Year in Review: Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of M&M Mondays Newsletter
On August 1st, 2022 I sent out my first newsletter to a huge list of 18 people.
→ 9 people opened it
→ 2 people clicked on a link
→ 1 person unsubscribed immediately
Included on that list was 3 of my own email addresses as well so….
Humble beginnings for sure. 😌
Now, 52 weeks later, we’re celebrating the 1st anniversary of this M&M newsletter and this entry will land in over 215 inboxes! 🎉
I’ve learned a lot over this past year.
From stretching my creative boundaries, to how not to write a newsletter, there are a lot of different directions we could go with this history lesson today.
But I think the most valuable thing I could do is share raw, honest, unfiltered numbers and point out a few insights that will serve other new and aspiring newsletter operators. As well as how I’ve turned these entries into the foundation of all my content that hits the internet.
Did you know?
Email has been around for over 50 years now.
It is also one of the first online marketing methods to hit the scene and hasn’t lost any steam.
Email newsletters specifically, have become all the rage in the past several years as brands of all shapes and sizes have leveraged this communication channel as a staple in their brand-building efforts and for good reason.
According to Oberlo, there are 4.37 Billion daily active email users.
This represents more than half of the global population! 🌎
Email is at the top of the marketing food chain for several reasons.
You own your email list - aka nobody can take it from you. It’s an asset that is yours.
You can deeply personalize your emails to increase engagement and conversions.
Consistent email sends (like w a newsie) build deep familiarity and trust with your audience.
My #1 Reason for Starting a Newsletter
My #1 reason for starting an email newsletter was to build a sustainable creator business that would support me and my family all while connecting with, and helping other new one-person businesses do the same.
Given my background as a email marketing freelancer and also reading so many newsletter success stories, I knew the true power of email as a marketing and conversational tool.
I also knew that if I didn’t just get started, I’d never be able to build something significant for the long-term.
The decision to publicly commit to a weekly newsletter was scary (and still is a bit) but I’ve gained so much from it.
A year ago I didn’t have… → any long-form content to use as a brand building tool
→ systems for making content consistently
→ any real fans or subscribers (no audience)
→ any audience awareness, much less any authority in my niche
Now I’ve been able to build quite a bit in each of these areas.
Brick by brick 🧱
In fact, if it weren’t for this newsletter, I wouldn’t have decided to pivot my business into more of the content creator space!
Here’s a glance at my content creation system that fuels every piece of content I put out…
If you don’t have a content system in place, pay close attention. It’s simple(ish) and it works!!
1 Pillar Entry = Endless Content
I think about the word leverage a lot.
I’m constantly looking for better ways to build leverage into my business so that I can accomplish more with less.
Want to work less hours and get paid more?
Want to write/record less and still have endless content?
Want to go on vacation and still get ‘payment received’ notifications?
Leverage is the only way.
*Here’s an entry I wrote specifically on this topic.*
Not only did I not have any email subscribers when I started this journey, I also didn’t have much of a social media following either. In fact, My IG and FB account got hacked and deleted in 2022 so that definitely didn’t help either. 🤬
Social Media = the best way to get discovered by the masses
Email List = the best way to build true fans of your brand
And what do you need in order to grow on social media?…
Media! aka Content.
You gotta have something to post, and you’ve gotta have good stuff to post or you won’t attract the people you’re looking for out there.
Even on day 1 of this newsletter I did 2 things:
I recorded at least an audio version to upload as a podcast
Reposted the email onto my website as a blog entry
This very newsletter has become my pillar content that I reuse, repurpose, and redistribute across nearly 10 different channels every single week.
Here’s a loose snapshot of how my weekly pillar piece feeds everything:
My Not-So-Sexy (more like embarrassing) Growth Journey
I’ve seen so so many tweets and IG posts about how so and so blew a newsletter up to 15k subscribers in 90 days. Good for them.
Let’s just say that’s not been my experience…
It took me 43 weeks to get to 100 subscribers.
(this is week 52)
Yeah… Take that in for a moment.
And dude, I’ve questioned myself all along the way…
Does my writing suck?
Am I picking boring topics?
Do people think I don’t know what I’m talking about?
Wtf am I doing wrong??!
I wouldn’t have questioned myself if I hadn’t heard about all these other wild success stories, but it created this standard or expectation in my head that I was continually way behind everyone else.
The only thing that has kept me going regardless of how I felt was that I knew that this is part of my long-term game.
Instant success would be amazing, but not required in order to keep playing the game.
Two lessons worth sharing here…
1. Don’t make business decisions based on your emotions. If I had done this, I would’ve quit after a month. Most people screw up right here.
If you wanna win, evaluate constantly, pivot when needed, and never quit. keep going.
2. Get out of your damn comfort zone. For me the imposter syndrome has been very very real and it specifically held me back in the area of making new online connections. You can be as nervous as you choose to be, but do not let this hold you back from doing the things you know you should. In a solo business, the only person you can blame for a failed business is yourself.
So how did I get my first 100 subscribers?
I’ll tell you exactly how I did it.
The Growth Levers That Are Working for me Now
1. Running Ads on a Free Quiz I Made
Other than the free content and an email marketing course (which has been a complete fail so far). I had nothing to offer - nothing to capture attention and bring people in to my ecosystem. I built the Creator|Freelancer Quiz in my spare time over the course of a 4-6 weeks and launched it in April of ‘23.
Knowing that I’d need to pay to get it front of ppl, I made several promotional content pieces and ran Meta (FB/IG) ads. for a few months. I’ve since stopped running ads (for now) but here’s what it did for me.
149 quiz takers who ended up on my email list!
Now of course there’s some churn involved and as of now 128 of them have stuck around for my newsletter entries.
If this is how I got you onto my newsletter list, thank you for sticking around. I’m genuinely excited to have you here. 🙌 🙂
I shut off the ads because the SAC (subscriber acquisition cost) was getting pretty pricey and I have some other ideas which I’ll get into later, on how to use my tiny ad budget.
My thoughts on this growth tactic…
Pros:
I have a new lead magnet / asset that I can use forever into the future
Once setup, the whole process is fully automated
You can micro-manage your spending limits based on your budget
Meta AI does a pretty decent job of finding the right audience to serve your ads to
Cons:
Can be expensive it you don’t monitor it
Potential for high churn rates
Average engagement metrics can become negatively impacted
2. Talk to People Online
Last week’s entry was on this topic, so I’ll keep it short-n-sweet. The more I talk to people online, mainly on twitter (let’s connect 🙂), the better I feel, the more I learn, the more confident I become, and the more subscribers I get.
Believe it or not…
When you talk to people, they usually respond. When you share insights with people, they tend to appreciate it. When you offer something of value, the right people will thank you for it. When you ask someone a question, they often give you an answer.
Crazy, I know. 😲
Here’s the pros/cons of this growth tactic from my limited experience…
Pros:
Engagement is incredibly high
Real connections are made, it’s more than just ‘a new subscriber’
These subscribers’ retention rates are pretty high
Cons:
It takes a lot of time each day - and is a slow growth trajectory
Not scalable, which is okay for most of us here (for now)
Requires getting out of your comfort zone
I mentioned I’m not running ads at the moment…
This is because I’m actively looking to redistribute that ad budget into promoting this newsletter on other newsletters. In fact, if you have a newsie that you run targeting a similar audience let’s chat. I’m open to cross-promotions (if it’s beneficial for the readers obviously), running ads, or whatever.
And as always, I’m a student of the game so if you have advice or insights I’m totally open to it. You can always reply to these emails.
So where are we going with this newsletter? Let’s talk about the future. 🔮
The Point of it All
These weekly newsletter entries aim to serve multiple purposes:
Help you on your journey through building a one-person business
A place for me to document my journey as a solopreneur
A pillar piece of content that feeds my content and social media marketing machine
A place to nurture my audience into customers of my paid offers (see the end of the email?)
A place to ask for feedback to apply to current and future projects and offers
An eventual ad revenue stream to feed the growth of my biz and the value I can provide
Side note: I think I’m gonna rebrand this whole thing eventually cause as you may have been able to tell, I don’t exclusively talk about marketing and mindset. It’s has a heavy bend in that direction but that motive is around empowering and educating new and aspiring one-person online businesses
Fun fact: When I started the M&M newsletter the objective was to write a helpful blurb on mindset and then one of marketing each week. I quickly found that to be quite tough for a handful of reasons. The first 20 entries were formatted like this though.
To end this entry, i just wanna say…
Thank you to you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for reading and engaging with these entries.
Thank you for your trust in allowing me to show up every week in your inbox.
Thank you for contributing to the world in the unique way that you do.
I aim to support, encourage, and guide you as you keep giving your value to the world.
The world is a better place because of you. And I am grateful for that.
Here’s to another 52 entries and beyond!!
And for those entries…
what do you want to see more of?
Content Strategy, Trends, Ideas, Hacks for soloP’s
Solo-biz tips
Mindset tips, encouragements, mental frameworks for soloP’s
Until next time ❤️✌️🙂
Ev
