
Newsletter Analytics Consultation
About this episode: A few months ago I had the pleasure of meeting Blake Ellison on Twitter. He mentioned he runs an analytics service called Analysts Now and actually helped Kevin Conti, who was on episode 31, grow to over $10k MRR with his newsletter Softwareideas. I got Blake and a member of the Newsletter Crew community, Stefan from Alternative Assets, to hop on a call and analyze Stefan’s newsletter.
This is part 1 of the episode and part 2 has the second half of the call. If you’re interested in part 2, then become a member of the Newsletter Crew.


Show Notes & Insights:
- Analytics give you clarity to what's working with your newsletter and what's not.
- Paid newsletter ads can provide a solid stream of traffic to your newsletter.
- There 3 major phases of a business when going from small to big. The indie phase, product-market-fit phase, and the scaling phase.
- The indie phase is when you're just getting the business of the ground. You still don't know if it's viable or if there's even a market for this offering. The work is more qualitative than quantitative.
- Newsletter-market-fit is when your content resonates with your audience. The engagement is high! Your open-rates and click-rates are higher than the standard.
- Try cleaning out 1% of your newsletter per week. The bottom 1% that is the least engaged.
- It takes roughly 6-9 months to see SEO start to pay off.
- Once you have a solid number on how much revenue a subscriber brings your newsletter, then you can really start paid advertising.
- As your newsletter grows expect a decrease in open-rates, click-rates, visitor-to-subscriber conversion, and overall engagement.
- Frankenstein numbers will get the job done as long as you're using a consistent measure across time. That at least gives you an indication of how well your newsletter is doing. It at least gives you a directional indication as a signal on what's going on and what you should look into.
- SEO should be a second or third traffic source in your growth toolbox. Don't go straight to SEO out of the gate.
Newsletter + Guest Info:
- Blake Ellison: https://twitter.com/blakerson
- Analysts Now: https://analystsnow.com/
- Stefan Von Imhof: https://twitter.com/stefanvonimhof
- Alternative Assets: https://alternativeassets.substack.com/
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