How To Pick Your First Growth Channel

Welcome to this issue of The Write To Roam, where every week, I show you how different 6- and 7-figure writers grow and make money.

The other day, a friend of mine who makes his living ghost-writing newsletters for busy entrepreneurs said that publishing online is like basketball: You have to take shots in order to win.

I like the analogy, but would twist it even further…

When you really start writing seriously, you realize business is like a game of basketball, except you’re playing against a hundred other teams, and everyone’s running around, but almost no one is shooting at all.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and feel like you’re behind if you haven’t started publishing yet. Log onto LinkedIn or Twitter, and it seems like everyone is years ahead of you.

But your feed is a mirage. It pulls active writers from the furthest corners of the globe, and streams them to your face.

The court looks crowded with shooters, but it’s not.

If you were to go on LinkedIn, and find everyone in your city with a similar job as you, you would quickly see – 90% of them have never posted a thing. Of the ones who have, most only re-share someone else’s work every now and then.

Perhaps a handful will have ever published their own thoughts. Of those, most aren’t consistent, and haven’t posted in a month or more.

All these people wake up, go to work, work hard, and compete for similar roles. But almost no one does the one thing that could practically guarantee them the career they want. Almost no one is shooting.

Keep that in mind this week.

-Ethan

How To Pick Your First Growth Channel

This week’s main insight comes courtesy of Matt McGarry.

A few weeks ago, he dropped this great video, comparing about thirty different newsletter growth tactics based on quality & quantity of subscribers they produce.

In the end, he says there are basically four primo channels (I will die before I use the term “s-tier,” but I digress): Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Meta.

His advice: Pick one to start.

Matt’s a friend, and joined me recently for a class I’m teaching. I asked him how to pick which platform was best for your newsletter, and as we chatted back and forth, we co-developed to this neat little decision tree.

You basically decide the answer to three binaries:

1. Are you an educator or news site?

2. Do you prefer making text or video?

3. If video, do you prefer long-form or short form?

Educator or News Site

Just about everyone writing online falls into one of these two.

Either they’re publishing news/journalism/analysis, or they’re a subject-matter expert, teaching a topic to readers. News is more timely, so it’ll typically require shorter-form, more frequent updates to grow. Education is more evergreen, so longer-form less frequent posts can still be valuable. Most business owners fall into the educator bucket.

Text or Video

Either can work, so pick the one you love doing most, so that you stick with it, rather than trying to learn a whole new skill on top of writing your newsletter.

If Video, Long- or Short-Form

For long-form, the advice is to start with two videos per week, funneling attention to some lead magnet as a way of getting people from video to the newsletter.

For short-form, start with five per week, and work up (one per day is a common goal, but people build to as much as 2-3 per day as they grow).

As for Meta Ads… They can help, but he says he doesn’t recommend using them until you hit 6- to 7-figures in revenue. Before that, it’s more important to focus on monetizing and growing organically.

I agree – you should be monetizing reliably before putting significant money into ads. But I sometimes still recommend people spend a small amount – a few hundred dollars – to get the list rolling.

Reason: Having strangers on the list makes this whole thing feel real, and early on, that can be crucial in maintaining your momentum. It’s not important for everyone. But if you struggle to feel like publishing is worthwhile, spend a few hundred bucks to get some readers who aren’t your grandma. Just make sure it’s money you don’t mind burning.

The ad budgets Matt works with are much larger (we’re talking $10k/mo+) so his advice holds for pretty much everyone reading this – monetize before dumping that kind of cash into growth.