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Extra Points by Matt Brown
"Find a lane that is uniquely yours, one where you won't get bored from writing and researching about every day."
Ciler Demiralp
December 08, 2024
Your go-to source for building a successful newsletter business.
Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Brown, the creator of Extra Points.
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!
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👋 MEET THE CREATOR
Matt Brown is a former sportswriter and editor at Vox Media. He started Extra Points when he was still working at his corporate job. In 2020, he was laid off, and there was no other editorial job due to the pandemic.
This was a milestone for Matt as he turned on paid subscription, and things started to change. Now, he earns $16k a month only from paid subscribers.
In this interview, Matt talked about:
how he started and grew his newsletter to 28,000 subscribers
how he earns $16K a month from paid subscribers
how Extra Points changed his life professionally and personally
his biggest advice to other newsletter operators
TOOL STACK
1. Experiment with different growth strategies for each milestone
We divided Matt’s growth journey into 3 milestones; each has a unique way of growing the newsletter.
First 1,000 subscribers
Matt already had an audience on X, had published a book and had been writing professionally for years.
Thanks to his existing audience he reached 1,000 subscribers within the first 72 hours of starting the publication.
1,000 - 10,000 subscribers
The growth in this phase was entirely organic.
To reach over 10,000 subscribers, he kept sharing his stuff on X, participating in regular conversations, and cultivating relationships with other reporters and radio stations. This way, he could get booked on podcasts and radio shows pretty easily.
He also had other folks amplifying his work.
There is another college sports industry publication, called D1.ticker, that regularly aggregated my work as well, which helped me get in front of more industry professionals.
10,000 – 25,000 Subscribers
He also included a referral reward program at this point.
He regularly encouraged his readers to share the newsletter with colleagues and friends.
He also purchased a much smaller publication (~1,000 subs) and merged it with Extra Points. This gained him around 650 or so.
Lastly, he began experimenting with cold outbound pitches where he invited athletic directors or coaches who didn’t currently subscribe to do so.
❗️What didn’t work: Podcast advertising and newsletter swaps. He found these strategies too expensive to be profitable or not driving enough high-quality subscribers.
25,000 Subscribers - today
Currently, he is experimenting with social media ads (Facebook and X).
To him, it has been okay at driving subscriptions but not very effective at driving high-quality subscribers.
"The best way that I’ve ever found to drive high-quality subscriptions is to regularly produce high-quality, completely unique, content.
That creates earned media opportunities and organic reach that we have not been able to replicate via paid channels."
💡 Next plans: Paying PR services and more aggressive outbound sales.
2. If you have a budget, don’t be afraid of investing in your newsletter business.
We asked Matt what he would do differently if he had a chance to start over in terms of growing his newsletter. Here’s his answer:
I would probably allocate more money and time to marketing if I started a completely new newsletter project now, leaning into paid ads, paid recommendations and paid PR efforts earlier.
3. To get paid: “MORE stuff is not the value proposition you think it is…it has to be the RIGHT stuff.”
The biggest mistake Matt sees other newsletters make when they try to monetize via paid subscriptions is with their content.
Matt charges his audience money because he has the professional experience, insights, and reporting ability on the issues they care about that they can’t easily get for free.
You simply have to know your niche and deliver real value.
The value prop that I offered in 2020 isn’t the same one that I offer now, and that comes from knowing and listening to your audience.
👉 Do you want to reach 2,900 newsletter operators & enthusiasts?
Thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to reply if you want to contact me.
Ciler
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