Grants for Creators by Danielle Desir Corbett

Learn how to start and level up your newsletter business from successful creators and insightful articles.

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I last sent an issue. I gave a break to reshape my strategy for Newsletter Circle. But I’m fully back now and so happy to reconnect with you all!

I’ll be sharing the latest updates in a separate issue this week.

In the meantime, here is a brand-new Sunday interview for you to enjoy. I hope you find it insightful. Welcome to the “Circle” again!

👋 MEET THE CREATOR

Danielle Desir Corbett is a former grants administrator turned creative entrepreneur.

Since January 2022, she has been curating grants and other funding opportunities specifically for creative individuals in her monthly newsletter, Grants For Creators.

The result is impressive: Her newsletter reached over 8,000 subscribers and hundreds of paid subscribers in less than 3 years.

But the road to success is never short. She built her newsletter on the solid expertise she accumulated over the years.

Before she quit her corporate career to pursue creative entrepreneurship, she submitted multi-million dollar grant proposals for seven years. Around 2020, she started noticing grants she could apply for as a creative. Over the course of two years, she won four grants as a podcaster. 

In addition to her newsletter, she hosts The Thought Card, a 4x grant-funded affordable luxury travel podcast that empowers financially savvy travelers to travel often while building life-changing wealth. She also co-hosts Road Trip Ready Podcast, which shares practical road trip tips and the best destinations across the U.S. and Canada. 

In our interview, she shared valuable insights on:

• How she reached over 8,000 subscribers

• Unique growth strategies she used

• How she started a paid subscription with only 500 subscribers

• Her biggest learnings about paid subscription

• The impact of running a newsletter on her life

🏷 NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD

🛠 TOOL STACK

• ESP → Substack

• Webinar → Calendly & Zoom

• Payments → Stripe

3 GOLDEN TIPS FROM TODAY’S INTERVIEW

1. You can launch a paid subscription with a small list if you have validation

Even though she has hundreds of paid subscribers today, Danielle initially felt uncomfortable with monetizing her audience. However, she made a decision based on positive feedback from her readers. She launched a paid subscription just after she hit 500 subscribers. She started with $5-a-month subscription. She eventually raised the price to $10 a month or $100 a year.

Her biggest learnings about paid subscriptions:

1. The more valuable your resource, the greater your income potential. Saving time and money and identifying niche skills and talents are excellent places to start. Everyone has innate advantages. When creating a newsletter, tap into yours.

2. Experiment with unique call-to-actions to join your paid subscription tier. 

3. Identify why subscribers may hesitate to join your paid tier and address those objections. 

4. Rarely offer discounts.

2. Create once, sell many times: Develop a signature talk

Danielle leveraged speaking at events and conferences to show her expertise in her newsletter topic. This way, she strengthened her presence as a thought leader and attracted new subscribers by mentioning her newsletter at the end of the sessions.

Then, she recorded her workshops and created a digital resource called Introduction to Grants for Creators that targets her newsletter audience. She also positioned this digital product as an income stream. This strategy especially helped her reach her first 1,000 subscribers.

3. Don’t search far for good content: Share subscriber case studies

If your aim is to be helpful with your content and if you know your audience takes action based on what you share, ask them how they applied their learnings and showcase examples.

Danielle encourages her subscribers to share with her when they win a grant. This is one of her most successful growth strategies.

If you want to learn more useful tips like these and behind-the-scenes of how Danielle Desir Corbett built her newsletter business successfully, read our entire interview here:

👉 Do you want to reach over 2,800 newsletter creators & enthusiasts?

Thanks for reading, and don’t hesitate to reply if you want to reach out to me.

Ciler