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👋 Hey!
This week's packed with deliverability warnings you can't afford to ignore, a LinkedIn growth loop that drove 25% of one creator's list growth. Plus, we're dissecting how a former hedge fund analyst turned a niche newsletter into $190K ARR, and showing you why your paid tier might need a total rethink.
Ready to level up? Let's dive in! 👇
😂 Meme of the Week
🔥 This Week's Hot Takes
Major mailbox providers are glitching and catching legitimate senders. Even well-authenticated newsletters are seeing unexpected bounces and filtering. Audit your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records now, and monitor your deliverability dashboards closely this week.
Subscribers want value, not another paid newsletter. Readers are hitting subscription fatigue. The play? Charge for outcomes like community access, templates, or tools rather than gating your emails behind a paywall.
Radio hosts have lessons newsletter creators should steal. Think punchy headlines, true "breaking" labels only when something's actually new, tight bullet formatting, and reader prompts that spark replies. Old-school broadcast tricks still work in inboxes.
Microsoft Outlook is ramping up rate limiting on incoming email. If you send to Outlook or Hotmail subscribers, expect temporary rejections. Submit support tickets proactively and keep an eye on your IP reputation to protect delivery.
💡 Growth Hack of the Week
The LinkedIn Weekly Loop That Drove 25% of List Growth
Simon Harper of All About Email shared his exact weekly LinkedIn cadence, and the numbers speak for themselves: LinkedIn produced roughly 25% of his total list growth with subscribers who engaged 8.9 percentage points higher and unsubscribed 9.2 percentage points less than average.
How:
Every Monday morning, post a short preview of your next issue. Include your subscribe link and pin it to Featured on your profile.
A few hours later, like and repost it. Reply to every comment to boost early engagement signals.
When the issue goes live, remove the pin and publish a new post with an optimized description and the newsletter link.
Tag every person or brand you feature in a comment to widen your reach into their networks.
Like, celebrate, and repost again over the next 48 hours. On Wednesday, share your Top 3 links from the issue with sources tagged in a comment.
Repeat weekly. Track subs, open rate, CTR, and unsub rate in a simple dashboard to iterate.
Why: This cadence stacks early engagement signals (likes, comments, reposts) that trigger LinkedIn's algorithm. Pinning gives social proof on your profile. Tagging amplifies reach. Consistency trains both the algorithm and your audience.
Expected Result: Aim for 10-30% of new monthly subscribers from LinkedIn within a few months. The subscribers you get tend to be higher quality and more engaged than those from other channels.
Pro Tip: Don't just drop a link. Write your LinkedIn posts like mini-newsletters: hook, value, CTA. The algorithm rewards posts that keep people on the platform, so front-load the insight.
🤝 Deal of the Week
AdApt: Your Sponsor Ads Shouldn't Sound Like a Robot Wrote Them
You spend hours crafting a newsletter your readers actually love. Then a sponsor sends over copy that reads like it was written by a corporate AI with zero personality. You paste it in. Your readers scroll past it. Your CPMs cry.
AdApt learns how you write and rewrites any sponsor ad in your voice. Paste your newsletter URL, paste the sponsor's copy, and get back something that sounds like you wrote it on a Tuesday morning with your coffee. Readers click more because the ad doesn't feel like an ad. Sponsors stay because CTR goes up.
The first 50 (45 left) newsletter operators get half off for a full year. Use code FIRST50 at checkout.
Spotlight: Asian Century Stocks
Michael Fritzell spent 15 years in global finance before launching a paid newsletter covering undercovered Asian equities. Now he's earning roughly $180,000-$190,000 in annual recurring revenue, built almost entirely on subscriptions.
What Works:
Rare domain edge: 15 years in finance plus Mandarin fluency and on-the-ground research in China and Southeast Asia. He finds stocks before Western markets notice them, giving paid subscribers a genuine information advantage.
Long-form, thesis-driven deep dives that justify a premium subscription and attract serious, high-lifetime-value readers who stick around.
Subscription-first monetization: No ads, no sponsors. Revenue comes from readers who pay for the research, proving you don't need an ad model to build a six-figure newsletter.
Platform control: Moved from Substack to Ghost for more flexibility over design, pricing, and ownership of the subscriber relationship.
Creator Quote: "During that year, I spent almost the full year speaking nothing but Chinese... At the end of it, I started dreaming in Chinese."
Your Takeaway: You don't need millions of readers to build a real business. Find a niche where you have a genuine edge, go deep, and price for value. Fritzell's newsletter proves that a small, highly committed audience is worth more than a massive, loosely engaged one.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
CrossPromo Club: automated 1:1 newsletter cross-promotions on any platform
Why You'll Love It: Drop a single link into your newsletter and start exchanging subscribers with other publications automatically. The system runs on a strict 1:1 reciprocity model, so you receive exactly as many readers as you refer. It works across Substack, beehiiv, Ghost, and any other ESP since it sends new subscribers directly to your signup page, keeping your existing funnels and paid recommendation setups intact. You can also browse and arrange manual swaps through a built-in partner dashboard.
Best For: Newsletter creators who want organic list growth without cold-pitching swaps or manually tracking who owes whom. If you've been curious about cross-promotions but hate the logistics, this handles it all for you.
🧪 A/B Test of the Week
Inspiration: Email strategist Jeanne Jennings of Email Optimization Shop ran a simple A/B test: same subject line, same email creative, same audience, same send time. The only change? A strategically written preheader instead of the default "View this email in your browser" placeholder.
Result: The custom preheader drove a 95.6% increase in revenue per email. Conversion rates jumped nearly 93%. All from one line of text that most creators never touch.
Why it works: Your preheader is the second most visible piece of text in the inbox after the subject line, especially on mobile. MailerLite's own data shows over 90% of campaigns don't use a custom preheader at all. That's prime inbox real estate going completely to waste. The best preheaders don't repeat the subject line; they complement it with a second reason to open.
Takeaway: Open your next draft and check what your preheader says right now. If it's blank, auto-generated, or just echoing your subject line, rewrite it. Use the preheader to tease a specific benefit, add urgency, or surface your second-best hook. Test it against your current default for two weeks and watch your clicks.
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🔗 Quick Links
Questions? Just write a comment below. I read all the comments and respond to them.
Thanks for reading,
Eren Daskesen