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This is GC⚡ #78 — your secret weapon for newsletter growth ⚔️

A special welcome to the 39 newest members of the Growth Currency⚡ newsletter community!

Thank you for giving me space in you inbox. 🙏

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here »​
​

[GC News & Announcements]

What's happening this week?

📢 SparkLoop Launches 2 New Growth & Monetization Tools
​The kings of the newsletter referral space recently announced their latest new tools:
→ The Partner Program: If your main goal right now is audience growth, check this out first.​
→ The Partner Network: Care more about how your newsletter can make more money? "Recommend amazing newsletters to your audience. Get paid when they subscribe."

DID YOU KNOW: you get a SparkLoop account ($199/yr value) included with the ConvertKit Creator Pro plan? Try the Creator Pro plan FREE for 30 days if you sign up before July 31 (affiliate link).

​

✍️ Niche Definer by Josh Spector
​A missing niche is a big reason many hesitate to start a newsletter. Check out the Niche Definer. In Josh's words:
​"The Niche Definer is a 53-minute video workshop that shows you how to identify your target audience based on your goals, interests, skills, and experience as well as how to communicate your niche in a way that attracts and resonates with the people you need to reach." Define your niche today »​

​

🙋 Want to add super high-quality leads to your email list?
​Join the "5 Pillar Email Foundational Strategies" free workshop with Angel Marie and Amy Porterfield, brought to you by ConvertKit this Thursday July 28th. Sign up here »​
​

[GC Editorial]​
12 Things I've Learned Reaching 2k Subscribers in 18 months.

"These are not the growth hacks you were looking for." 🪄

The timing was crazy.

Right before I sent out the 77th weekly edition of my Growth Currency newsletter last week — I hit 2,000 subscribers.

It was fitting, too: my first edition went out January 19th, 2021. And hit 2,000 on July 18th, 2022 — 18 months to the day (basically).

What began as a little Substack writing experiment has now turned into a small business side hustle. One that’s taught me a lot, helped me teach a lot, and brought in over $5,000 in direct & indirect revenue.

And all I did was promise myself to write 100 editions before quitting. Piece of cake, right? Hah.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of counterintuitive things I’ve learned from this journey to 2k subscribers.

Note: this is not a growth playbook. There are no growth hacks here. Instead, I’m sharing some unique lessons and observations I’ve learned that I wish I had known from the beginning of my newsletter journey.

​Read the rest »​
​

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Go and watch your first YouTube video.

Read your first blog post.

Find your first newsletter edition.

Listen to your first podcast episode...

Now, compare it to your most recent piece of content.

It’s night and day, isn’t it? You may have even felt a little (actually, maybe a lot) embarrassed.

As embarrassed as you are, that’s also how proud you should be, because that’s how much your content has grown—how much you’ve grown.

If you're like most creators, your marketing platform reminds you of that first creative effort. It has not kept up. You need a fresh start.

​Get a Fresh Start with ConvertKit»​
​

[GC Curated Resources: Start + Grow + Improve + Monetize your newsletter]​
Your Growth Currency ⚡ This Week

"Knowledge is the currency of growth."

​

START

⚡ The Ultimate Guide To Starting A Newsletter by Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole

This is brilliant. This guide will help you at the VERY beginning: deciding on a newsletter format. Dickie & Cole explain there are 2 main types of newsletters formats:

1) Short & Curated
2) Long & Original Thinking

AND—they describe which one you should consider:

​

GROW

⚡ 85+ Tested Ways to Grow Your Email List Fast in 2022 by Vikram Saini

This is a long list. But Vikram is thoughtful enough to break it into different categories, like...

→ How to Grow Your Email List Using Email
→ How to Grow Your Email List With Your Website
→ How to Grow Your Email List With Optimization Strategies
→ How to Grow Your Email List With Social Media
→ How to Grow Email List Using Podcast
→ How to Grow Email List Using Content Optimization

(🔗 via Minimalist Hustler)

​

​

IMPROVE

⚡ 50 lessons learned from writing 50 newsletters by Anne-Laure Le Cunff (via Ness Labs)

These are stellar. My favorites any newbie publisher should take note of:

#4 - Focus on the right goals.
#11 - Don’t be afraid to pivot.
#20 - Go beyond one-way broadcasts.
#21 - Ask for feedback.
#35 - It’s a marathon.

(🔗 via Refind.com)

​

​

MONETIZE

⚡ My newsletter is making $2,000 per month with 6,500 subscribers - AMA by Ryan Gilbert (via IndiHackers)

This is an AMA post, so it's short—BUT scroll down to the Q&A below the post for some monetization gold. Ryan published 117 editions of his Workspaces newsletter before earning a DIME. That's dedication.

​

The GC NOTW (Newsletter Of The Week)

⚡ Business Brainstorms Newsletter by Jakob Greenfield

Jakob is spending 12+ hours studying trends, brainstorming ideas, and researching successful companies. Then he packages everything he's learned into a 3-minute report to help you level up your entrepreneurial game.

​Check it out & level up »​
​

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​

Thanks for making it to the end—I try and save some gold for this space.

We (I) just wrapped up the 1KS Roadmap relaunch on Twitter.

It was a neat experiment running an automated course through a social platform. Thanks to Vineet Sinha for giving me chance to take his tool Implicit.io for this test run. The entire course was delivered & automated through Implicit.io.

Some interesting stats:

→ 88 accounts signed up the day the course was announced
→ 35 accounts signed up after the course had begun
→ 11 accounts completed ONE assignment (out of five)
→ 4 accounts completed 4 or 5 assignments (out of five)

The point of this 1KS relaunch was to add assignments and incentivize course completion. If you completed a daily assignment, you got a bonus incentive in the form of an additional tip or template.

You can still take the course by replying to this tweet:

⚡ Dylan R. || Newsletter Strategist 💙💛 @growthcurrency Biggest lie online: "Just build an audience." The problem? Only 1/20th of your social audience sees your content. You're at the mercy of the algorithm. But you can take that power back. July 12th 2022 27 Retweets 392 Likes

​

How would you rate this edition?​
⚡⚡⚡⚡⚡ Electrifying!​
⚡⚡⚡ A decent jolt.​
⚡ Just static...

Hit reply and let me know why — I answer every one :)

​

And in case you missed it, here are last week's TWO most popular links:

#1: 6 types of newsletters you can start today by Ghost.org
#2: How To Make Your First Newsletter Dollars—without a big list or selling ads by Growth Currency⚡
​

​
Other Growth Currency⚡ Resources:
​
→ The 1KS Roadmap: A Free Course To Your First 1,000 Subscribers​
→ The Ultimate Creator Database of Awesomeness​
→ How To Start, Grow, and Optimize a Substack Newsletter​
→ Advertise in this newsletter​
→ Book a Newsletter Consult With Me: 30 Mins | 60 Mins​

Peace and platonic love,

Dylan

​Twitter | Medium | Instagram | TikTok​