One of the biggest pieces of advice for new authors is to start a newsletter. In almost every YouTube tutorial, article, and author interview, the consensus seems to be that having an author website and a newsletter are essential to kickstarting your author career. But just creating your newsletter and author website doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to get much traffic. So, today I thought I would share my journey from a brand new author with zero followers to today.
I am an affiliate with ConvertKit through PartnerStack. I receive payments for referrals to ConvertKit. Read my full disclaimer here.
My first author website was a free one (elizastopps.wordpress.com) because I had no idea if this crazy idea to become an author would ever be profitable. I started blogging back in October 2016, sharing progress about my first ever NaNoWriMo. At this point, I had not published any books, I was just sharing my writing journey. My blog helped me make a few friends in the writing world and meet other new authors who were also doing NaNo. On this website, I had about 48 followers who read my posts regularly and checked in with me. I didn’t start a mailing list because I tried Mailchimp and I thought it was pretty confusing and frustrating to set up. So, I put the idea on the back burner and figured I would revisit it once I had a few books out.
My First “Real” Author Website
In 2018, I decided to start paying for an actual domain (the one you are reading this on) and started posting more regularly. I had a few books out in The Leslie Kim Serials and I was happy doing author interviews and generally just building my blog following. I’m not sure how many readers I had when I started but I know it wasn’t many. The hard truth is that finding readers and building a following takes time. Unless you are one of those lucky ducks who happens to launch a book into worldwide success right out of the gate, then you might be an overnight success with a huge following right away. For me, I’ve gradually increased my following every month for the past few years. There are some years where I am less active and write less and the growth usually stalls out.
Starting My Newsletter
I finally started my newsletter list on ConvertKit in 2020. I had read about them in some articles and I was interested because they seemed a lot simpler to use than the other newsletter providers I had heard about. And they were free for your first 10,000 subscribers. (Actually, they still offer this deal.)
One of my favorite features that ConvertKit offers is free webinars, tutorials, and helpful videos to get you started. It was so easy to learn how to set up my newsletter, how to do visual automations, and use all their features. I definitely attended quite a few of these live webinars which are not pre-recorded, they were actual ConvertKit employees there to answer questions and do walk-throughs for different features. I am also subscribed to their newsletter where they share ways that other creators were able to find success.
ConvertKit also makes it really easy to make money through their platform. If you want to sell digital products, online courses, or set up a tip jar, ConvertKit has you covered.
I ended my first year on ConvertKit with about 22 subscribers to my newsletter. These were all people who followed me “organically” (and some of them were definitely family members). I was a little bit discouraged. I had started my author website, started a newsletter, and published a few books but I still wasn’t connecting to very many readers. That’s where BookFunnel comes in.
Growing with BookFunnel
I am not an affiliate with BookFunnel, but I have been using them since 2022 and I think they are great. BookFunnel is a service that makes it easy to join book promotions, giveaways, newsletter swaps, and even sell books through their platform. When I started selling books on my website recently, I connected it to BookFunnel so that they can easily deliver the eBook to customers and those customers have the option of multiple different formats (rather than only buying an ePub or a PDF.)
I use BookFunnel to find new newsletter subscribers by offering freebies, like free books, short stories, and excerpts, and joining promotions. I also share those promotions in my newsletter and social media accounts (which helps the other authors in the promos). Anyone who wants to get the book for free has to subscribe! In my first month on BookFunnel, I went from 22 subscribers to 173. I was giving away copies of books in The Leslie Kim Serials and it worked! Most of those subscribers have stuck around for the past few years and many of them do download my other free giveaways, some of them went on to buy the next books in the series, and anyone who didn’t want to keep following me could easily unsubscribe. This felt like a huge win to me! I didn’t do much with my newsletter over the next few years beyond sending an email when I released a new book (so, not many emails.) It wasn’t until 2024 that I decided that it might be smart to start building my newsletter list again.
At this point in my writing career, I have released 4 books in The Leslie Kim Serials (and one prequel) and 2 books in my young adult mystery series, Paige Parker Mysteries. The Disappearance of Susannah Dane is by far my most popular book and most of that success was because of Kindle Vella (and their generous bonus program.) I won’t go too much into that here but you can check out my other posts about Kindle Vella here. While the initial spike in readers for The Disappearance was amazing, I found that it was a little challenging to get readers to carry over to the next book in the series. Because I had seen it happen with The Leslie Kim Serials, I knew that the solution was to try to get readers onto my newsletter list so they would know when a new book came out.
In July 2024, I ran multiple promotions through BookFunnel for the series and I was able to jump my subscribers from 147 subscribers (some of the initial subscribers had left by this point) to 322 subscribers.
Now, I know this isn’t one of those success stories about how someone went from 50 to 50,000 subscribers in a month. But it is a genuine success for me. In one month I went from 22 to 173 subscribers (2022) and then in one month (July 2024), I went from 147 to 322. That is really only 2 months of promotions. If I had been doing promotions every month, I am sure that I could have had more growth. As it stands now, I tend to only promote the first book in the series when I have a new book coming out. I prefer to spend more time writing than marketing but promoting through BookFunnel has consistently worked for me.
I also use BookFunnel to deliver freebies that are newsletter exclusives, like teasers for upcoming books or free book giveaways. BookFunnel gives the option to create links to files for existing subscribers and it is a little safer than just sending raw links out into the world. BookFunnel is about $10 a month, but it is well worth it for me. And if you choose to pause your subscription to them, they still keep your links so it is easy to come back later.
ConvertKit Recommendations
ConvertKit recently added a new feature to their newsletters that allows you to recommend other creators to your readers when you send out a newsletter and other creators can do the same for you. Recently, I had the Cozy Mystery Bookshop add me to their recommendations and I started seeing a trickle of new subscribers just from them sharing me with their subscribers. How neat is that??
This is similar to BookFunnel’s newsletter swap feature but it is all happening right in the ConvertKit dashboard. You can choose which creators to recommend, you can recommend each other, and it can help you find creators working in the same niche as you. I was thrilled to learn about the Cozy Mystery Bookshop because they also share indie bookstores around the US that specialize in mystery books (which is kind of my favorite thing.)
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