How I got my first 1,000 newsletter subscribers

On August 1, 2020, I launched The Black Sportswoman, a publication where Black history meets women’s sports. It started as a Twitter account, launched as a Substack newsletter and it is now a multiplatform, multilingual publication dedicated to sharing the stories of Black women athletes around the world.

Our core product is our website and newsletter, which is powered by Ghost. We offer a free newsletter and a paid membership. Today I want to share how I reached my July 1, 2021 goal of hitting 1,000 free newsletter subscribers.

Before I do that, some additional details for context: 

• We didn’t publish new content from mid-September through November 2020 (while I participated in the Google News Bootcamp)
• From January through April 2021, we were extremely inconsistent – sometimes posting only once a month. I left my full-time newspaper job in April, though the reason wasn't to focus on The Black Sportswoman. Still, a lot of our growth happened after that.
• Since May 2021, we’ve gotten back to publishing consistently. We now publish twice a week (1 free, 1 paid)

It took a lot of hard work and more strategies than just reminding people we have a newsletter – though that of course helped. We of course had lulls.

Below are the strategies I used to gain my first 1,000 newsletter subscribers.

My past work, new audience served as a foundation

I got my first hundred or so subscribers from the Twitter audience I built reporting last summer, which was my first experience freelancing for national publications consistently. Niche but reputable publications like The Equalizer and All For XI, as well as more traditional publications like Sports Illustrated, FiveThirtyEight and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

Doing this built my Twitter following, my reputation and by continuing to prioritize Black women athletes and their experiences, I continued to build my brand (even though the brand building wasn’t what I was trying to do). 

Now, my audience isn’t massive – right now I have 2,700 followers on my personal account. But it almost doubled last year, with the spotlight on my stories and me as a reporter due to the international focus on Black people’s lived experiences.    

Once I launched the publication, I posted weekly features – including interviews with the legends, telling stories and history my audience (and I) hadn't heard of before. This unique content and the value it offered in the women’s sports landscape drew attention and people began shouting out my work. 

By September I had about 300-350 subscribers. 

I refined my ideas and found my target audience

During September, I joined the LION/Google News Initiative bootcamp – they are currently accepting applications – and I paused the editorial side to focus on the business and strategy. I strongly encourage you to apply if you want to build a digital news publication.

One small example of changes made:

• My 2020 tagline: The Black Sportswoman tells the stories of Black women athletes in sports history and highlights those often written out of mainstream coverage.
• My 2021 tagline: The Black Sportswoman, where Black history meets women’s sports.

Among many other things, I refined my focus and found (and I am continuing to find) my unique value in the women’s sports landscape. There are a lot of publications popping up, but I focus on Black women athletes across the diaspora.

This has helped me develop a better pitch for why people should subscribe, as well as where to reach people and who I should be reaching out to in the first place.

After bouncing back with a well-received profile and Q&A with Briana Scurry, we hit a lull.

Then, I added a newsletter signup pop on my website 

This was by-far my most effective strategy.

When I moved over to Ghost in December 2020, I noticed a drop in momentum of subscriptions. No matter how many times I shared the link or let people know to visit, it felt like I wasn’t converting the awareness, website views or overall engagement into subscribers. (I don’t know if this is why for sure, but compared to my free Ghost template, Substack has a simpler way to submit your email easily.)

My solution was to create a MailerLite email signup popup that asks people, while they're on my site, to subscribe to my email list – and I noticed an immediate difference/steady uptick in subscribers once I began directing them to my website after that.

My MailerLite plan is still free, and I am able to have an auto-response email that also serves as engagement with news subscribers. You do need an email connected to your domain to do this, though.

The day after I added the popup, I launched my first e-book.

I created lead magnets to attract new readers

This was my second-most effective strategy.

I decided to create unique content to attract people who had interest in Black women, women's sports or sports history to my email list. It had to be interesting enough for someone to offer up their email in exchange for it, but I was in the middle of reporting my big Peru women's volleyball story. I honestly didn't want to create anything from scratch.

So I repurposed content I created in January and turned it into our first e-book – free in exchange for an email address. So many people hadn’t seen that content – we’d added more than two hundred subscribers since then – but the e-book format caught the attention of many new people online.

That e-book is no longer free, but on the last day that it was free, I mentioned there were only hours left to download the book at no cost. I added many new people that way as well. Now it wasn’t intentional, but I also grew my email list by creating a limited-time offer.

Networking kept me afloat during the lulls

When I wasn’t posting or drawing leads consistently before I left my full-time job, we had occasional boosts thanks to shoutouts from publications in the women’s sports niche – PowerPlays and The IX newsletter, being RT’d by popular sites like the Burn It All Down Podcast, having fellow reporters in the women’s sports world – like Erica L. Ayala or Kurtis from Across The Timeline share my work or invite me onto their podcasts.

These are people I have relationships with, and while we’re all in or care about women’s sports we all actually have different perspectives and niches within sports. 

I’m not sure about other industries, but in the women’s sports landscape, it’s easy to make friends and uplift each other because while our stories aren’t always positive, most of us started out as fans and the general goal is to grow and sustain women’s sports.

I’ve learned a lot during this first year of The Black Sportswoman, and I hope this is helpful as you build or continue to grow your own newsletters or publications. 

If you have interest in me writing a separate post re: what I learned throughout this process, editorial & business strategies through the The Black Sportswoman's first year, let me know.