What am I missing in newsletter promotion?

I grew my newsletter to 15000 subscribers and I write around Micro SaaS Ideas

Recently wrote about growing a newsletter on IH. Here is my take.

• Build a side project that drives leads to the main newsletter - The side project doesn't have to be tech heavy. It should be able to be built using simple NoCode stack and shouldn't take more than 2-3 days. In most cases, this side project/product should be free to get more leads. [I am working on something around this. Should be ready sometime this week]

• Create an ebook that is closely related to your audience. Could be paid or free. Keeping it for free drives more subscribers to your newsletter. Keeping it paid helps you experiment better (something around Newsletter). I created Zero To Founder ebook

• Get an Influencer in your niche and help him with a small free product that he could use and in return he could mention about your newsletter.

• Pick an Influencer, offer to write content (really high quality content) for him for free and ask the Influencer to mention about your newsletter somewhere in his post/tweet.

I run a niche, curated programming newsletter with around 3k subs.

I've had decent growth from creating posts on LinkedIn + Twitter, then tagging the authors of the articles I feature in my newsletter. I also email them personally with an image asset they can use to post on their social media (to celebrate being featured in my newsletter). This is pretty time intensive though and could definitely be automated.

I think the other comments about making a lead magnet, be it content behind an email wall or a side project, are very good ideas.

What I've also found to work fairly well is consistent cross promotions with other newsletters in my niche. I consistently get 1% or more of the other newsletter's sub count to sub to my newsletter as a result of a cross promotion. These have been so successful for me, I decided to build a site and facilitate connecting other creators with each other (https://crosspromote.io/). I connect creators in similar niches with similarly sized newsletters via an intro email every week, for FREE. So far the feedback I've gotten has been outstanding, with several people saying although it's pretty barebones, it's the best service they've tried.

I think building relationships with other creators is one of the most important things you can do to grow your newsletter and as a creator.

Facebook cpc (cost of a subscriber is too high)

What is too high? How much do you value a subscriber exactly?

Note: the more you send emails, the more you can include ad slots, and the more your subscriber LTV increase. If you only send monthly emails, it's harder to get a good ROI on newsletter paid acquisition channels because your MRR with things such as newsletter sponsoring can be very low. If you send daily your MRR per subscriber can be like 20x (but you have to put the hours to create the content, so it doesn't make sense if you have a small newsletter)

Time. You’re missing time. More time = more posts = more surface area. It will compound.

And other good suggestions in this thread.

I think you need to get into email marketing.
What I've experienced working very well is a lead magnet. Make an ebook relevant to your Podcast and then give it away in exchange for their email address.

Then humanly push your content through a newsletter where your Podcast is the main focus.

I'm using this for my YouTube channel, and it's working very well.

Great suggestions here and I'll add submitting to newsletter directories like mine https://inboxreads.co/ can help with a steady flow of subscribers. But have to agree with every one that the main thing is time, you seem to be doing all the right things it just takes a long time to see the result of your work when it comes to content cretion.

it takes time how long have you been doing it? i see you said 2 issues sent so i guess its recent? give it more time continue posting on sm channels, provide older issues for free until you get your target number.