183: How To Get Over A Million Email Subscribers In 2 Years With Sam Parr Of The Hustle

Podcast: Download (Duration: 47:13 — 54.3MB)

The Hustle went from 200 email subscribers to nearly a million, and the single change that accelerated it most was abandoning the blog and going email-only. Open rates run between 40% and 60%, and roughly 90% of revenue comes from advertising inside those emails.

Sam Parr started with a conference rather than an audience. He had about 200 emails, cold-pitched speakers far above his weight class, and used ticket sales to fund everything that followed.

His framing is worth stealing: your email is your website. The Hustle treats the daily send as the product rather than as a distribution channel for something else.

This episode covers how he landed speakers with no track record, why email-only raised open rates, how the ambassador referral program drives 20% of growth, and what newsletter ad rates actually look like.

A note on timing: this is a 2017 conversation. Subscriber counts, ad rates, and platform behavior have all moved since.

Key takeaways

• Collect emails rather than chasing direct sales, since 20% to 30% of visitors give an email against roughly 1% who buy immediately.
• Cold pitches work when each one references something specific and hard to find about that person.
• Booking a conference is circular: pitch each speaker on the others, and the commitments firm up together.
• Spend most of your booking time landing one large name, because the rest say yes afterward.
• Switching to email-only raised open rates because a daily send becomes a habit rather than an interruption.
• The ambassador referral program, rewarding shares with shirts and hoodies, accounts for about 20% of growth.
• Newsletter advertising ran $20 to $60 CPM on emails sent rather than opened.
• Growth came from doing the same unglamorous work daily for 18 months rather than from tactics.

Why should you collect emails instead of selling directly?

Because the arithmetic favors it overwhelmingly. Roughly 1% of visitors will buy a conference ticket, while 20% to 30% will hand over an email address.

Sam ran that math before launching anything. Capturing the larger group and selling to them later beats optimizing for the small group who buy on the first visit.

The list was tiny at the start. About 200 people, mostly friends and friends of friends who got added without asking.

The content cadence was modest too. Two articles a week about something or someone interesting, with a pitch for the conference at the bottom.

How do you get high profile speakers with no audience?

Research each person deeply enough to reference something almost nobody knows about them. Sam landed speakers far above what his 200-person list justified through cold email alone.

His example is Rick Marini, who founded Tickle and later BranchOut. Sam had watched every conference talk Marini had given, including one with about 200 views.

In that obscure video, Marini described choosing between a consulting job paying a quarter million at 26 and starting his own company. Sam’s pitch connected his own recent decision to that exact story and asked him to tell it.

The response confirmed the approach. Marini could not believe anyone had found that video and invited him to the office.

Every pitch was individually written. Sam tailored each one to where that person sat in their company’s lifecycle.

How do you book a conference before anyone has committed?

Pitch each prospective speaker on the others you are pursuing, and let the commitments converge. Sam compares it to telling your mother your father already agreed.

Four things develop simultaneously: speakers, audience, sponsors, and logistics. Each sits half-finished until they all resolve together.

The sequencing advice is specific. With four weeks available, spend three landing the single biggest name, because the remaining week fills easily once that person is confirmed.

Lineups stay fluid far later than attendees realize. Speakers have been added a week out, and changes have happened two nights before the event.

How do you promote content on Reddit without getting banned?

Participate genuinely first and keep self-promotion to a small fraction of your activity. Roughly 10% of what Sam posted was his own, and the other 90% was ordinary community participation.

His participation was real rather than strategic. Questions about used jeans in a fashion subreddit, help fixing a broken remote control, comments on tech news.

Each subreddit needs its own read. Understanding the personality of a community comes before creating anything aimed at it.

Entrepreneurship communities have the sharpest detectors. Sam’s approach there was writing about people he genuinely found inspiring without linking anywhere.

Hacker News rewarded a specific content type. Articles with a scientific or research angle matched that audience and produced his early traffic.

He explicitly rejected vote manipulation. He describes having been interested in that kind of tactic previously and choosing organic growth because it pays better over time.

Front page hits were rare and large. Reaching it happened maybe five or six times, occasionally worth a million views.

Why did going email-only accelerate growth?

A daily email becomes part of someone’s routine in a way a website never does. Open rates climbed once The Hustle started sending every day.

The premise is a service rather than content. Give someone the news they need over breakfast so they can hold their own in conversations at work that day.

Being unusual was its own distribution. An email-only media company was strange enough in 2016 that people told their friends about it.

The economics drove the decision. Ad-supported article traffic was a declining business, and they concluded they were not positioned to win it.

Email needs far fewer writers to sustain. That efficiency is what made the model viable.

Search traffic survived the transition anyway. Older articles still drive 20,000 to 30,000 daily visitors, and the daily email now produces five articles a day being built to rank.

Why an email list protects you from platform dependence

Media companies that route 95% of their traffic through Facebook have handed someone else control of their business. Sam’s framing is wanting a pirate ship, meaning the ability to do what you want with people you like.

Email is not immune, and it is less concentrated. Gmail’s promotions tab is a real risk, and not every subscriber uses Gmail.

He is realistic about the limit. Short of building your own platform entirely, some dependence always exists, and the goal is hedging rather than eliminating it.

How does a referral program grow an email list?

Give subscribers a unique URL and reward tiers for the people they bring in. The Hustle’s ambassador program accounts for about 20% of growth.

The tiers escalate with real merchandise. Four signups makes you an ambassador, 20 earns a t-shirt, 100 earns a hoodie, with stickers, hats, and socks along the way.

Quality of the merchandise is the point. Sam’s partner designs shirts good enough that people would buy them, and they are given away instead.

The mechanic started at the conference. Sharing a link that produced ticket sales earned you a free ticket.

How much do email newsletter ads pay?

Between $20 and $60 CPM, calculated on emails sent rather than opened. Advertising provides about 90% of revenue, with conferences making up most of the rest.

Ads are native and clearly labeled. The same writers who produce the news write the sponsorships, and each is marked as sponsored.

Sam is direct about why the disclosure matters. The actual product is an audience that trusts them, and they decline brands with bad products.

Inventory is one or two ads per email. The list is also segmented, so Microsoft and Sam’s Club can both advertise on the same day to different readers.

Why advertising alone cannot build a large media company

News advertising can reach tens or hundreds of millions in revenue and will not get you to the scale Sam wants. A second revenue engine is required.

His examples are companies people misclassify. NerdWallet earns hundreds of millions from credit card offers, AARP makes billions from memberships, and Bloomberg makes the bulk of its roughly nine billion from terminals.

The conclusion reframes what the news is for. Your journalism becomes content marketing for other products and services you sell.

The idea he is drawn to is collective buying power. An affinity group of 30 or 40 million members could negotiate real discounts and potentially influence policy.

How do you produce a daily newsletter?

The team reads news from late morning through mid-afternoon, then meets to argue about what matters. Sam describes that room as feeling like a comedy writers’ room.

Writing runs from roughly five to eight in the evening. Editing and updating continues as late as 3am to catch anything breaking.

The send goes out around 8:30 or 8:45am. Then the cycle starts again.

Contribution is shared rather than rotated. Each person accounts for roughly 30% of the output.

Neither founder touches the daily process now. Sam and his co-founder wrote it themselves at the start and have handed it off entirely.

How do you improve email deliverability at scale?

Clean HTML, your own IP address, and a good sending reputation with the major providers. Sam compares deliverability to SEO: a set of best practices with no silver bullet.

Moving off shared infrastructure helped substantially. The Hustle went from MailChimp to SendGrid and eventually built its own system on another provider’s API.

Product quality is what he credits most. Strong product-market fit and knowing exactly who wants the newsletter drive the 40% to 60% open rates more than technical tuning.

The scale of the problem is easy to underestimate. Sam guesses Amazon runs a 50-person team on deliverability alone.

What actually drove growth from 10,000 to a million subscribers?

Consistency rather than tactics. Sam names 30,000 and 100,000 as inflection points and says almost nothing changed in approach between them.

A friend visiting the office made the observation. Quarter after quarter they were doing the same work in the same small space, and that eventually compounds.

He calls it extremely unsexy. Doing the same job every day for 18 months at a decent standard produces results.

He explicitly disavows the shortcuts he tried early. Giveaways and vote manipulation produced small traffic bumps and nothing durable.

The mindset difference is time horizon. Accepting a mediocre month to build articles that generate search traffic a year out is what most internet marketers will not do.

How do you fund a media company before it earns money?

Conferences were the cash cow that let The Hustle stay independent while the audience built. Media pays well once the audience exists and pays nothing on the way there.

The first conference drew 360 people and was profitable. The second, run 80 days later with the same tactics, was four times larger.

Profits reduce how much you need to raise. That preserves valuation and keeps ownership with the founders and employees.

They did raise 1.3 million, and Sam questions whether they needed it. It bought speed.

The investor list was strategic rather than financial. Founders of Bleacher Report, Tim Ferriss, and Ramit Sethi are people whose advice he would otherwise have paid for.

Frequently asked questions

How do you grow an email list from scratch?

Sam started with about 200 addresses and published twice weekly, sharing each piece in communities where he was already a genuine participant. Growth came from repeating that for 18 months.

What open rate can a large newsletter achieve?

The Hustle ran 40% on low days and 60% on high days at close to a million subscribers. Product quality and audience fit matter more than list size.

How much do newsletter ads pay?

Between $20 and $60 CPM, billed on emails sent rather than opened. That accounted for roughly 90% of The Hustle’s revenue.

Should you send a newsletter daily?

Daily sending raised The Hustle’s open rates by making the email a routine part of readers’ mornings. It requires content people genuinely need rather than filler.

How do you get speakers for a conference with no audience?

Research each person until you find something specific almost nobody knows, and build the pitch around it. Land one large name first, and others follow.

How do you promote your own content on Reddit?

Participate genuinely and keep self-promotion to roughly one in ten posts. Each subreddit has its own culture, and entrepreneurship communities detect promotion quickly.

Do referral programs work for newsletters?

The Hustle’s ambassador program drives about 20% of growth. Subscribers share a unique link and earn merchandise at four, 20, and 100 signups.

How do you improve email deliverability?

Send from your own IP with a strong sender reputation and keep your HTML clean. It resembles SEO in having many best practices and no single fix.