016: Inside Ahrefs: one of the most efficient SaaS companies in the world

05/06/19 • 58 min

In this episode I sit down with Tim Soulo, the CMO at Ahrefs. He shares behind-the-scenes on how they've built a company to over $1M in revenue per team member.

In this episode I sit down with Tim Soulo, the CMO at Ahrefs. He shares behind-the-scenes on how they've built a company to over $1M in revenue per team member.

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017: David Perell - Mastering Twitter to Grow Your Newsletter and Make Money

David Perell is known as “The Writing Guy” on Twitter, but did you know his email newsletter has over 40,000 subscribers? Not only that, but he sends THREE newsletters a week... every week!

In this in-depth conversation, David shares exactly how he uses Twitter to grow his audience, how he maintains consistency with such a high rate of output, and how he’s built an amazingly profitable business by monetizing his newsletters with his breakthrough writing course.

We discuss the top 3 ways for a writer to make money from their work and reputation. Should you:

• Become a consultant?

• Sell courses?

• Start a company?

David breaks down when each model makes sense, and whether people like Ben Thompson of Stratechery would be better off starting companies instead of selling paid newsletters.

David explains why new writers should focus on quantity over quality—and when to flip that around. He also covers the small tweaks that turn your articles from flash-in-the-pan to evergreen.

You’ll learn what to focus on when you’re just starting your newsletter, and the language to use on subscription forms to get people to sign up (hint: it’s not, “Sign up for my newsletter!”) Plus, how David sends 3 newsletters every week with less than 2 hours of work!

Links & Resources

David Perell’s Links

Website: perell.com
Twitter: @david_perell
YouTube: David Perell
Subscribe to David’s Newsletter
Check out David’s course, Write of Passage

Episode Transcript

David: [00:00:00] This is one of the things I think a lot of people get wrong about getting more email subscribers is they’ll say something like sign up for my newsletter. No one cares. I say something like you will learn how to take ideas and then turn them into structured writing. Then you will learn how to distribute that structured writing.

And then you will learn how to build a system to do this. It’s very specific and it’s very useful to the reader in so far as you have those three things, your conversion rates will go way up.

Nathan: [00:00:34] Today on Art of Newsletters, I’m joined by David Perell, who has an incredible newsletter that he’s grown to over 40,000 subscribers. We dive into how he uses Twitter to grow his audience. He blows my mind with what he does on Twitter. we had a new, his research processes, how he sends out three newsletters a week really consistently.

And then the biggest thing is how he monetizes list. he just makes an incredible amount of money off of the courses that he puts out there really, really high quality. And I think it’s a great model for anyone looking to build their audience and earn a living from their audience in particular. So with that, let’s dive in.

All right, David, welcome to the show.

David: [00:01:14] Thank you, Nathan. I’m a huge fan of both you and the company that you’ve built. I ConvertKits one of the most important platforms in my life. And thank you very much for all that you do.

Nathan: [00:01:26] Oh, that’s great to hear. Well, I’m excited to share a lot of your story. We’ve known each other.

What? Only a year or two. Maybe not, not that long, but I dunno, we both admire each other on Twitter and you know, I see you post stuff and I’m like, Oh, That’s an idea that I had, but phrased way better. So I’m excited to tell your story and to share a lot of the tips and tricks for building a billion newsletter.

Why don’t we start just tell people about the Write of Passage, your newsletter, you know, kind of like give the high level view of the newsletter and your business and how it all works.

David: [00:02:03] Yeah. So the way that I think about newsletters is that I guess I would segment it into two buckets. The...