📈 Watch Me Build a Newsletter From Scratch

Exciting news!

I’m launching another newsletter (from scratch) and walking you through my exact process from day 1.

In today’s email, I’m breaking down:

• The why

• The details

• The numbers

• The funnel

• The tools

• What might kill the idea

Let’s dive in 👇️

Helpful Links 🔗 

• 🤖 Naval thinks everyone will be working for themselves in 50 years (link)

• 👀 ICYMI: The 3 Metrics Every Newsletter Operator Should Know (link)

• 🛠️ Our favorite newsletter tools: beehiiv (ESP), Descript (video editing), Sparkloop (growth & monetization), Typedream (custom landing pages), ElevenLabs (AI voiceovers)*

_{*These are affiliate links}

Work 🤝 Life

I’m launching another newsletter on beehiiv - this time with my wife!

The niche? Pregnancy, labor and birth.

The challenge? Validate a business idea within 3 months while spending as little time and money as possible.

The Hypothesis 🤔 

My hypothesis is that we can either:

• Build a profitable newsletter funnel OR

• Build a breakeven newsletter funnel and grow an owned audience “for free” (aka break even now, profit later)

Context about my wife 💁‍♀️ 

Among many other things, she is:

• A stay-at-home mom raising our 3 kids (one adopted, one born in a birth center and one born at home)

• A licensed speech-language pathologist

• A certified birth doula who has helped women give birth in hospitals and birth centers

The Why 🤔

1. Unprompted, dozens of women have told my wife they wish a resource existed for women who aren’t pregnant yet but want to be one day.

2. The potential to make money while helping people have safer, more positive birth experiences

3. Testing some new things so we can better serve our agency clients

4. This is fun

The Details 🤓 

• Niche: Pregnancy, Labor and Birth

• Value Proposition:

  • Most women are never taught about birth, what it entails and how to prepare adequately, so the average woman today knows very little about it.

  • Lack of knowledge creates uncertainty. Uncertainty leads to fear and misconceptions formed from popular culture (like birth portrayals in movies).

  • Fear and misconceptions leads to negative birth experiences:

    • Emotionally (you feel helpless and at the whim of everyone else’s decisions)

    • Physically (longer labor and higher likelihood of unnecessary c-sections and other medical interventions)

• Timeline: 3 months

• Budget: ~$750

• Growth: 90% paid Meta ads, 10% organic social

• Monetization:

  • beehiiv boosts

  • birth education course

  • 1:1 consulting calls with my wife

The Numbers 👨‍🏫 

• Goal CPA (cost per acquisition): $2 - $2.25

• Course pricing: The course price will increase slowly over time relative to how long the subscriber has been subscribed.

  • $49 → $79 → $99 → $129 →$149 → $199

• Target earnings with beehiiv boosts: $0.25/subscriber

• Goal conversion rate (course purchases): 2-3%

• Goal conversion to paid consulting calls: 1%

The Tools 🛠️ 

• 🐝 Beehiiv for the newsletter (free available, $39/mo to use automations)

• 🌐 Typedream for the course landing page (free available)

• 📹️ Payhip to host the course (free)

• 🎨 Canva to create Meta ads (free)

• ✂️ Descript to edit video ads (free)

The Funnel 💻️ 

Acquisition:

• FB Ads → beehiiv landing page → beehiiv boosts* → post-subscribe survey → thank-you page upselling course → newsletter content

_{*We’ll test one month with boosts and one month without to measure how it affects overall numbers.}

Content:

• One newsletter issue a week via an evergreen automated sequence lasting 2-3 months (every new subscriber starts at day 1 of sequence)

• A sales sequence between weeks 2-4 to hard sell the course

In the next edition, I’ll break down the funnel in more detail.

What might kill the idea ☠️ 

We’ve already validated that people “want it.” They’ve told my wife they want it.

But we need to prove whether or not people are willing to pay for it.

Big difference.

The biggest challenges that will make it hard to achieve short-term profitability:

1. Problem awareness: Half of audience won’t be pregnant yet and may not be motivated to buy a course due to a lack of urgency. Which means to drive sales we really need to:

   • Educate them on why it’s important to start learning and preparing for birth before getting pregnant

   • Showcase how the course is the solution to their problem

2. Tight timeline, limited resources + small budget: 

   • 3 months is not a lot of time.

   • A fresh ad account and no existing audience to leverage means building Meta pixel data from scratch. This means execution needs to be on point from Day 1.

   • A $750 budget means we can get ~ 200 - 300 subscribers through the funnel.

Keeping the Test Pure 🧪 

I’ll share the course landing page in future updates.

But I won’t share the actual newsletter publicly to keep this as pure as possible.

That said, if you know someone who is pregnant now or wants to be one day who might be interested, reply here and I'll send you the link.

There you have it. 🫡 

In future updates, I’ll share:

• The details of the welcome flow

• The strategy behind the sales sequence

• The course landing page

• The Meta ads we ran

• Pricing strategy

• And more..

🚨 If you want to start a newsletter and join me in building from scratch for the next 3 months, start a free account on beehiiv and let me know you’re in.

The more the merrier,

Isaac + Kieran

P.S. When you’re ready to grow your newsletter…

Let us do it for you. We help creators, brands and media companies grow their newsletters so they can drive more revenue.

Like how we’ve added over 10,000 subscribers to this newsletter last month👇️ 

Or how we’ve more than doubled this newsletter with quality subscribers in August 👇️ 

If you want us to grow your newsletter for you and are ready to invest at least $2k/month on ads, book a call with us here.