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Write On by Joe Portsmouth
"I followed my passion, got started, and figured the rest out along the way."
Ciler Demiralp
April 28, 2024
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CREATOR INTERVIEW
This is the story of how Joe Portsmouth found the courage to start a newsletter from scratch centered around a topic he's passionate about.
This is the story of how, ultimately, he struck a balance between his full-time job and his newsletter as a side project.
This is the story of his realization that continuous progress is all that matters, regardless of whether it’s fast or slow.
In a nutshell, this is the story of how to pivot, delegate and calm down!
Joe Portsmouth has been reaching over 11,000 subscribers with Write On, where he shares copywriting tips as an experienced email marketer. He's in it for the long haul, aiming to make Write On his main gig, focusing on building momentum.
His biggest regret? Not starting sooner!
In our interview, we discussed:
Overcoming burnout
Utilizing the power of delegation for consistency
How changing the newsletter's topic can stimulate growth
Developing copywriting and storytelling skills for newsletter creators
Now, I'm handing the mic over to Joe Portsmouth.
Let's get started!
🛠 TOOL STACK
👋 MEET THE CREATOR
Welcome Joe. Let’s start with getting to know you.
I work full-time at Beard Club as the Sr. Director of Customer Retention.
I’ve spent 8+ years working in the customer retention space for a variety of startup companies, including FanDuel, Hopsy, and PetHonesty. This role has a major focus on email and SMS marketing, so that is where I’ve gained most of my copywriting experience, which eventually led to the creation of Write On in January 2023.
Growing Write On is my main focus outside of my 9 to 5.
🥁 START
How and why did you start Write On in the first place?
Before Write On, I had been working on another newsletter focused solely on e-commerce email marketing and customer retention. I wasn’t seeing a ton of growth, and I felt burnt out from spending my 9 to 5 and 5 to 9 hours thinking about this topic. I was interested in learning more about copywriting and storytelling at the time, so I figured it would be a fun pivot for a newsletter topic.
So I started Write On from scratch, launched a few lead magnets on Twitter for my existing following and ended up growing pretty quickly.
It took three weeks for Write On to reach 2,677 subscribers.
It took 11 months for my 1st newsletter to reach that amount.
Once I saw that initial traction, I phased out the old newsletter and went all-in on Write On.
🚀 GROWTH
Which growth strategies did you utilize to reach over 10,000 subscribers?
0 - 10,000 subscribers
The overwhelming majority of my list growth of up to 10,000 subscribers came from giveaways on Twitter, where I would craft a lead magnet, promote it, and DM people who expressed interest in the comments with a link to get it.
10,000 - present
My list has reached as many as 16,000+ with the help of paid ads on X, but I’ve cleaned up my list extensively over time.
“With a background in email marketing, I know that quality is much more important than quantity.
As a result, my open rates have always hovered around 50%, but as growth has slowed, my total subscriber count has gone down to around 11K.“
Re: growth slowing down, I recently took a few months off from content creation on social media because I was burnt out. That pretty much stalled all newsletter growth (along with turning off paid ads). I still wrote a weekly newsletter but put 0 effort into growth during this ~2-month period.
I’m currently getting back into the groove of posting daily content with the help of a new team member and am focused on building out monetization funnels before turning on paid ads again.
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