Selling 7 of our Newsletters (Behind the Scenes)

A month ago or so, I spoke about selling a part of our newsletter portfolio…

It’s now for sale on Duuce.com and you can find it here…

However, I wanted to go into it a little further and the opportunity that is there, why I’m not happy I’m selling it and a 7th newsletter that I’m selling on top of this package of 6.

When I got into the game of newsletters, I knew that at least 50% of what I was going to do, wasn’t going to work. My entire method of business growth is break a lot of things and make a lot of mistakes.

In doing so, I’m able to get data quickly. As I am able to get data quickly, I am then able to focus and double down on what’s working.

I’ve spoken about the newsletter game quite a few times here, however, in this post I speak about how it’s something that requires a level of scale to work…

We’ve built the infrastructure for being able to scale newsletters. We’ve built each and every piece from sponsorships to writing and to growth and now we’ve proven the model.

We understand what works and what doesn’t and in that time we acquired and built 7 different newsletters that no longer have a high enough return on investment for us.

Simply put— due to our position in the market and our ability to work with large audiences, our time and money should be spent in other newsletters we own, along with being able to acquire much larger audiences that allow us to scale at a better level.

Due to that, we’re selling a collection of 7 newsletters. Today, I’m giving you a behind the scenes look at these 7 newsletters.

When I entered the newsletter and media game I knew that the most important part more than anything? Systems

In the process of building this newsletter set of companies we actually acquired mid-minority stake in an operational dashboard company. We needed help and thus we enlisted the help of https://wearesystemsup.com 

Through the process of building this, we also realized the massive undertaking required to succeed with sponsorships and sponsorships.com was born. In essence, the journey of acquiring and building these newsletters have been just as fruitful as running the newsletters themselves.

When building these newsletters— we were concerned more about systems than revenue. Why? For the simple reason that short-term revenue is easy to find. Long-term revenue that is system-oriented? Not so much.

In what I’m sharing, while we had a lot of sponsorship and affiliate potential, we said no to almost all of it, as the revenue generated would have cost us more than to sell it.

The reason for this is one of the core reasons we’re selling. If someone was operating this themselves with a single team member— it would work. However, with the infrastructure of our team and resources, the more we produce revenue, the more time we need to spend on it and the more time we lose.

Hence, why we’re selling it. The opportunity is big enough for someone looking for an internet business making $250K/year, however, it’s not big enough for a company that can utilize those resources elsewhere.

Here are the newsletters and a little on how they work:

The House of Routine

Subscribers: 2,000

Open % : 76%

CTR: 0.65%

Link: www.thehouseofroutine.com 

We purchased this eCommerce brand as a failed brand and attempted to turn the email list into an email newsletter. It didn’t really work the way we planned, whatsoever and I would put it under the “that didn’t work category”. While the brand came with a 40,000 per email list, there simply wasn’t enough brand equity and in the end we lost a lot of appetite.

We’ve kept it as its own brand, however, we’d suggest rolling this into another brand. We’ve never grown this and it is simply heavily engaged due to the amount of engagement tracking we do.

8AM

Subscribers: 8,354

Open % : 53.2%

CTR: 3.07%

Link: www.get8am.com 

Cost Per Lead (Sparkloop):

We acquired this newsletter and it’s actually one of my favorite of the bunch. I enjoy getting it in my inbox and considering that it’s a daily email has a lot of potential for advertising space and content. The growth of this newsletter was largely based on Sparkloop and the 8300 represents about 23,000 subscribers in total.

Out of the entire group we’re selling, I really think this has a lot of potential.

NeonPulse.AI

Subscribers: 21,191

Open % : 40%

CTR: 1.74%

Link: www.neonpulse.ai 

Cost Per Lead (FB): $2.07

This is your typical AI type of newsletter that is hot right now. The engagement has been pretty great with this and all of the growth has come from Facebook Ads which generally see’s a $2~ average cost per lead.

Smarter Brain Insider

Subscribers: 12,228

Open % : 40%

CTR: 1.87%

Link: http://smarterbraininsider.com 

Cost Per Lead (FB): $0.97

We acquired this newsletter at around 5,000 subscribers and have been growing it steadily mostly with referrals and Facebook Ads. We have ads at a steady <$1 and while it is broad the engagement and sponsorship opportunity has been great.

The Slice

Subscribers: 7,654

Open % : 33.13%

CTR: 1.41%

Link: www.theslice.co 

Cost Per Lead (FB): $0.00

We acquired this newsletter as well and it has a lot of overlap with Smart Insider with a more founder-type direction. Engagement is strong, however, it hasn’t been grown since we purchased and majority of past growth was organic.

Hardly Hustle

Subscribers: 1,870

Open % : 38.8%

CTR: 2.55%

Link: www.hardlyhustle.com 

Cost Per Lead (FB): $2.92

This is a tiny newsletter we acquired with only 350 people on it at the time (for nearly nothing). Majority of the growth was from Facebook Ads (a little expensive) and swapping with some of our other higher-end newsletters.

The Early Checkout

Subscribers: 14,500

Open % : 47%

CTR: 1.9%

Link: www.theearlycheckout.com 

Cost Per Lead (FB): $NA

If we had more eCommerce companies in our portfolio (we barely have any) I would keep this as it’s one of the most valuable newsletters in this group. It’s also generated the most amount of sponsorship revenue when we were actively selling sponsorships ($5-10K/mo).

If you have a product or service and selling to eCommerce companies, this is one of those that you could legit get your money back in a month. It also has a lot of potential and we were successful at having people agree to include this newsletter as part of their Facebook Group or Organic Social Media.

Who runs all of this?

At the moment, majority of this is ran by a few people on The Wisdom Team, with a few writers. In selling these, we aren’t looking to make it a transition of team, however, we are giving 60 days of both coaching and advisory to help ensure things are smooth.

What we are including, however, is our entire management system for running these newsletters (or newsletter), alongside of everything we’ve learnt for sponsorships, scaling, growing and managing the growth.

This is invaluable and is only available through purchasing our newsletters or being a business partner of ours— essentially your getting hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

What’s the actual opportunity?

Well, inside of all of these newsletters (no matter if you bought one or multiple) I see the following as the main revenue drivers that are not connected to an existing business.

1). Sparkloop (generating revenue for people who sign up to this newsletter)

2). Sponsorships (the market will continue to get better for this)

3). Low-Ticket Products (we’ve proven this model in other newsletters of ours and in many case are positive return on ad spend)

4). Affiliate Offers (obvious, but I wanted to add it)

Of course, this makes even more sense for someone who has an existing business and wants to create a “pre-funnel” which I talk about in this video…

Simply put… there are proven ways for both scaling these and being able to generate revenue and while I wish I could keep these the return on investment is better for a smaller team that is able to focus on these singular newsletters or someone who can take 1 or more of these newsletters and help reduce their marketing costs.

Originally, I wanted to sell all of these together and while that is an option and a preferred option. We’re currently losing focus and money by keeping these in our portfolio.

So… if you’re interested and you think it has potential for you and your business..

Please hit reply to this email or email directly at [email protected] 

Here’s how purchase will work and some notes for you:

1. I’m accepting 10-day LOI’s only, simply put, the faster we’re able to relocate resources, the better. Further, from having participated in dozens of acquisitions, these are micro. There isn’t a lot of due-dilgance and I don’t want a dragged out process.

2. I’m accepting cash only, with zero seller financing. We’re wanting to utilize this capital in our other properties.

3. We’ll be able to move quickly and have you up to speed— further, we’re happy to keep systems running for 30 days in transition to ensure that life is easy while you’re getting your feet wet.

I believe that’s all. I’m excited for all that we’ve learnt and excited to continue onwards with our portfolio.

- Scott Oldford