Latest / Send & Grow by SparkLoop / From Launched to Sold in 11 months: How LeQwane Lynch grew & sold the Alerts Daily newsletter — with LeQwane Lynch
Transcript
- EP 33 - LeQwane Lynch === LeQwane Lynch: [00:00:00] Some of these newsletters stop at email. I understand like the thing where it's like newsletters are owned platforms. We own our list and I completely get it, but there is free traffic out there waiting for you to take it. Hop on some of these rented audience platforms that you guys talk about, such as social media. These platforms have algorithms that want to connect you with your specific audience. And if you have something valuable or you have something good to say or valuable to say, and you can speak to your audience, you can, you know, build these, build these platforms outside of your email lists, monetize. them using them to drive more traffic to either your website or your newsletter to monetize that a little bit more. Dylan Redekop: Welcome to the send and grow podcast. I'm your host Dylan Redekop off in my day job at spark loop. I spent all my time analyzing how the best newsletter operators and media brands in the world grow and monetize their audiences. I get a behind the scenes look at how they're growing their newsletters and [00:01:00] driving revenue, and there is so much to learn from their success and from their mistakes. With this podcast, you get that access too. Every week, I sit down with a different guest from industry experts to successful operators, and we go deep on the stuff that you need to know about, so you can become really effective at growing and monetizing your newsletter. Today, I'm joined on the show by LeQwane Lynch, the founder of Alerts Daily. A five day a week newsletter he started, scaled, and sold in under a year. At the time of sale, Alerts Daily was getting a combined 4 million unique views across social media and his newsletter, and he did it all organically. In our chat, LeQwane shares how he managed to scale and sell his newsletter so quickly. You'll learn LeQwane's organic growth strategy that got him over 35, 000 subscribers in 11 months. How LeQwane earned four figures per month in ad revenue with zero ad sales experience. And how to build a newsletter you can sell in under a year, just like he did. Why don't you set the stage for us? So like, take us back to, [00:02:00] you know, just before you're going to launch alerts daily, you're the newsletter that you scaled up and sold tickets back to 2022 when you launched it and, um, you know, why did you decide to start a five day a week newsletter? LeQwane Lynch: Absolutely. In 2018, I launched a private community that serviced, uh, resellers, uh, of like streetwear, art, sneakers, collectibles, electronics, and things like that. And initially started with sneakers. Cause I was a big, like collector myself and just reseller, but it quickly evolved into those other things I mentioned and getting into the newsletter specifically. I kind of fast forward to that past that, but get into the newsletter specifically, the idea behind launching it was. In this paid community, we essentially aggregated information, whether it was proprietary information or public information that was, it was out there, but it was very disorganized and hard to find and things like that. So the members of this community, just over the years of like testimonials and researching into like why [00:03:00] they buy it and things like that, it came to my attention that essentially the members would check the discord like once or twice a day. And if nothing really is going on, it's like, okay, you know, they don't really check in until tomorrow. And I'm like, all right. Well, the biggest part of this discord was like the sneaker space, because that's kind of how it started. So I was like, well, my private community only service, like a thousand people, give or take over the five years, six years that I was running it a thousand members concurrently, month after month, you know, we serviced probably like five to 6, 000 total members. But it's like, that's a very small subsection of the people that are interested in sneakers at scale. Um, I estimated there to be about five to 10 million people that were collectors or just deeply into the, you know, the niche in general. So I was like, well, what if I. Like can water down what we're doing in this discord or whatever and give it to the masses. And it's like, that was the, the theory behind starting a newsletter and like seeing the milk road and, you know, the hustle and all those other [00:04:00] guys, I, I recently like listened to my first million podcasts and stuff like that. I'm like, well, the newsletter, I'm just thinking like, okay. Every day I'm just kind of reading these newsletters. I'm just like, all right, wonder if I could disseminate this information that we're doing and just put it into these people's emails. And I was like, all right, I'm going to do it. You know, at that time we had like a social media, we had the, you know, the member base and things like that. So it kind of jumpstarted it. But yeah, that was the, that was the, I think it behind it. It was like, take what we're doing in the discord, water it down and give Dylan Redekop: it to them. Package up basically all the, the important nuggets and just like send it to people, which is like, Hey, you're saving me. You're saving me. All this time and this hassle of trying to, you know, not hassle, but, you know, all this time of going into the community, seeing if there's anything there and just like delivering it right to the inbox, which is, which is really smart. So we started to start the newsletter. You had a few thousand members in the discord community, roughly active users. And so in 11 months, just to set the stage, you grew the newsletter, the alert daily newsletter from essentially zero from when you started, though you did have [00:05:00] the backing of the community, but you grew it up to about. Was it around 30, 000, 35, 000 subscribers? LeQwane Lynch: Yeah, the total active list was about 35, 000 over the lifetime of the newsletter. It had a girl, maybe 40, Dylan Redekop: 45, 000. Okay, cool. So you went from basically zero to 35, 000 in 11 months. So like, that's like pretty, those are pretty great numbers. Sure. There's newsletters that have grown faster, but most newsletters don't. And I I'm curious, like, what was the journey to the, for the first few months? Like, how did you. How did you focus on growth? You mentioned the 4 million unique viewers across social media and email. Like what was, what was your strategy really for growth in the first few LeQwane Lynch: months? So getting started, basically I did start at zero. Yeah. Not many of the members in the group actually pulled it over to the newsletter. There was maybe a couple of hundred, maybe 500 people. The way I focused on growth was chopping it up into bite sized pieces, essentially, and just kind of kind of get all the analogies of. Oh, I can only do what's in front of me or, you know, look at, you know, you take the next step or whatever. And that's what I did. [00:06:00] I chopped it up into three steps. I said, okay, if this is going to work, people need to find value in it. So I'm like, okay, the first month's goal, I chopped that into three things. I said, people need to first find value in it. People need to want it and it needs to be scalable. Like it needs to, you know, grow. So I chopped that up into three segments and the first month was essentially validating the idea. And it was like, if I can prove that, you know, 85%, if I get 85 percent plus positive feedback from this newsletter of people reading it, I'll continue. And I ended that month with like 95%, you know, happy people saying they love it. And I'm like, okay, the next one was like, okay, let's see if we can grow this thing. I want to see if I can get 1500, um, from 500 to 1500 subscribers or something like that. It was like a thousand, I think. And it's like, if I can double the newsletter in a month, I'll keep going. I ended that with 2000 subs and then it's like, okay, I'm on to something here. You know what I mean? And I'm like, okay, what's next? And it was just kind of like, just scaling it, you know, can I, can [00:07:00] I continuously get this information out? Do people continue to, you know, read it and things like that. And there was like an open rate thing next. And it's just like, um, I was able to keep that above 50%. And from there, it just, it just kept like, okay, what's the next goal? I hit 3, 500 and it's like, okay, I want to get to 5, 000. And I just kept doing that week after week. And it just kept growing. Dylan Redekop: Were you doing any paid growth at that time? Or was it mostly organic? LeQwane Lynch: No, this, this is 100 percent organic growth. I didn't do any paid acquisition of users for the newsletter. It was primarily. Social media, a lot of it can be attributed to short form video, but feed posts on like Instagram, Twitter and things like that. Mainly Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, though, through video and kind of like feed content. Dylan Redekop: So converting social audiences to newsletters can be notoriously challenging, especially like video form to or video. Platforms like, like YouTube and, and Tik TOK, uh, because you're going from something where people are consuming, you know, video, whereas they will go to a newsletter where they have to read. And so sometimes [00:08:00] there's, it can be a lot more challenging to convert those viewers. So what did you find, you know, worked best when you're trying to get people from your YouTube videos or Tik TOK videos over to your newsletter? LeQwane Lynch: Starting out, I basically, like when I was looking to scale and like, how can I convert people from social to this newsletter, I set up. Like ideal reader profiles essentially. And over the years of having that private community, I knew the type of audience that like this community served the private community served a very niche subsection of people that were into collectibles, like the resellers. There are a lot of people that are in the collectibles, whatever it is. So it's like, I knew the type of audience or customer to sell to for that. And for the newsletter was the complete opposite. This was someone that was basically fed up with not having organized information. However, at the end of the day, they just wanted their sneakers. So it's like figuring out the unique audience that this is going to serve and the value [00:09:00] proposition of this newsletter for that person. So anytime that I wrote a newsletter or made a piece of content, I kinda, I kinda stamped it with like, okay, the target reader persona I set up, his name was Brandon. And it's like, you know, Brandon really wants to sneakers. Is this information going to help him get sneakers? Is it going to be something he needs to know? You know, this week, just making sure that every piece of content provided value to Brandon and what he cared about to boil that down. It's just simply like figuring out the unique value proposition and your unique target audience and what they need. And then just basically promising them that through the newsletter and then obviously delivering on it. Dylan Redekop: Yeah, absolutely. If you don't deliver, it's going to fall flat, no matter how much you promise it in the, in the videos and stuff. So. Okay. So we've got, um, you started the newsletter, you're growing, figuring out the social media, converting to two newsletter subscribers game. So the next step, uh, Mike, I assume monetization because of course you're, you're putting in so much time and effort. I would imagine [00:10:00] that you had started to think strongly about how to monetize. So can you walk us through kind of your, your journey with. How you monetize the alerts daily newsletter. LeQwane Lynch: The idea to monetize the newsletter was kind of just the straightforward idea that everyone goes for, where it's just like find sponsors and plaster ads on it. I did have the core product in the beginning for what. Like at least five months, I still had the paid community going. So the idea was like, okay, if I can get this thing to 10, 000, maybe I can then start promoting our private, you know, the core product, which was the pay community. The audience of the newsletter wasn't really set for that pay community. So converting them to that pay community wasn't a viable option. So the next option, like I said, would just be, you know, plastering the newsletter with ads, like pretty much like everyone else and kind of finding the right partners and things like that, that. It makes sense to get in front of that particular audience of people that were very dedicated enthusiasts and spending hundreds of dollars a month and thousands of dollars a year on the [00:11:00] products that they want. Dylan Redekop: It was easier to find those advertisers and sell to them knowing you had brand like you had, was it Brendan or Brandon, your exact ideal persona reader. Like you had that avatar of your reader. So was it that much easier, I guess, to, to make those sales? LeQwane Lynch: Yeah. So figuring out the exact companies to work with was a pretty easy task. However, there's only so many, you know, people that want these, this particular audience or whatever else, just like any other newsletter or whatever. So figuring that out was easy, simple, but actually selling to them was difficult because I realized very quickly that some of these large companies or whatever in this space. They didn't have a huge budget dedicated to like actually spending on newsletters or whatever else. So luckily I was able to get a few partners and start monetizing and things like that and found, you know, a good, a few that ran ads with us and were willing to test it in things. And it worked out pretty well. And, Dylan Redekop: uh, not to bury the lead, but one of the advertisers. Or one of your first a avatars [00:12:00] became the buyer of your newsletter. Yeah. So we'll get into that shortly. So you were selling ads to your newsletter, but you had never sold ads before or done any, you know, media ad sales before. So how did you figure out what your, you know, ad prices should be or what to charge people? LeQwane Lynch: Sure. I was new to selling ads initially. I didn't really have a big perspective as for like what to charge and things like that. But I did have people that were in the industry that, uh, were at some of these larger companies such as like. You know, other newsletters in the space and I'd be talking to them through DMS and things like that. And they'd tell me like advice, such as like, Oh, charge, you know, just kind of blanket advice, like for every 25, 000, uh, readers and you have 40 percent open rate, 10, 000 people read it every day, 500. And I think that that chalks up to be like 20 percent or 20, uh, CPMs or something like that, and it's like, yeah, just looking at it as, as like a CPM model and didn't kind of just figuring that out. And then the other thing was just like. If I tell a [00:13:00] potential partner, the prices, do they gawk at me? You know what I mean? And it's just like, if that's, if they, if they do, maybe it's too high. They don't. Okay. Maybe it's low. Maybe I should play around with it. So I did a lot of playing around with figuring out. Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It's a delicate balance. You, you pitch them a price and if they say, yep, let's go ahead right away. You're like, shoot. You know, I, I went too low. Right. LeQwane Lynch: Yeah. And yeah, being new definitely did not help with that, but I realized sales was not my thing, like really quickly in that, you know, talking to someone, getting on the call and things like that. Dylan Redekop: So we've got alerts daily. It's, it's growing. We've got now monetized with ads. And as I teased earlier, you, one of your first sponsors ended up actually purchasing the newsletter 11 months after you had started it. So I think, you know, we've talked a little bit about selling a newsletter and buying a newsletter in this podcast in the past, but we haven't really. Dove into it a ton, especially lately. So I'd love for you to kind of talk us through how that conversation happened. And, you know, was it, was it hard for you to consider to sell or, you know, how did it, I guess, how did it start and walk us through that sort of [00:14:00] experience? LeQwane Lynch: Yeah, absolutely. The plan initially was to sell the newsletter eventually. I mean, it wasn't necessarily like. Oh, I want to do it in a year or 2 years or 3. It was kind of like, I'm going to build this thing. It's 1 of a kind thing and someone's going to want this thing because it's going to be valuable. So starting out, I kind of already had the end in mind in that, like, okay. If I start this, who will buy it? Like, is that another media company that's much larger? And this is the area that they want to get into. Their audience is synchronistic or it aligns. Well, synergist, it has a lot of synergy. So it was like already knowing, okay, I had a list, you know, of buyers and it's like eBay might want this stock X might want this goat might want, you know what I mean? Like I knew. So it's like having that in the mind was very helpful. When it did come time to like scale and sell, it wasn't a hard decision for me because I really, I figured out in the [00:15:00] process of doing the content on the newsletter, editing it, doing the growth and doing the sales and everything else, being a one man band. That that is not for me. Like I really enjoyed one aspect of the newsletter, which was growing the thing, you know, through, through just kind of organic methods or whatever else. I really found that fun, but everything else I did not. So it was not difficult to sell it. No. Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So it wasn't like you're, you're giving me this baby that you had. You know, raise and, and, and everything like that. It was more like, okay, I'm, I'm, I think I'm, I'm ready to take this five day a week, you know, challenge off, off my hands, which I, I published a weekly newsletter. And even that, you know, felt like a lot. So publishing five days a week, that's, that's not for the faint of heart. So kudos to you for going at that for a solid 11 months as a one person, as a one man band, as you said, so were you doing this as your full time thing? Or did you have, do you have a job as well on top of it or? What did that look like? LeQwane Lynch: Yeah. Alerts daily was my full [00:16:00] time, full time job. The community prior to that had been my full time job since 2018. And I started that in high school. I'd never did anything else outside of those, those two projects. Dylan Redekop: Now here we are in the present you've, you've sold alerts daily and. I'm curious, from your perspective, now that you've gone through the experience of quite rapidly scaling a newsletter and selling it, scaling, monetizing, selling, what do you think are the most important things that a newsletter operator who is considering a similar path needs to think about and plan for to have an eventual profitable, hopefully exit? LeQwane Lynch: The thing that I'd say is most important is to know your audience. And who you're speaking to, like what value are you providing them? And at the end of the day, just knowing like you're there for them and not the other way around, because when, when you're very clear on that, you can make content that speaks to your, you know, your specific reader or. Or whatever else. And that leads to high engagement [00:17:00] readers, high engagement audience, just across the platforms that you post on, or just, you know, interact with, or the communities you interact with. And that, that is very powerful just to know exactly what your value is and who your audience is. Dylan Redekop: Yeah, no, understand. And then, you know, everything, when you understand your reader and who, who wants to read your newsletter, everything becomes a lot easier. Like you said, you're able to kind of figure out who to. You know, pitch ad sales to media sales and eventually, you know, think about as well who would want to acquire this information, who would want to potentially buy this someday. So that's, that's a very sound advice. What do you see most newsletter operators doing wrong these days? I'm not sure, again, how much you pay attention to, to other newsletters or others that you're subscribed to, but what do you think, what do you think most newsletter newsletter operators do wrong? Could you could improve upon or do better? LeQwane Lynch: Sure. I follow the newsletter space very closely. I follow, yeah, most, most newsletters that are notable. I'm either on the [00:18:00] list or talking to their team or, you know, following their team, engaging with them, trying to meet their team because I took a lot of, I took a lot of inspiration from a lot of the people that, you know, had things that worked, obviously my methods were a little bit different when it came to just focusing on organic or whatever. Cause I didn't want to throw money into paid ads. And that, that is one area that I would say is kind of like, uh, a trap where it's kind of like just following trends blindly and not knowing why you're doing what you're doing. Um, some people can start out their newsletters and see, you know, some of the top dogs or whatever throwing money at paid ads. Maybe that's not your best route to go, or, you know, just, you know, just following the trends that people use to explode quickly. Because you will see the same on the other side, which is a quick decline. I think that we're seeing that with like, I seen a meme the other day where it's like the AI newsletters, it just looks like the beverage aisle of like any Whole Foods or like. Walmart store where everything looks exactly the same. And it's just like, if you start an [00:19:00] AI newsletter because it's trend trendy or whatever, at least have a unique value or something to stand out and cut through the noise, because it's much easier when you're a one of one, you know, in general, you're not fighting for competition. Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Nicheing down, especially in a very trendy. Area like that is, is super important. The other thing, I mean, if you're able to be kind of the first one to do it and do it well, that helps. I think, you know, I think about milk road as an example too, like the, they kind of grabbed the five day week crypto. I'm sure they weren't the first, but they, they definitely are one of the most prominent ones, you know, and when they launched in, I think it was 2021. And, you know, really kind of soared with it. So what do you think is the biggest or maybe most undervalued opportunity for newsletters? LeQwane Lynch: Biggest and most undervalued in my opinion is it's just kind of like media expansion. Some of these newsletters, especially the larger ones, they, they stop at email. I understand like the, the [00:20:00] whole, you know, huge thing where it's like. Newsletters are own platforms. We own our list and you know, check out, I mean, that's awesome. And I completely get it, but there's free traffic out there waiting for you to take it. And it's just like hop on some of these rented audience platforms that you guys talk about, such as social media. You know, Reddit SEO, you know, it's, it's a interesting thing right now, but these platforms, they have algorithms that want to connect you with your specific audience. And if you have something valuable or you have something good to say or valuable to say, and you can speak to your audience, you can, you know, build these platforms outside of your email lists, monetize them, whether it's directly monetizing that platform. Or, you know, using them to drive more traffic to either your website or your newsletter to monetize that a little bit more. I feel as though just being a real media company, air quotes, you know, is kind of like. A thing that a lot of newsletters could do [00:21:00] very easily there, they have more than enough content to, you know, original content on other other platforms than email. Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I think that the temptation is just to stick to the written. If you're going to go, you know, to a social platform to promote, stick to the written ones is kind of the temptation because you're. Everything you're creating is mostly, you know, writing or, or based in something that's written that people read. But you're a great example of somebody who, you know, took the opposite approach and went video and, and really kind of built that as your, as one of the number one ways you, you group organically. So. LeQwane Lynch: Yeah. And one of the, one of the things with that is like, at the end of the day, content writing my own newsletter, I realized that like content is content at the end of the day, and it can be repurposed. I only wrote. One, you know, three pieces of like big, you know, one, one 50 to 250, like pieces of content within the newsletter every day. So it was like 750 words of like article and then the rest was kind of like [00:22:00] curation where it's like, I'm talking about whatever someone else wrote or, you know. Graphs or something, but those, you know, 250 word articles, 150 to 250 word articles could be repurposed into the video content. And they, a lot of times acted directly as like a. 80 percent of the script that I wrote for video content, you see what I'm saying? So it's like, it's not difficult to take some of the content that you have and then put it elsewhere and then use those platforms to, at the end of the day, all funnel back to the place that truly matters, which is your email, if you're monetizing that, and that is your main business. So that's, that's kind of how I see it as like some of that content could, you know, be repurposed and used elsewhere. Dylan Redekop: Absolutely. I it's. Very good point. And I think more and more as, as competition for inboxes and inbox attention kind of grows and social media attention as well. I think people are going to have to leverage those means too. So it's a great, a great point probably to end on. But [00:23:00] before we end, I do want to talk to you just quickly, or let you tell us about what you're up to now, now that you've sold alerts daily, what's next for LeQwane and, and you know, 2024. LeQwane Lynch: After, after selling the newsletter and getting a lot of just like. Information and insight from other people in the space 1 thing that I quickly realized is like, it was sort of an anomaly to grow a newsletter at the pace of like, 2500 to 3500, 4000 subscribers a month for free through organic means. And it's just like. Well, some newsletters are paying 4 a subscriber, 3 a subscriber, five, eight, six, depending on the audience, you might be paying 12 a subscriber and it's like, that's very valuable. I realized most newsletters. Are growing through paid acquisition and it's like, well, that is leaving a lot of just profit on the table or opportunity on the table for organic growth. So I started reach, which is agency [00:24:00] in which I'm helping other newsletter operators build audiences outside of their email newsletters that they can then use to funnel traffic back to their newsletter. Such as like the social media or whatever else and to grow it and then either monetize those platforms directly through more sponsor content, you know, upselling their current sponsors or whatever else, and just overall expanding the reach of their media operations. Yeah. As I said, I think that that I kind of answered that already with like the most undervalued area of newsletters. And it's just like, that is the area that like many of them aren't focusing on. You see like the. Within the last like year or two, the morning brew really dived into social. And that's become like a integral part of their business and that they're, they've been upselling their sponsors and things like that to get them unique, dedicated shorts on, you know, YouTube and Instagram reels and things like that. Or content like sponsored posts. I'm sure they're charging a [00:25:00] boatload of money for those posts or they're just throwing them in as sweet deals. And with them having like. I don't know. It may be like 500, 000 or something like that, or a million on Instagram. It's a lot of people. It's like, that is a huge driver of their business. And I'm, they're not talking about it, but they're, there's, um, and there's a couple of other operations in the media, like newsletter space doing that. And they're, they're seeing a killing on it. Dylan Redekop: What? That's awesome. And I think you, you know, you underpinned it with your, when I asked you what the biggest or most undervalued opportunities for newsletters, and you took that, you already knew what it was and you've created, is it safe to call it an agency, uh, with, uh, Reach? LeQwane Lynch: Yeah. Reach, Reach is a newsletter, um, growth agency. It's like a newsletter content marketing agency, pretty much, uh, whatever you want to call it. Dylan Redekop: Cool. So, um, that's at reach subs. co. We will throw the link in the show notes here. Can you share just where, if anybody else wants to follow you on social media, can you share where we can find you there as well? Sure. LeQwane Lynch: Um, LinkedIn [00:26:00] as Lee Kwan Lynch, the spelling is probably like in the description or something, but L E Q W A N E and then Lynch, L Y N C H, as well as Twitter at Lee Kwan, just one word, my name, same, same spelling, and then obviously reach if they have a, if you have like a newsletter. That you're interested in expanding the media on and growing your reach and building audiences outside of email. Great. Dylan Redekop: Okay, sweet. We'll throw that all in the notes as well. And, uh, Laquan, it's been awesome chatting with you about your story and everything you've done, accomplished a ton and really excited to see what you do. In 2024, we'll be following closely. So thanks for coming on. Thank you. LeQwane Lynch: Thank you for having me. I think this was a, hopefully I was able to give some kind of insight to, uh, other operators out there and they, they got some value from it. Yeah. Yeah. I Dylan Redekop: mean, you gave me ideas, so it was, it was, it was good. It was awesome. so much, man. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Send Grow podcast. If you like what you heard, here are three quick ways that you can show your support. Number one, leave us a five star rating [00:27:00] and review in the podcast app of your choice. Number two, email or DM me with some feedback with your questions or with suggestions for future episodes. And finally, number three, share your favorite quote from the episode on social media and tag both me and our guest. All of the links for that are available in the show notes. And whatever option you choose, I am really grateful for your support. Thanks and see you next week.