$92,900 in 1 Month Recommending Other Newsletters

Louis Nicholls runs Sparkloop, a newsletter growth platform 📈

One of the main things it does is reward newsletter operators for recommending other newsletters.

Louis recently tweeted about a payout of $92,900 to one operator…

🎉 New payout record!

Soooo close to our first 6-figure payout in a single month to one newsletter operator… 🤯

(spoiler alert, it’s already guaranteed to happen for several next month)

So that one newsletter operator referred a bunch of subscribers to other newsletters, getting paid anywhere from $1 to $5 per confirmed sub… amounting to $93k in one month 💰

In response to the news, John Bardos tweeted that the mystery operator is likely spending a lot on ads themselves…

They must be adding 40k to 50k new subscribers every month to make those numbers. 

That means they must be spending $40k+ per month. It’s probably closer to double that.

(Unless it’s an AI newsletter. Then the costs are probably half.)

Folks have been trying to guess who the operator is.

It may well be Sahil Bloom, who grew his newsletter to 400k subscribers in 36 months. Part of his strategy is apparently a “Sparkloop flywheel,” like John alluded to.

Regardless of who it is, the important lesson here is this: building a large audience opens up many opportunities.

I didn’t think it was possible for a newsletter to earn $93k in one month simply by recommending other newsletters… but there you go.

With such a big and engaged audience, that same operator could monetize in many other ways if they so choose 👇

• Speaking gigs
• Offline conferences
• Paid newsletter subscriptions
• Online courses
• Membership communities
• Affiliate marketing
• Book sales
• Consulting
• Investing opportunities
• Etc.

All that to say, don’t underestimate the value of building an audience.

And how do you build an audience? 🤔

Lots of great tips in that Sahil Bloom profile I mentioned above, but this is probably the main thing…

Sahil has always said that he’s not the best at anything he does, but he will outwork you…

If you show up over and over, people come to know you and take you more seriously than someone who talks about a topic for a little while and then disappears.