How To Run A Successful Daily Newsletter

The Peak is a quickly growing daily business newsletter in Canada. Here's how they built it.

Brett Chang from the daily Canadian business newsletter The Peak joined me to discuss the growth of the newsletter industry, how to build an audience, keeping people engaged, when to use referral programs and how to get started with newsletter ads.

Anyone trying to understand how to grow a newsletter audience, creating a media brand or learning how to integrate ads into their outlet should listen to this episode.

Show Notes

Read the Peak, follow them on Twitter and listen to their podcast.

Read my latest story on why laid-off Bell sports journalists should form a worker co-op.

Show Transcript

5:52 - What is the Peak

7:05 - Why has the Peak been successful while others haven't, what makes the Peak unique and valuable with its audience

8:49 - How to write for a specific audience

9:30 - Finding your first readers, why it’s harder to build an audience than you think

11:06 - The challenges with engaging with your community and audience, the problem with broad versus niche audience

12:38 - How to go niche with broader audiences

13:35 - How you approach engaged versus non-engaged audiences, how engagement informs what topics they cover

15:28 - Strategies for keeping engaged audiences coming back

17:42 - Two questions to ask picking new ideas or strategies to pursue

19:43 - Metrics they monitor

21:40 - Which channels they use to grow audiences

23:55 - When to use referral programs, breaking referral marketing misconception and generating momentum

30:28 - The ins and outs of newsletter advertising, newsletter ad products, integrating ads into your newsletter, why you should move away from CPM-based ads

33:04 - How to pitch your outlet to advertisers

35:00 - Deciding what to charge for ads

36:38 - The value of writing your own ads versus advertisers

37:55 - Advice for media outlets beginning to do ad sales,

39: 42 - Monetization strategies they didn’t pursue, types of ad units for different audience sizes

41:55 - Why they didn’t pursue the subscription model

43:33 - Why the market for newsletters is only going to grow

45:14 - Why they aren’t pursuing American audiences