Just expand your list
There’s a piece of advice you’ve heard so many times it almost feels like a law of nature: grow your list. Get more subscribers, and the money will follow. It sounds logical — and that’s precisely why it’s so dangerous, because it makes you look for the solution in the wrong place.
I’ve been working with newsletters for over twenty years, and in my experience, the size of the list is almost never the real problem. I’ve seen solo entrepreneurs with 300 subscribers selling courses and consultancy every single month — and I’ve seen people with 5,000 on their list who’ve never got a single order out of it. The difference between the two isn’t about numbers. It’s about whether you can see what’s actually happening on your list.
Most people who run a newsletter know their open rate. Perhaps they also know their click-through rate. But they don’t know who on the list is actually buying — and, more importantly, they don’t know what made those particular people sign up in the first place. And without that knowledge, you end up fixing the wrong things, time and time again, in good faith.
Your newsletter has only two tasks
When you strip away all the unnecessary bits — automations, funnel models, segmentation, content calendars — your newsletter really only has two tasks. The first is to get the right people on your list. The second is to present them with something they need, and which you can help them with.
That’s it. Everything else is secondary.
The problem arises because these two tasks are invisible to one another. When sales fail to materialise, most people assume that it is task one that is failing — that the list is simply too small. So they spend all their energy on growth: a new post on LinkedIn, a new lead magnet, yet another guest post. And they completely ignore task two.
But often, growth isn’t the problem at all. It’s the absence of an offer.
When your newsletter becomes a pen-pal relationship
I regularly speak to self-employed professionals — such as accountants, consultants, coaches — who send out a weekly newsletter with good, well-thought-out content. Their readers respond. The open rates are good. Everything feels right.
And yet: nobody buys anything.
When I ask when they last presented a concrete offer to their readers, there is silence. Or they say something along the lines of: “I don’t want to seem pushy.”
I understand that, and it’s an attitude I respect. But there’s an important difference between pressuring someone to buy and telling them you have something that can help. If you never mention it, they won’t figure it out for themselves. They read your content, get something out of it, and move on — without knowing that you actually offer exactly the help they’re looking for.
It’s not a question of being more aggressive. It’s a question of being clear. And there’s a world of difference.
The worst thing you can do is apologise when you finally present something: “Sorry for the sales pitch.” In that moment, you’ve told your reader that your own product doesn’t deserve their attention. And that message is hard to take back.
An exercise you can do today
There’s one thing I’d like to ask you to do. It takes half an hour, and it could change the way you think about your newsletter.
Take your last five to ten customers — the ones who’ve actually bought something from you. Find out how they ended up on your list. Was it a specific post they saw? An article they read? A recommendation from someone they know? Try to trace them back to the specific source.
The pattern you find tells you something crucial. It tells you whether your problem is traffic — meaning you’re attracting the wrong people — or whether it’s sales, meaning you have the right people but never ask them to buy.
Once you can see that, the guesswork stops. You know where to spend your time. You know whether a bad month is down to your content, your offer or your traffic source.
Your newsletter probably doesn’t need more subscribers. It needs you to understand the ones you already have.
PS. I’m currently writing a book on exactly this — how to build a business with a newsletter, without relying on algorithms and platforms. Sign up for the premere list here, and you’ll be notified when it’s ready — and get a price no one else will.
