📈 TikTok Survival Playbook For Creators: Convert Followers Into Subscribers and Own Your Audience

The TikTok ban happened. And for now, it’s rolled back.

But holy cow should this scare you if you provide for your family with money you make from social media.

Instead of having the same conversation 20 times with my friends who earn a living on TikTok and other social platforms, I’m documenting the exact playbook I would use to:

1. Convert a social media audience into newsletter subscribers

2. Reliably make money from an audience that can’t be taken away from me

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

Helpful Links 🔗 

• 🤖 AI-powered social media growth (link)

• 🧪 What we’re testing for one of our newsletters (link)

• 👀 ICYMI:📈 8 Simple Tips For A High Converting Landing Page 

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

_{*These are affiliate links}

Before I get into the playbook, a few words on “why.”

Why us

First, if you stumbled across this playbook in the future, why listen to me?

I run a newsletter growth agency where we help brands, creators and ministries grow email newsletters for a living.

Our clients have millions of social followers, millions of email subscribers and we operate a portfolio of newsletters ourselves.

Our team just helped a TikTok influencer with 900k followers launch a newsletter on beehiiv. He’s already at 65,000 subscribers with 68% open rates and newsletter sponsorship deals landed (not including deals from beehiiv’s ad network).

*That’s all organic. Creators and brands with large followings have a huge advantage when it comes to paid growth. For example, we work with Upworthy (15M followers), and have reduced their paid acquisition of new email subscribers an additional 20% thanks to their organic social engagement.

We know social media, owned media and how to leverage them both to feed your business (and your family).

Why email 📧 

In the days leading up to the TikTok ban, influencers flocked to other social channels like IG, YouTube and RedNote. And that’s not a bad idea.

But it is a bad idea to ignore email.

Aside from the obvious “you just lost your ability to make money overnight due to our government’s decision,” here are some advantages of email (owned audience) > social media (rented audience) 👇️

Building an email list was smart in 2008.

And it’s still smart in 2025.

Which is why I see tweets like these all the time.

The point?

Your social following isn’t yours.

Your email list:

• Can never be taken away.

• Can drive distribution to every other channel you’re on (IG, YT, X, podcasts, etc.)

• Can be your largest source of income and provide stability to a business that will inevitably go wherever the algorithmic wind takes it

So, what should creators and companies do in the wake of the TikTok ban?

Build your email lists.

The Playbook 🗺️ 

Even if you don’t have a team, you can literally implement this playbook today.

I’ll cover 3 categories:

• Infrastructure: Setup + content

• Growth: Drive your audience to sign up

• Monetization: Start making money on day 1

Infrastructure 🏗️ 

If you want to move fast (like before a social platform gets shut down), don’t get caught up in details like colors, fonts and formatting. You can always come back and change those things.

If you’re not in a rush, you can take time to make everything pretty.

But either way, this won’t take long.

What I cover below is what you need to get started.

1. Start a beehiiv account (free for 30 days)

   • If this were 5 years ago, I’d break down pros and cons of each email platform. Today, beehiiv is by far the best platform for creators to build their email list. It’s not even close. That’ll be come clear as you keep reading.

   • You get a 20% discount if you use our link.

2. Configure basic settings

   • Newsletter name (e.g. John’s newsletter, you can always change this later)

   • Thank you page + welcome email (swipe copy here)

3. Set up beehiiv landing page

   • No need for another software. Beehiiv gives you a dedicated landing page included in your subscription.

   • I created a landing page tutorial in beehiiv here. Watch the video labeled Part 2 for a 5-min walk through of how to set up your landing page.

Once you take these steps, copy your “signup page” link from the bottom right of your beehiiv dashboard for the Growth step.

What should you actually put inside of your email content?

You’re a content creator and you know your audience. Lean into that. Here are some ideas.

• Start simple: Choose something you can produce 1-2x a week without adding yet another thing you have to do. Repurpose existing content or create something new that takes < 15 minutes to create.

  • Some ideas and questions to help you get started:

    • Think about it like a text message - short, personal, intimate thoughts and reflections.

    • What content easily flows out of you and doesn’t feel like work to create?

    • Email is a different medium. What does email allow you to communicate that social platforms don’t?

• Summarize: Link to your content across your social channels, use AI to give your audience the spark notes version of a longer form piece of content

• Curate: Share helpful resources your audience would benefit from in your niche

• Make it interactive: Include a poll or trivia question (native beehiiv feature)

Again, don’t overcomplicate it. Done is better than perfect. Start, learn and iterate. It’s hard to steer a parked car.

Growth 📈 

I’ve talked to creators with millions of followers and YT subscribers who have said, “I don’t know the first thing about building an email list.”

I have good news. It’s not rocket science. The only mistake you can make is overcomplicating it.

It only takes 2 steps:

1. Have a specific place to send people to sign up (already covered that)

2. Tell people to sign up and why

Here’s how to convert followers into subscribers:

At Scale

1. Link to your newsletter signup page in your bio, video descriptions and channel descriptions.

   • If this is a real priority for you, don’t make the link to your email newsletter 1 of 10 links in a linktree. Make it THE link in bio. Otherwise, you’ll lose more than 50% of people who would have subscribed. At the very least, make it the top link.

   • The idea is to make it obvious for followers to know you have a newsletter and how to sign up for it

2. Tell people why they should sign up for your newsletter. What would benefit them? What do they want? What would entertain them? You know what content performs best and what your audience wants most.

   • Free resources (meal plans, checklists, how-tos, product recs)

   • Exclusive behind-the-scenes content you won’t get anywhere else

   • Exclusive discounts, deals, and first to know about announcements

3. Go hard. Create content that contains explicit calls-to-action to sign up for your newsletter. Commit to it for 30 days straight and see where you land.

   • "Ever wondered how I get my sourdough so perfectly crispy? I just created a complete troubleshooting guide with all my secrets – including my emergency fixes for common mistakes. Grab your free guide at the link in my bio!" - my wife, probably

   • “I just recorded a video with my wife detailing the miraculous birth of our son. I’m sending it exclusively to my newsletter subscribers. Comment “birth story” on this post and I’ll send you a link to sign up for my newsletter so you get the behind-the-scenes.” - Joseph, probably

Collaboratively

Have friends who are creators with a similar audience?

Cross-promote each other using beehiiv’s built-in recommendations feature.

Here’s how it works:

• Someone signs up to your newsletter via your sign up page (from your link in bio)

• This pops up and they can sign up for your friend’s newsletter too

• If you both recommend each other, you’ll cross-pollinate and everyone wins.

Slide into the DMs

The last way to convert followers into subscribers is less scaleable, but effective.

You can DM followers (or have a VA do it for you), tell them about your newsletter and invite them to sign up.

Just be careful not to break any rules - each platform has limitations on how many DMs you can send in a given time period.

Monetization 💰️ 

The ways to monetize a newsletter are similar to how you monetize your social media audience - those ways often just become more powerful.

Here are some of the most popular ways to monetize your email list:

• Products + Services

  • Merch

  • Paid communities

  • Digital products and courses

  • Coaching and consulting services

  • Premium content (beehiiv has a built-in paywall)

• Referral networks + affiliate partnerships

  • Above, I told you about beehiiv’s built-in free recommendation platform.

  • You can also get paid to do that. If you notice on the image above, some of the newsletters listed in that widget say “Sponsored.” That’s because they have a network of newsletters that will pay you $1-$3 per subscriber you refer to them.

  • Once set up, it’s entirely passive - you can make money just by getting your audience to sign up for your newsletter.

• Brand Partnerships

  • Expand current partnerships

    • Add your newsletter statistics to your media kit. It’s an additional asset to further partner with the brands you work with.

  • Secure new brand deals on your own or within ad networks

    • Beehiiv has a built in ad network. Every month, you get sent ad opportunities to partner with brands in their network. You get paid on a cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM) basis. This is available to anyone on any paid beehiiv plan.

      

Here’s why brands love sponsoring emails:

• Ad platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are getting more expensive.

• Similar to influencer marketing on social, they get to leverage the trust you’ve already built with your audience.

• Email drives results (that they can measure). Email is the marketing channel that provides the highest ROAS. They can also attribute results to specific campaigns and publishers so they know exactly what's working.

• Their results don't depend on an algorithm outside of their control.

• Newsletter ads don't look like ads. Inboxes have less competition than social media. This means more, clicks, conversions and ROI.

Summary + Takeaways

This isn't just about surviving a ban – it's about owning your audience.

Regardless of the outcome with TikTok, every creator should be doing this anyway.

The potential ban just adds urgency to what's always been true:

Building on rented land is risky.

Your newsletter is your castle.

Your social media accounts are bridges leading to it.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Get started and adjust as you go.

Again, here are the main steps to take:

1. Create an account on beehiiv and set up the basics (1 hour)

2. Put the link to your newsletter signup page everywhere you exist online (10 min)

3. Tell your audience to sign up for your newsletter and why (baked into your normal content creation process)

4. Make money

Reach out if we can be helpful.

Cheers,

Isaac + Kieran 🫡 

P.S. If you’re ready to invest $4k+ per month on growth, book a call here with the two guys pictured above 🫡