How to Grow a Newsletter from 0 to 3,000 subscribers Quickly

It took me less than a year to grow a newsletter from 0 to 1,000 subscribers, and a little while later, I hit the 3,000-subscriber mark.

Getting 1,000 subscribers is a big milestone for any newsletter creator, especially when you start at zero. It’s one thing to buy an existing newsletter, but it’s another to start it from scratch and grow it to that large.

And before you think you need 50K to 100K subscribers to make money with a newsletter, I was making plenty of money before I even hit 1,000 subscribers.

I’ve created this guide to show you how I was able to successfully grow a newsletter from 0 to 3,000 subscribers. I’ll share all my tactics and all the ways I’ve made money as a bonus feature on this guide.

If you’re ready to grow your newsletter quickly and easily, continue reading this guide.

Grow a Newsletter with a Newsletter-Friendly Niche

The most important thing you need to grow a newsletter is a niche and a target audience.

Your niche is the main topic you create for. I have a hiking newsletter. The niche is hiking.

You also need a target audience. Often, you’ll want to narrow your niche down to find your perfect audience.

My newsletter doesn’t just focus on the generic niche of hiking. I’ve narrowed it down to focus on my local area’s hiking trails. My audience is local hikers and hikers who live in the states and cities close to my area trails.

I’ve chosen to narrow my niche down to a local niche, but that’s not always the best direction,

Just make sure you’re choosing a niche about a topic you’re passionate about. If you’re not passionate about it, your competition who is passionate will always be ahead of you. You need to choose a niche that you’ll always love to create content about.

My niche is local area hiking because I’ve been hiking in my local area every weekend (and a few days a week) for around 12 years now. I’ve become a local expert in it, too, which has really helped my newsletter grow.

What is your niche, and who is your audience? Answer this and move on to the next section.

Grow a Newsletter with a Reputable Newsletter Service

Make sure you choose a reputable newsletter marketing service if you want to grow a newsletter the right way.

This is the service where you actually send out your newsletters. In the old days, we would send out bulk emails, wait a while, and then send out more bulk emails. Nowadays, there are services that make this easier.

But not all email marketing services are legit and reputable.

You should research the best ones and go with the one you find to be best based on your research. You definitely don’t want to choose one that is often aligned with spam cases. You want to choose one that people know about.

There are many options to choose from but choose based on your needs.

I use MailChimp because it has all the features I need (which aren’t very many) and is trusted by millions of creators. Kit is another good one that has many affiliate and creator features built into it. Beehiiv is another one that many people are choosing these days because it makes it easier to have a monetized newsletter.

Do your research, figure out which email marketing service will meet your needs, and go with the one you find the most featured and reputable.

Grow a Newsletter with an Engaged Social Media Presence

Social media is going to be one of your best marketing platforms if you want to grow your newsletter to its fullest.

Out of my 3K subscribers, I would say that 98% of them came from social media marketing efforts. Most people are on social media these days, and you can bet your niche is being actively discussed on social media even right now. By ignoring social media as a marketing tactic, you’ll be missing most of your greatest opportunities.

But it’s not as easy as just joining every major social media platform and posting links to your newsletter subscription page.

You need to review various top-level social media platforms and see if your target audience is actively using them. You want to go where your audience is and make sure they’re very active on the platform. Choosing a platform where your audience is not at will only waste your precious time trying to market your newsletter.

You also need to build a community of loyal followers through native content submissions and consistent engagement.

To be noticed, you need to consistently post every single day on the platforms you choose to create on. You need to post multiple times a day, and the content needs to be of the highest quality. You also need to engage even more than you’re posting.

Social media sounds like hard work, but in reality, there are plenty of ways to reduce your workload.

Use a schedule feature or service to schedule multiple daily posts a week or two in advance so that you can focus on engagement. Engage with a similar niche page and your target audience daily. Provide the highest quality and value, and be seen as a friendly expert in your niche.

You should be posting more native content than promotional content to keep up with the algorithms.

All social media platforms have algorithms that will give you fewer views when you post external links. So, with that being said, you should post content that you have to upload or create on the social media page, more than promotional content. Your profile or page link should include your newsletter.

It sounds difficult, but you just have to turn it into a habit, which is what I have done on Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads, YouTube, and Patreon.

I schedule a week’s worth of daily content using native scheduling features and Buffer. I then log in every day to reply to all comments made on my pages and engage with other pages and their followers related to my niche. I create engagement questions, upload photos and videos, and occasionally post links to my newsletter on my page when scheduling.

Once you learn to use social media to grow a newsletter and consistently do it, you’ll attract a lot of new subscribers.

Grow a Newsletter with a Valuable Lead Magnet

You need to give something away besides your newsletter if you really want to grow a newsletter.

Doesn’t that sound counterproductive? If you offer a free newsletter, why on earth would you need to give more away just to get new subscribers? The fact of the matter is that newsletters with a lead magnet get significantly more subscribers than those that don’t offer one.

A freebie for subscribing is what we in the newsletter business call a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet can be anything, but it needs to be valuable and compelling. I offer an exclusive eBook in PDF form featuring 35 great hiking trails that not many people know about. You have to give the potential subscriber something they’re not likely to get anywhere else.

There are many things that you could use to offer as a lead magnet.

You could go the route I did and offer a guide, eBook, or something like that. You could also offer an app or some kind of software if you wanted to. Another option might be a free trial or a discount code to get a product or service you offer.

But what if they subscribe, get the free lead magnet, and then unsubscribe?

There will likely be people who do just that, and it happens to everyone, so don’t feel like you need to get too upset about it. You could make sure your welcome email has copy in it that reminds the new subscriber to stay subscribed in order to get even more exclusive freebies as you send your newsletter each time. In all honesty, though, if you’re using your newsletter to try to sell, those who just want freebies and that’s it are not really going to be your main customer target base, so it’s not really that big of a loss.

Decide on a good free lead magnet and ensure that it has some exclusivity that you don’t offer anywhere else to help boost new subscribers.

Grow a Newsletter with the Right Website and Post CTAs

If you have a website, you can grow a newsletter by adding CTAs to the pages and posts.

A CTA is a Call to Action, which is basically when you use copywriting techniques to get a reader to act on something you want them to act on. In this case, your CTA is either a newsletter signup form or a dedicated landing page that persuades the reader to subscribe to your newsletter. You’ll strategically place your CTA at various portions of your website to increase action taken by readers.

There are a few ways to place your CTA to get better action-taking results.

You should add a pop-up to your website that encourages visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. You should also add CTAs in eye-catching ways on all pages and blog posts you create near the top and on the bottom of the page. It also helps if you add information about your lead magnet and rename the button something like “Get Your Free Guide Now” or whatever lead magnet you’re offering.

I know the pop-up doesn’t sound too appealing, but it works.

I added a newsletter subscription box pop-up to every page and post on my website when I had around 60 subscribers, and that feature alone helped me reach 1,000 new subscribers in less than a year. It’s a great way to catch their attention quickly and put the lead magnet right in front of their faces.

If you have a website, blog, social media, or anything you can put a CTA on, you need to be doing it to grow your newsletter to its fullest potential.

Retain Your Subscribers with Feedback Surveys

To grow a newsletter, you need to keep your newsletter subscribers subscribed to your mailing list.

One of my biggest success stories in keeping mailing list subscribers is through user feedback. I provide a method for subscribers to give feedback for my newsletter, and then I shape the newsletter based on that feedback. This shows the subscribers who care enough to give me feedback that I also care enough to show them I’m listening.

Your newsletter is a benefit to your subscribers, not so much to you.

Don’t create a newsletter because you want to post what you want to post, per se. Instead, you should be creating a newsletter geared to giving value to those who subscribe to your mailing list. If you want to keep people on your list, you have to give them what they want, plain and simple.

It’s very easy to get feedback from your subscribers, too.

I create a Google form for every newsletter I send and put it in a few sections asking for feedback. I ask on the form what subscribers like, what they don’t like, and what they would like to see in the future. I’ll then take the feedback and implement it into the next newsletter I send out, showing my subscribers that I’m listening to their feedback.

If you truly want to grow, always seek feedback from your subscribers. This will build a loyal following in the process.

Monetize Your Newsletter with Sponsorship and Affiliate Links

Running a newsletter will not always be free, so you should try to monetize it to pay the bills and put money in your pocket.

My newsletter costs $75 a month because of the number of subscribers I have. At first, most services provide a generous free plan of 500 to 1,000 (some even more) subscribers before you have to pay, but in order to get any features, you’ll have to pay from the get-go. As your newsletter grows in subscribers, you’ll eventually have to pay more for it, and it will eventually get expensive.

In order to keep your newsletter going, you’ll need to start making money with it.

The best ways to make money with your newsletter are through sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and selling things. With sponsorships and selling things, you can set your own prices, but with affiliate links, you get whatever rate the company you affiliate with decides to pay you. Nonetheless, you have to pitch your sales and persuade your audience to buy something.

Sponsorships are one of the most common ways to earn money with a newsletter.

I charge a specific monthly price for the main newsletter sponsor, and then I put that sponsor right under my newsletter introduction. I make sure the price includes the monthly price of the service and some extra profit for me. The sponsored content is usually a banner or some text. I make sure to add a label to identify it as a sponsor because that’s usually required by law and ethical.

Affiliate marketing is another good way to make money if you have an audience interested in buying.

The way affiliate marketing works is that you join an affiliate program, add a special trackable text link to your email content, and then get paid if someone makes a purchase using your affiliate link. You should be transparent about using affiliate links in your newsletter. The more sales that your affiliate links earn, the more money you will be able to earn through those sales.

The best way to make the most money with a newsletter is by selling something from it.

Create and sell products and services with your newsletter. Create a product or service that solves the biggest pain point of your audience and sell it from your newsletter. You can make hundreds to thousands of dollars each time you send out a newsletter by selling your own products and services.

Ensure that you start making money when you grow a newsletter so that you can keep your newsletter active and growing.

Now, Over to You!

Now that I’ve given you all this gold about how to grow a newsletter, it’s your turn to say something.

Comment below and tell me about your newsletter. I want to see what kind of content you are writing about.

Thanks for reading my article. Be sure to share it, and please follow me on X for more newsletters, online communities, and membership tips.

If you really want to support me further, consider buying me a coffee.

About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.