Newsletter acquisitions and Profitable Newsletters with Chris Osborne of Growth List

About this episode: This week we have the legendary Chris Osborne with us. Why is he legendary you’re thinking? Well, Chris built two successful newsletters that you may have heard of, FoundersGrid and Crypto Weekly, that just recently were acquired. He’s also built and launched twenty newsletters in twenty days. This is the first serial newsletter creator I’ve met. In this episode we’ll cover the acquisition processes for FoundersGrid and Crypto Weekly, why newsletters are one of the best businesses to start today, his recently launched course targeted toward newsletter creators called Profitable Newsletters, and his newsletter tech stack recommendations. If you’re starting out or are a seasoned creator this is an episode that you won’t want to miss.

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Key Notes:

• Crypto Weekly was created and targeted to a very specific audience. Chris imaged the newsletter to be a weekly check-in at 5pm on Fridays for investors to get a full overview of what happened that week in the crypto space.
• The acquisitions of both of these newsletters were very serendipitous. He knew people interested in that space, hoped on a few calls with them, arranged a price. No lawyers were involved. The whole process took two weeks from start to close.
• Chris was losing interest in running Founders Grid which had led him to think about selling it.
• There are too many factors to consider for there to be a template on how much you should sell your newsletter for.
• Crypto Weeklys growth was pretty stagnant when he sold it.
• Newsletters are a great business to build online because they are very inexpensive to get set up, you can start and launch it within an hour or two, and they are really helpful.
• Curation based newsletters are a great service since it outsources the work of digging through so much bad content to find the gems. This saves subscribers valuable time and is a net positive for everyone.
• Sponsors love newsletters on the business side since they can get their product in front of their target audience in a very personal way.
• Curated content newsletters are very hard to pull off with the standard subscription model. For these types of newsletters, it’s best to go the sponsorship route. Most paid subscriptions newsletters are original content.
• Subscribers pay a monthly subscription to hear the thoughts and opinions of a certain author.
• Chris’s course Profitable Newsletters is content filled without the fluff and is meant for anyone thinking about starting a newsletter as a side hustle, main gig, or for a company.
• If there’s a subreddit of your niche then you can create a newsletter for that niche.
• Chris Osborne’s recommended newsletter tech stack: Carrd for the landing page, Email Octopus or ConvertKit for the email delivery service
• Carrd provides stunning landing pages for a very cheap price and it’s easy to set up the domain mapping too.
• Email Octopus has a large free plan any newsletter creator can leverage.
• ConvertKit has outstanding support.
• Chris’s number one tip for someone starting a newsletter is to simply don’t give up. There are too many people giving up too early any it’s a shame.

Important Links:

• Profitable Newsletters course: https://kintuhq.podia.com/profitable-newsletters/hdixb
• I launched 20 newsletters in 20 days – here’s what I learned: https://kintu.co/20-newsletters/

Guest + Newsletter Info:

• Chris Osborne: https://kintu.co/
• Profitable Newsletters: https://kintuhq.podia.com/a/hdixb

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