🔽 Subscriber Entropy

💸 100K Subs Costing $10K/m?

Chris Laub posted a great thread on average subscriber decay:

Looking at the Subscribers report in beehiiv for the different publications I have, it’s ranging from 1.2%-3.4%, so 2% per month is definitely a good figure to use.

At smaller subscriber levels, such as 2000 subs, this 2% per month is not an issue as you’re likely growing organically by at least 40 subscribers per month.

But if you have a large subscriber base of say 100K subs, you need to find 2,000 new subs each month just to maintain your list size.

At that size, organic channels are likely not going to get you there (unless you are Superhuman, in the final story below!). In fact in order to get to 100K subs you almost certainly spent a considerable amount on acquisition. Potentially 7 figs…

If we assume with a 100K list, 20K was from organic and 80K was from paid acquisition and it took you 2 years to get there, then at an annual 23% churn rate, you would have needed to acquire say 50% more (to keep the math simple) for 120K subs.

Let’s say you’re in the investing niche and a sub costs $5 to acquire on average - that’s $600K you’ve spent. If your average cost has been $8, then we’re now at 7 figures.

This may be a good ROI, depending on how you intend to monetize.

However, in this example, in order to maintain this level of subs you need to keep spending at least $10K/m.

And if you don’t maintain your subscriber base, then the amount you can charge for sponsorship per send will also drop.

Maintaining subs is an expense that I don’t think many people factor in.

💬 A Message from Ezoic

There is a direct connection between your user experience & the revenue your website generates.

When websites provide visitors with exceptional experiences, the visitors stay longer. And they become more likely to click on, consume, and take action on the key things you want them to do on your site.

Improving user experience in ways that drive revenue growth for businesses is the mission behind everything we do at Ezoic.

With customers worldwide, Ezoic offers solutions for websites of all sizes. Gain control over your site’s revenue and maximize the performance of your website today.

Learn More About Ezoic Now

🚀 Sponsorships.com Launches Agency

The previous vision I had for ‘Sponsorships as a Service’ at acquire.gg is now being turned into a reality within sponsorships.com:

Chez Spigelman, like myself, is now part of the Wisdom Media rollup, and has just launched a sponsorship agency where the only thing that brands need to do is come with a budget, their ideal customer profile and conversion goal:

This Sponsorships Newsletter Agency (SNA) will then come up with a custom campaign, picking the best newsletters within Wisdom Media (and soon to be third parties) to achieve the greatest ROI.

This is a great, platform-agnostic addition for newsletter operators looking to better monetize their asset.

Check out the landing page at agency.sponsorships.com for more info.

📰 Classifieds

Website Driven Revenue grows fast when powered by EzoicAds. Get everything you need to monetize your website. Get instant access to top ad networks and let AI optimize your earnings from every pageview. Start a free trial today!

The Newsletter Is The Business is everything I know about launching, scaling and selling editorial newsletter businesses. Check it out

🤖 Superhuman Making 7 Figs

Business Insider just dropped a great article on how Zain and his brother are making 7 figs in revenue from their AI newsletter Superhuman (also on beehiiv), leveraging AI to grow it.

The newsletter brings in six figures a month from sponsorships from its 300K subscribers (80% organic from Twitter and Linkedin!) and 45% open rate. That’s 135K opens per email, and the main ad costs $2,999 for a CPM of an extremely reasonable $22:

It’s great to hear how they are actually leveraging Chat GPT to summarize research papers and create email subject lines.

And I liked this quote on the value of newsletters vs other (social) media properties:

Read the full story below: