Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / How Newsletter Writers Use Paid Search Ads to Grow Subscribers
Transcript
- Lucas: Let me start with a specific number. A tech newsletter writer I've been following — let's call her Sarah — launched a paid search campaign in March of this year targeting a single long-tail keyword phrase: 'weekly startup newsletter for founders.' She spent about four thousand dollars over three months and picked up roughly fourteen hundred new subscribers at a cost per subscriber of two dollars and eighty cents. Luna: That's a pretty efficient acquisition cost. But I imagine not every keyword works that well. How did she land on that phrase? Lucas: She used Google's Keyword Planner and searched for terms related to her newsletter's niche — startup culture, founder advice, venture capital insights. The broad terms like 'startup newsletter' had high competition with bid prices around three to five dollars per click. But when she added qualifiers like 'weekly' and 'for founders,' the competition dropped significantly, and the cost per click fell to about one fifty. Luna: So the long-tail approach lowered her ad spend. But clicks alone don't get you subscribers. What did her landing page look like? Lucas: That's a crucial piece. She didn't just send traffic to her Substack homepage. She built a dedicated landing page using a simple tool like Carrd. The headline matched the ad copy almost exactly — 'Get the weekly startup newsletter for founders' — and she had a single opt-in form with a clear value prop: 'Curated startup insights every Tuesday.' No navigation, no distractions. Luna: Right, so the ad promise and the landing page promise are aligned. That probably helped her conversion rate. Do you know what that rate was? Lucas: She shared that her landing page converted at about 18 percent. That means for every hundred clicks, eighteen people subscribed. And with a cost per click of one fifty, that works out to roughly eight dollars and thirty cents per subscriber from clicks — but she actually got a lower cost per subscriber because some clicks came through at lower bids. The two eighty figure was her blended average. Luna: Okay, so the math works. But I wonder about scale. How many keywords can you realistically target before you run out of relevant long-tail terms? Lucas: That's the ceiling. For a niche newsletter, you might have fifty to a hundred viable long-tail keywords. Sarah expanded to about thirty phrases over three months — things like 'newsletter for startup employees,' 'venture capital newsletter weekly,' 'tech newsletter for founders.' Each phrase had modest search volume, maybe fifty to two hundred monthly searches, but together they drove a steady stream of traffic. Luna: And what about Bing Ads? I've heard that can be cheaper because fewer advertisers compete there. Lucas: She tested Bing as well and found cost per click was about thirty percent lower — roughly one dollar per click instead of one fifty. But conversion rates were slightly lower, around 15 percent, so her cost per subscriber on Bing was about six sixty-seven. Still, a good supplement. She allocated about twenty percent of her budget to Bing. Luna: That's a smart split. Now, what about ad copy? There's a skill to writing a Google ad that gets clicks without being misleading. Lucas: Her highest-performing ad had a headline that said 'Weekly Startup Insights for Founders' and a description that read 'Curated news, funding rounds, and growth tactics. Join 5,000+ founders who read us every Tuesday.' She tested three variations — one emotional, one benefit-driven, one social proof. The social proof version won by a wide margin, with a click-through rate of 3.2 percent versus 1.8 for the others. Luna: That makes sense — people want to know others like them are already reading. But I'm also curious about negative keywords. Did she filter out irrelevant searches? Lucas: She did. After a few weeks of data, she noticed her ads were showing for searches like 'free startup newsletter' and 'startup newsletter template.' Those searchers were unlikely to subscribe to a paid newsletter or even a free one with the intent she wanted. So she added those as negative keywords, which improved her click-through rate and reduced wasted spend by about 12 percent. Luna: Good detail. Let's talk about tracking. How did she know which subscribers came from which ad? That's not always straightforward. Lucas: She used UTM parameters on her landing page links — source, medium, campaign, and keyword. Then she set up a simple conversion tracking pixel from Google Ads that fired when someone submitted the opt-in form. She also tagged new subscribers in her email platform with a tag like 'source: paid search' so she could segment them later for retention analysis. Luna: And did she analyze retention? I feel like paid acquisition can bring in less engaged subscribers compared to organic. Lucas: She did. After ninety days, the paid search cohort had an open rate of 42 percent and a click rate of 8 percent — slightly lower than her organic subscribers, who had 48 percent and 10 percent respectively. But the gap wasn't huge. She attributed that to the relevance of the keywords. People searching for 'weekly startup newsletter for founders' have high intent. Luna: So the key is to bid on terms that signal strong intent, not broad interest. I've seen some newsletter writers waste money on generic terms like 'startup news' that attract casual readers who never open the emails. Lucas: Exactly. Another pitfall is bidding on your own brand name. One writer I know bid on 'The Hustle' — a major competitor — and got some clicks, but the cost per subscriber was over ten dollars because those searchers were often just looking for the competitor, not an alternative. She eventually stopped that campaign. Luna: Brand bidding is tricky. Let's step back — what's the minimum budget someone should start with? I don't want to suggest that every newsletter writer needs to spend thousands. Lucas: You can start with as little as five hundred dollars over a month. That's about sixteen dollars a day. With a cost per click of one fifty, that buys roughly ten clicks a day. If your landing page converts at 18 percent, you'd get about one to two subscribers per day, or thirty to sixty a month. Not a huge number, but it's a test. The key is to learn which keywords and ad copy work before scaling. Luna: And then scale the winners. That's the classic paid search playbook. But I want to talk about one more thing — geographic targeting. Did Sarah target globally or just English-speaking countries? Lucas: She started with the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. She found that the US had the highest conversion rate at 18 percent, while the UK was slightly lower at 15 percent. Canada and Australia were around 12 percent. She excluded non-English-speaking countries entirely because her newsletter is in English and the conversion rates were below 5 percent. Luna: Smart. That avoids wasting budget on low-performing geos. Now, one thing that often gets overlooked is ad scheduling. Did she run ads at specific times? Lucas: She tested running ads only on weekdays during business hours — 8 AM to 6 PM in the target time zones. But she found that weekends actually had a lower cost per click because fewer advertisers were bidding. The conversion rate on weekends was slightly lower, but the lower CPC meant the cost per subscriber was about the same. So she ended up running ads seven days a week. Luna: Interesting. So there's no one-size-fits-all. You have to test. I think many newsletter writers are intimidated by paid search because it seems complex, but Sarah's case shows it can be managed with a systematic approach. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's worth noting that paid search is just one channel. For Sarah, it became a reliable source of about five hundred new subscribers per month, complementing her organic growth from social media and referrals. It gave her a predictable growth lever. Luna: Before we wrap, I want to mention something we both believe strongly about. This show is ad-free by design — we don't run sponsorships or commercial breaks. If you find these conversations useful and want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just an option for those who value the ad-free format. Lucas: Yeah, and it's listener support that keeps us independent and able to dive into specific tactics like paid search without any sponsor influence. So thanks to anyone who's contributed. Luna: Alright, back to the topic. One final thought — for newsletter writers considering paid search, what's the single most important piece of advice you'd give? Lucas: Start with a single keyword, a single ad, and a single landing page. Run it for two weeks with a small budget. Gather data. Then iterate. Don't try to launch ten campaigns at once. The nuance is in the testing. Luna: Good advice. Paid search isn't for every newsletter, but for those with a clear niche and strong landing page, it can be a repeatable growth channel. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. That's it for today. We'll be back next time with another angle on newsletter growth.