More Subscribers Without Social Media? It Can Be Done!

(hooray!)

Hey there newsletter-builders!

I don’t have a big fancy post for you today because I’m going bushwalking with my best friend instead of writing on Medium.

Why? Because my newsletter business gives me the flexibility to enjoy good weather when it arrives.

Love the Aussie bush!

The best thing I learned this week is…

You can grow a newsletter to >$1 million in revenue without hundreds of thousands of followers.

You might remember, from my analysis of the million-dollar Substack Noahpinion, that its creator had 291,000 Twitter followers and 139,000 subscribers. So, more than double the number of followers compared to subscribers.

My big takeaway from that analysis was that you need a huge audience to get a massive subscriber list (duh!).

This week I learned about another million-dollar Substack where the creator has fewer social media followers than subscribers. Yes, he has many more subscribers than followers.

From https://growthinreverse.com/gergely/

While many successful newsletter creators have MORE followers on Twitter and LinkedIn than email subscribers, that's not so for Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer, a newsletter with more than $1.5 million in annual revenue, according to Chenell Basilio of Growth in Reverse. He has 400,000 subscribers but only around 200,000 Twitter followers and 100,000 LinkedIn followers.

What does this mean? It means that The Pragmatic Engineer has achieved at least as much growth from word-of-mouth referrals, recommendations, and other sources as from social media.

I wasn’t wrong about needing a huge audience to get to $1 million. Gergely Orosz does have a huge audience - 400,000 subscribers. The big takeaway from this creator is that his audience is not all on social media.

Read the full story about how Orosz got to 400,000 subscribers without having a massive social media presence here:

How Gergely Orosz Built the #1 Technology Newsletter in 3 Years (by Growth in Reverse)

What does this mean for you (and me)?

Take heart! This is good news for creators who are trying to reach people that don’t hang out in places like Twitter.

It means we can confidently put more effort into word-of-mouth marketing. We should spend more time encouraging existing readers to spread the word about our work, because this can be a successful driver of growth.

And on that note, if you know someone who is trying to get started with newsletter creation, please share this publication with them. And re-stack a quote from this post too, if you found it helpful.

… and if you aren’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, please do that now. It’s free, and you’ll learn something I promise.

Have a great weekend,