'Day 0 Monetization'

👋 Today’s Revenews is written by Louis Nicholls, founder of SparkLoop and GrowMyNewsletter.com. Over the past 5 years, he’s helped thousands of top newsletters drive over 20m new subscribers and $100m in revenue.

Fellow British newsletter nerds aside, let’s dive in! 🚀

Day 0 Monetization

Louis, the founder of Sparkloop, talks about various monetisation methods, including Sparkloop, but this is not an Ad.

Over to you Louis…

Hey friends! Today I want to show you the easiest way to…

• grow your newsletter 10x faster in 2025

• with quality, valuable subscribers

• completely for free

 And we’re going to do it by focussing on the biggest untapped lever you can pull: Day 0 Monetization.

What is Day 0 Monetization and why is it important?

Imagine that a new reader subscribes to your newsletter today — and it costs you $2 to acquire them via Meta ads.

For most newsletters, it takes 1-3 months to earn back that $2 acquisition cost. 

Which sucks for two reasons…

1. You can’t grow your newsletter quickly (unless you have a lot of $$$ to invest upfront)

2. Growth is risky: It will take weeks until you find out whether the subscribers you’re paying for are valuable or not 

But — luckily for us — smart newsletter operators have found a better way.

By focusing on Day 0 Monetization, smart newsletter operators are making money from new subscribers on “day 0” (the first 24 hours after they subscribe).

In many cases, they’ve even achieved the “holy grail” of newsletter growth: A Zero Day Packback Period.

Meaning you’re profitable from Day 0… and you can essentially use Meta ads and other paid growth channels to grow your newsletter “for free”.

So how do you do it?

Steal these 4 “Day 0 Monetization” tactics for your newsletter

I’ve spent hundreds of hours working with newsletter operators to implement day 0 monetization.

Here are the four tactics that are crushing it for top newsletters right now (and that you can easily steal for your own newsletter):

1. Paid Recommendations

What: After a new subscriber opts in to your newsletter, you can show them a “recommendations widget” on your thank-you page with other newsletters they might like to read as well. 

For each other newsletter the subscriber opts into (and becomes an engaged reader), you’ll get paid a referral commission (usually $1-5).

Some newsletter operators used to worry that recommending other newsletters to your subscribers would make them less likely to open and read your own newsletter. 

This has been proven not to be the case* and there’s no downside to paid recommendations.

(*unless you run a daily news newsletter and also recommend other daily news newsletters) 

How much you can earn:

Based on the numbers I’ve seen, newsletters using paid recommendations in their opt-in flow earn…

• $0.50-2.50 per new subscriber (with SparkLoop* paid recommendations platform)

• $0.10-0.50 per new subscriber (with boosts, a paid recs tool native to beehiiv)

(* disclaimer: I am a co-founder of SparkLoop)

Examples:

The Office Party Newsletter used paid recommendations in their opt-in flow to achieve a Zero Day Payback Period and scale to 10k subscribers in just a few months…

2. Lead Generation

What: You already know that brands will sponsor newsletters to reach their target audience. But did you know they’ll also “sponsor” your newsletter signup flow?

After a new subscriber opts in to your newsletter, you can show them a quick survey on your thank-you page. Based on how the subscriber answers your survey, you can give them the option to opt-in to relevant “free resources” from brands… who will pay a lot for access to that qualified email address. 

How much you can earn:

• Earnings can vary wildly based on the value of your audience. Most newsletters will earn $1-5 per successful lead generation. But some (eg in the niche finance space) can go for up to $200 per lead!

• On average, I’m seeing lead generation earn back $0.50-3.00 per new subscriber to your newsletter 

Examples:

MarketBeat has 6+ pages of free resources and exclusive offers for new subscribers to choose from after subscribing to the newsletter:

The “I Hate It Here” newsletter for HR professionals includes lead generation for brand like BetterHelp in their welcome survey:

3. Tripwire Offers

What: A Tripwire offer is a “no-brainer” purchase… something you can offer new subscribers on your thank-you page that:

1. Is jam-packed with value,

2. costs so little they can say yes without a second thought (normally $5-50), and

3. leads well to more expensive products and services you want the subscriber to buy in the future

For paid newsletters, your tripwire offer might be a 30 day trial for just $1.

Other great tripwire offers include ebooks, courses, live group trainings and — for local newsletters — coupon booklets.

How much you can earn:

A good tripwire offer converts at 2-5% from a newsletter signup. 

You should aim to earn back $0.20-$1.50 per new subscriber on average.

Examples:

MarketBeat has a $19.99 introductory offer on their thank-you page…

The Every newsletter collective uses a “2 weeks access for $1” tripwire offer for their paid newsletter subscription…

4. Day 0 Emails

What: Most newsletter operators send only one or two emails to new subscribers on the day they subscribe. 

Why? Because they’re worried about “scaring off” that new subscriber and making them unsubscribe.

But the best newsletter operators I’ve worked with do the opposite: They recognize that a subscriber will never be as motivated (or have as much positive momentum) as the day they join your newsletter.

And so they send A LOT of emails in the first 24 hours.

MarketBeat, for example, sends 5+ emails within hours of subscribing.

And these emails work: When you include your paid recommendations, tripwire offers and lead generation offers in them, you get a second chance to monetize your new subscribers on day 0.

Sure – you’ll see an uptick in unsubscriptions. But the vast majority of them will be low-value subscribers who would have left in the first few weeks anyway.

How much you can earn:

With a good series of 3-6 targeted emails to new subscribers on day 0, you should be able to earn anywhere from $0.50 to $3.00 per new subscriber on average.

There’s a big range because it depends on how many of the monetization channels from above you’re using in your emails, and how well they convert for you.

Putting it all together

Imagine you spent the rest of the year optimizing your Day 0 Monetization…

• Add paid recommendations (30min)

• Add a survey with lead generation (1-2 days)

• Create a great tripewire offer and add to your thankyou page (1-5 days)

• Recap all the above in a great series of 3-6 welcome emails for new subscribers

… with less than two weeks of work, you’d have created an opt-in flow that earns you $2-10 per new subscriber on day 0.

Meaning you can enter 2025 with the ability to scale your newsletter audience incredibly quickly via paid acquisition — basically for free!

Just like the 25’000+ smart operators who rely on my weekly newsletter to discover how the best newsletters are growing and monetizing →