She Earns $100K+ Per Year From Only 3400 Subscribers

Ellen Donnelly runs a newsletter called The Ask 📧

Launched during the pandemic, she describes it as…

The Ask newsletter helps entrepreneurial professionals to build a profitable one person business around their unique gifts & talent.

Per a recent interview, she has built it into a six-figure ($100K+ per year) coaching and content business in just over 3 years with only 3,400 subscribers 🤯

Why Ellen started The Ask…

After a decade as a startup talent expert, I wanted to provide a destination for entrepreneurial people to make better decisions about their future.

📈 How she grew the newsletter…

0 – 100 subscribers

Friends and other coaches I knew.

100 – 500 subscribers

Organic growth and word of mouth – literally asking people to sign up!

500 – 1,000 subscribers

This is where I really made a concerted effort to hit the 1k milestone in a short space of time: creating lead magnets, doing cross-promotions, and just really focusing on high-quality, shareable content.

1,000 – 2,500 subscribers

I ran an online summit in 2022 called Talent To Money, where I paid for amazing speakers and ran the event for free, so I added loads more people to the list.

2,500 subscribers – present

The Substack referral network helped to grow my list to 3.5k ish.

I especially like the online summit strategy 😍

More on that…

The best, most rewarding strategy had to be running the Talent to Money summit and adding 1k people in a couple of months.

Whilst it was a high-lift from an operational perspective, it also created a lot of ‘goodwill’ in the online space.

Might be worth trying if you can afford good speakers 🗣️

How Ellen monetises her mailing list…

My newsletter has been the engine of my business growth: it has been how clients either first learn about me or deepen their understanding of what I offer and who I am, so that by the time we meet on a discovery call they are often fully bought into the idea of coaching with me.

I have also monetized the newsletter through the odd sponsor and affiliate.

She’s also creating a membership community called Authority Club. 

So she’s figuring out lots of ways to monetize her expertise 💰

However…

A lot of the hype around business models these days is to earn ‘passive income’ or create ‘time freedom’ and this can lead to chasing revenue models that aren’t the best fit, either for your skills/experience or what will work best in the long run.

So think deeply about your business path and align choices to what works for you – not your competitor!

I’ve heard said before that chasing “passive income” is a fool’s errand if you’ve yet to figure out “active income” (ie. trading time for money).

From what I’ve seen, it’s extremely rare for someone to put the cart before the horse and have it work out well 😕