watch it change your life” or “just create a free ebook as a lead magnet” as if these things alone are enough for building your online audience and capturing email subscribers.
The truth is a bit more complicated, especially if you’re in a smaller niche. For me, the niche is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. For a long time, I struggled to get email subscribers.
However, in the last year, I’ve more than doubled the size of my newsletter.
Here’s how:
I started by getting obsessed with learning the bird app.
Ah, Twitter.
When I first started using that silly little bird app for my writing about 2 years ago, it was toward the bottom of my priority list.
I mean, my tweets were getting about 11 impressions each, and the only people liking them were my 2 friends from Jiu-Jitsu who also use Twitter. I had about 300 followers — most of whom were robots.
It seemed like a stupid (and kind of toxic) thing to spend my time on — until I started networking and engaging with other people instead of just tweeting into the void.
This is where most people go wrong. This is where, for a long time, I went wrong.
Twitter taught me to sell my writing better.
Tweeting daily (and doing weekly threads) was essential for me in learning how to be more succinct and tight in my writing.
I also built momentum. I now average about half a million views per month on Twitter, and I’ve been adding followers every single day since about September. Followers lead to email subscribers if you are able to hook them in with a compelling thread and a lead magnet, like my free ebook on learning Jiu-Jitsu faster.
This strategy has helped me build my free email list, and even a few paid subscribers for my premium newsletter as well.
My premium Substack pretty much covers a trip or two to the grocery store and a few cups of coffee for me at this point, but this is still not bad for writing about literally whatever I want to that falls under the martial arts/lifestyle niche.
The biggest key to growing an email list is to make your email list known to people.
I operate from the mindset now that people want to read what you have to say, they just don’t know it exists.
This was my biggest mistake in the early days. For a long time, I operated under a “built it and they will come” mindset. It was just easier for me to not try and promote my work.
I don’t love writing “sales-y” things and I don’t like coming off as a salesperson, but copywriting is essential for trying to make money off of your writing. My biggest problem was insecurity and a lack of confidence in my work, so I decided to avoid promoting it together.
Now, each time I plug my email list into a tweet or thread, I gain at least 5–10 subscribers. If the content I’m plugging it under is performing well, this number can be 10-20x that. The growth potential for a newsletter on Twitter is massive.
You don’t need to constantly be plugging your products and courses, but a well-placed, well-written call to action on a well-received piece of content can easily net you 100 or more email subscribers — even if you’re a small and weird niche.
As your audience grows, the potentiality for how fast you can grow does not slow down, it compounds. This is why consistency is essential for any sort of digital writing endeavor.
Other pointers on digital building from a blue belt in writing.
I’m a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, but I’m probably a blue belt in writing.
In Jiu-Jitsu, blue belt is the first belt after white belt — it means you’re barely above a beginner. That’s where I feel I am.
I’ve had articles go viral on every platform I’ve tried, I have a few thousand followers everywhere I write, and I’ve written a newsletter for a little more than a year now. It’s safe to say I’m not a beginner, but I certainly have a lot to learn when it comes to writing on the Internet.
That said, these are some other key writing principles that have really helped me in growing my content:
Don’t be afraid of writing lists — Listicles get a bad rap. People like reading lists just as much as they like making fun of them. Lists are relatively easy to digest — just make sure your list is good. My first ebook was a list, and it’s been downloaded and read more than 1000 times.
Personal stories are the best stories — The best way to help someone understand a topic is to use a story. This doesn’t have to be your personal story, but it does have to be someone’s personal story. Learned experience establishes credibility in your work.
Give away great content for free — People are usually too quick to monetize their work, and this stops them from ever reaching their full potential. Don’t be afraid to write a great Twitter thread, give away a free ebook, or write a free newsletter. This free work helps build trust between you and a possible future customer.
Closing Thoughts
Hitting 1000 subscribers on my newsletter felt like a really big win for me.
Sure, compared to some giants who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, 1000 is child’s play, but in the newsletter game, it seems that growth compounds over time.
The longer you work, the better your chances of growth and visibility become. Building an email list is a marathon, not a sprint, and people tend to forget that. We tend to get impatient.
Building an email list isn’t just about snagging emails and plugging products and services at the end of what you write, it’s also about getting your work in front of people who want to read it.
Newsletters are all the rage right now, and there’s a reason why.
If you haven’t started, these tips will help you get to 1000 subscribers a lot faster than I did.
Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!
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