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A DIY newsletter actually costs a lot more than you think. beehiiv pushed MCP v2 to everyone. Casey Newton bet on scoops over roundups. The Newsletter Conference is 10 days out and seats keep dropping.
If your week feels overpriced this Tuesday, that's the point
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😂 Meme of the Week
🔥 This Week's Hot Takes
beehiiv MCP v2 opens to everyone. AI can now query segments, automations, products, podcasts, and monetization data through one connection. Reporting moves from spreadsheet exports to a prompt.
Your DIY newsletter costs $327 per issue (and your books never see it). Price your time at $35 an hour, the BLS writer median, and labor alone runs $315 per weekly issue and see where the receipts come out of.
Casey Newton bets on scoops over aggregation. Roundups and generic analysis are getting flattened by AI. Original reporting and a sharper POV are what readers will keep paying for.
USA Today returns to profit by ditching subscriber growth for ARPU. Subs dropped 28% year-over-year, but digital revenue grew 5% on stacking and bundling. The lesson for your newsletter: stop chasing the sub count and start stacking offers on your existing readers.
The Newsletter Conference is 10 days out. May 15 in NYC, the agenda is live, and seats keep dropping. Live events shifted from optional to a real growth and sponsorship channel for serious operators.
💡 Growth Hack of the Week
Audit the cross-promo before you say yes
Most creators say yes to swaps, the way people accept LinkedIn requests. Too fast, too often, with too little homework. The list grows on paper. The open rate dips a week later. Three months in, you're cleaning a list full of people who never wanted your newsletter to begin with.
The fix is a 15-minute audit before any swap.
Ask for the last three sends' open and click rates. Not "average" numbers from their pitch deck. Actual numbers from their last three campaigns. If they push back, that's already useful data.
Read three of their recent issues. A finance newsletter for solopreneurs and one for institutional traders share a category, not an audience. If you wouldn't subscribe yourself, your readers probably won't either.
Ask about retention from a previous swap. "How many of those new subscribers were still opening at 30 days" is the question that filters serious operators from list dumpers.
Match prize and lead magnet quality. If your gift pulls $1,500 of value and theirs pulls $30, the reciprocity is broken before sending one.
Tag the source in your ESP. Run the swap with a clean campaign tag, then check 30-day open rates against your house list. If a cohort drops below 60% of baseline, drop the partner from your rotation.
Why it works: Relevance beats reach every time. A swap with 5,000 aligned readers will out-convert one with 50,000 mismatched subscribers, and your sender reputation will thank you on the next send.
Expected result: A well-matched swap typically lands 5 to 15% subscriber growth with stronger open rates on the new cohort, instead of the slow leak you'd get from a category match without the audience match.
Spotlight: The Water Coolest
Tyler Morin started The Water Coolest in September 2017 as a daily finance newsletter written in the voice he used to talk to friends at the bar, unfiltered and irreverent. Within about four years, the list crossed 100,000 subscribers. Barstool Sports bought it in November 2021 and Tyler stayed on as Head of Newsletter Ops. In late 2023 he reacquired the newsletter and went independent again.
What works:
The voice is the moat. Finance newsletters are a crowded category. The Water Coolest broke through because the voice was specifically polarizing. The Instagram bio still says "definitely not for everyone." That line is doing real work. It pre-qualifies subscribers and self-segments the list before they ever click subscribe.
Early growth came from adjacent meme accounts. Tyler bought sponsorships on @GSElevator, Litquidity, and High Yield Harry while those accounts were still climbing. He has said the cost per subscriber from those placements crushed paid social, with hundreds of high-quality signups per day at peak.
The "water cooler" lens drives daily content selection. Tyler's curation question is "What will people be talking about at the water cooler tomorrow morning?" He scans WSJ, CNBC, Bloomberg, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram every morning with that filter on.
You can buy your newsletter back. When Barstool went through ownership changes in 2023, Tyler reacquired the asset and went independent again. His public note read like a man who had spent two years writing down which decisions he would not repeat: "not a damn thing is going to change."
Your takeaway: Voice is the asset corporate buyers underprice. If your newsletter sounds like everyone else's in your category, you are competing on distribution, and distribution is the most expensive thing to compete on. Pick the most specific, slightly polarizing version of your voice you can defend, put a "definitely not for everyone" line somewhere on your signup page, and let the list self-filter.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
adly.news: A free marketplace for selling newsletter ad slots without the cold-email grind
Why You'll Love It: adly.news matches your newsletter with relevant advertisers automatically, gives you a public storefront to showcase audience metrics and packages, and lets brands book slots instantly or counter-offer through in-app messaging.
Best For: Solo operators and small teams who want to monetize ad inventory without hiring a sales rep, and creators who'd rather list slots once than chase sponsors every week.
🧪 A/B Test of the Week
Test: Button copy on your signup form
What it is: Version A keeps your current button text (likely "Subscribe," "Submit," or "Sign up"). Version B replaces it with a single word: "Continue." Center the button inside the form and shrink it from full-width to roughly 40-50% width.
Why it works: "Continue" signals motion, not commitment. "Subscribe" forces the visitor to consciously enter a contract. Pair the copy change with a smaller button and you remove the visual weight that triggers hesitation.
Expected result: Max Bidna saw conversion jump from 7.56% to 37.8% on the same offer. Plan for a 2x-5x lift, not a 10% one.
Takeaway: Run this test before you touch your headline, your lead magnet, or your hero image. The button is the cheapest variable to change and the highest-leverage one to win.
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Questions? Just write a comment below. I read all the comments and respond to them.
Thanks for reading,
Eren Daskesen