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Crossplay by Patrick Klepek
“I've really enjoyed building something on my own, including making mistakes along the way.”
Ciler Demiralp
November 03, 2024
Learn how to start and level up your newsletter business from successful operators and insightful articles.
Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Patrick Klepek, the creator of Crossplay.
I’m excited to share some key insights from our conversation here, but for the full interview, be sure to check out our website. Enjoy!
👋 MEET THE CREATOR
Patrick Klepek is a game reporter with 20+ years of experience. His main focus is Remap, a media company formed with his colleagues at VICE where he works on podcast and video streams.
Before Remap, he lost his job in a public series of layoffs at his former employer, VICE. He turned getting laid off into an opportunity and build a newsletter business with 500 paid subscribers.
Now, he runs his newsletter, Crossplay with over 8,000 subscribers and around 500 paid ones.
In this interview, Patrick shared valuable insights on:
growth strategies he used with milestones to reach over 8,000 subscribers,
his learnings on paid subscription,
key learnings about building a newsletter business.
1. Turn the worst scenarios into your own opportunity
Patrick lost his job in a very public series of layoffs at his former employer, VICE.
He then registered his newsletter at Substack even though he didn’t have a clear idea of the topics he would write about. He would decide that along the way.
He started his newsletter as a paid one right from the beginning. Since people were aware of the layoffs, they signed up at this stage purely to show support and interest. It was a blind support according to Patrick.
People wanted to ensure that he would be paid to continue to write and report. He turned this misfortune into an opportunity for himself.
2. Focus on channels where you can reach your target audience.
Patrick is currently working with a social media freelancer to come up with a TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram strategy, as he thinks there are a lot of parents in those spaces that would be interested in Crossplay.
He is ready to dive into new channels in order to grow his audience and reach out the right people with his content.
3. Balance the free subscribers and the paid members
Patrick has around 500 paid subscribers and 8,000 free ones. He learned to balance between reaching new subscribers and keeping the existing subscribers happy.
Free articles mean an opportunity to bring in new people. Paid articles are an opportunity to convert people and reward the people who are already subscribed.
His newsletter is mostly free. Patrick hopes that people would find it valuable and want to support the work.
👉 Do you want to reach 2,800 newsletter operators & enthusiasts?
Thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to reply if you want to contact me.
Ciler
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